gender lacking languages

Guest   Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:17 am GMT
What languages apart from English have gender lacking forms? Ie, so that it's impossible to know the sex just by their writing?
Guest   Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:18 am GMT
For example, in English:

I am angry. I am fat.

Spanish:

Estoy enojado/a. Soy gordo/a.
guest   Mon Sep 24, 2007 1:48 pm GMT
Korean lacks grammatical gender, however, there are distinctions made for masc. fem. and neuter things...

I believe most, if not all, agglutinating languages possess this feature...
guest   Mon Sep 24, 2007 1:51 pm GMT
...and some languages, like Dutch/Afrikaans, are moving in that direction
Frak   Mon Sep 24, 2007 2:18 pm GMT
German:
Ich bin ärgerlich. Ich bin fett.
Guest   Mon Sep 24, 2007 5:09 pm GMT
In Japanese there is no distinction whatsoever, being it people or things;
there are some adjectives you wouldn't normally attribute to a male (such as 'cute'), others you wouldn't attribute to a female but, other than common sense, there is no distinction.
greg   Mon Sep 24, 2007 5:33 pm GMT
Guest : « What languages apart from English have gender lacking forms? ».

L'anglais n'est pas totalement dépourvu de marquage morphologique du genre, même si, au total, la pêche n'est pas miraculeuse :

A] <féminin> = <masculin#ess> → <baroness> = <baron#ess>
<count>, <heir>, <host>, <lion>, <manager>, <priest>, <prince>, <prior>

B1] <masculin> = <neutre#er> → <murderer> = <murder#er>
B2] <féminin> = <neutre#ess> → <murderess> = <murder#ess>
<cloister>

C] <masculin> = <féminin#er> → <widower> = <widow#er>.

Il y a d'autres exemples.
Guest   Mon Sep 24, 2007 5:59 pm GMT
^
think he meant a gender difference regarding adjectives, not nouns?
SJF   Tue Sep 25, 2007 3:08 am GMT
Chinese
furrykef   Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:35 am GMT
<< In Japanese there is no distinction whatsoever, being it people or things;
there are some adjectives you wouldn't normally attribute to a male (such as 'cute'), others you wouldn't attribute to a female but, other than common sense, there is no distinction. >>

Japanese does not have grammatical gender, but men and women speak very differently in Japanese, so it's easy to tell the gender of the speaker.

- Kef
Guest   Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:39 am GMT
I meant gender differences in adjectives and verbs.
suomalainen   Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:46 am GMT
All Uralic languages lack gender, even in personal pronouns.
'He/she' is in Finnish 'hän', in Estonian 'tema' or 'ta', in Saami and Mordvinian 'son', in Mari (Cheremis) 'tudo', in Hungarian 'ö' (the points on 'ö' should be lines tilted to upward right showing that the sound is long).
Guest   Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:11 am GMT
<<<<think he meant a gender difference regarding adjectives, not nouns?>>

blonde vs. blond
brunette vs. brunet >>

Good point^^'
especially coming from you, "Le Blonde", hehe


So only the Uralic languages seem to lack gender distinction...
Guest   Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:37 pm GMT
<<German:
Ich bin ärgerlich. Ich bin fett. >>

Hey! my post:

"Ich bin dick" was deleted...this is not a vulgarity..."dick" is the actual German word for "fat" (lit. 'dick' = 'thick')...

I thought you'd have figured that out by now...
Guest   Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:43 pm GMT
Yeah, German dick is like English thick ("Relatively great in extent from one surface to the opposite" as a dictionary puts it. lol)