English and Gender(s)

Julie   Wed Mar 22, 2006 10:32 pm GMT
please tell me where i can get information about gender aspect in english
Ed   Sat Mar 25, 2006 12:01 am GMT
Whatever function grammatical gender might have had it clearly has no use today as there is a tendency to lose it as languages develop and become more advanced.

The Romance languages except for Romanian
have lost Latin's neuter and Dutch appears to be merging the ancestral Germanic masculine and feminine into one. English and Afrikaans have gone even further and lost grammatical gender altogether with no ill effect. Afrikaans has lost its grammatical gender found in the Dutch language it developed from fairly recently, within the last 300 years.

At the risk of howls of protest, perhaps French, German et al. should follow English and Afrikaans and abandon this relic?
greg   Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:44 am GMT
En fait le français possède 2 neutre sémantiques (comme l'allemand, l'espagnol, l'italien, l'anglais et l'espagnol) : le neutre sémantique fort (qui peut être grammaticalement masculin ou féminin : la table — le bateau — la lune — le soleil) et le neutre sémantique faible (qui peut être grammaticalement masculin ou féminin : la victime — le ministre¹ — la sentinelle — l'homme²).

¹Suivant le contexte, <le ministre> (masculin grammatical) peut être un masculin sémantique ou un neutre faible sémantique.

²il s'agit ici de l'acception "être humain" ; pour l'acception "adulte de sexe masculin", <l'homme> est évidemment un masculin sémantique et non un neutre faible sémantique.
Guest   Sat Mar 25, 2006 9:18 am GMT
this isn't about french greg, this is about English. If you want to write french write it on your latino/languages forum.
Ed   Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:34 pm GMT
Greg, ek praat nie Frans nie.
greg   Sat Mar 25, 2006 9:47 pm GMT
« Guest » : l'anonymat réduit singulièrement la portée (déjà limitée) de tes propos faiblards.
Guest   Tue Apr 11, 2006 1:27 am GMT
this is not helping me i said GENDERS not genders infomation.
L6117VL   Tue Apr 11, 2006 11:01 am GMT
Ed:

"Whatever function grammatical gender might have had it clearly has no use today as there is a tendency to lose it as languages develop and become more advanced."

An utterly subjective remark.

The presence (or absence) of grammatical gender in a given language provides no indication of whether that language is "advanced" or not - whatever "advanced" is supposed to mean.

Hmm, I thought we had already flogged this subject to death?
Adam   Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:41 pm GMT
"At the risk of howls of protest, perhaps French, German et al. should follow English and Afrikaans and abandon this relic? "

I agree. Grammatical gender is just pointless. There's no reason for it to exist.

Most of the world's languages DON'T have grammatical gender. It's just mainly European languages that have it.
Adam   Tue Apr 11, 2006 6:59 pm GMT
English probably lost its grammatical gender through trade.

The Anglo-Saxon language had three grammatical genders - masculine, feminine, and neuter. But they probably dropped the grammatical gender in their language when they started trading with the Britons, to make it easier for the Britons to learn the Anglo-Saxon language so that both sets of people could understand each other.
L6117VO   Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:16 pm GMT
"Most of the world's languages DON'T have grammatical gender. It's just mainly European languages that have it."

Do some homework. A good many languages - including non-European ones, rely on various noun classification systems. Some appear very complex and "pointless" as you put it.

"But they probably dropped the grammatical gender in their language when they started trading with the Britons, to make it easier for the Britons to learn the Anglo-Saxon language so that both sets of people could understand each other."

What incredible tosh...
G_DANS   Wed Apr 12, 2006 2:11 am GMT
Frankly grammatical gender in languages is a waste of time. Got to agree English and Afrikaans have made a position step getting rid of such trash.

But English has retained a couple of them eg.

waiter/waitress - host/hostress
L6120CH   Wed Apr 12, 2006 6:47 am GMT
"Frankly grammatical gender in languages is a waste of time."

Oh? Why?

It doesn't seem to present any great difficulties to the native speakers of such languages.
Guest   Wed Apr 12, 2006 7:52 am GMT
>>"Frankly grammatical gender in languages is a waste of time."

Oh? Why?<<

Unnecessary complexity added to a language from an objective perspective.
L6120CE   Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:26 am GMT
"Unnecessary complexity added to a language from an objective perspective."

Well, you might think you're being objective with that comment but you're not. You're merely making a subjective remark on "complexity."