I’m sure this has been worked many a time, but i’ll work it once more. I am curious to see what people think of when they consider whether various languages are more maculine(manly, rough, etc…) or feminine(soft, light, etc…). This has nothing to do with grammar genders (masc. fem. neuter.) just the overall impression of the language. Feel free to list any languages and their corresponding gender you like. No neutral/neither answers allowed, as I am most curious to see answers to the languages I consider to be neither fully masculine or fully feminine. And if you are not a native English speaker, i value your opinion even more.
I’ll begin:
German-masc.
English-masc. (This varies quite a bit though, especially with regional or national accents
Swedish-fem.
Norweigan-masc.
Spanish-masc.
Italian-fem.
French-fem.
Dutch-masc.
Chinese-fem.
Japanese-masc.
Vietnamese-fem.
Finnish-fem.
Arabic-masc.
Portuguese-fem.
And i’m out of languages that I can think of
forgot Slavic languges
Russian-masc.
Polish-fem.
Czech-masc.
Serbo-Croatian-masc.
You may have only heard men speaking Japanese. Men and women speak the language quite differently.
Spanish is masculine, but Italian is feminine? I mean, sure, it’s subjective, but your list just sounds like a comparator of how I would stereotype the speakers of each language.
Yes, in a way, that’s the point. The reason why Swedish is feminine and Norwegian masculine is because Swedish has a sing-song quality to it, with a change in pitch with pronunciation that Norwegian lacks. As far as Italian/Spanish, thats a matter of perception. I am interested in seeing different opinions. (This is IMHO, after all)
Well, obviously men and women both speak all of these, so this is silly.
But of your list, I think Russian is more feminine and Italian is more masculine, to me.
No, wait,* it depends on who’s speaking it.*
ETA: I do like this little joke (though it stereotypes the languages from very, very narrow subsets of them):
French sounds like a woman flirting with a man.
Italian sounds like a man flirting with a woman.
Spanish sounds like a saint praying to God.
And German sounds like a stableboy cursing at a horse.
(Not my actual opinion of Spanish and German, really.)
Have you ever heard Norwegian?
English (Southern & SW USA ) masculine. Think Slim Pickens, john Wayne
English (Aussie and British) feminine. I just can not get into an Aussie movie where the big, ugly bad guy, opens his mouth, only to sound like Julia Child.