# languages with gender; I just don't get it. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 30, 2002, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442 "2002-04-30T09:48:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/41 "2002-05-01T02:07:03Z")
Yes, ‘_araq_ literally means ‘sweat’ and metaphorically it’s applied to distilled liquor because the condensation and dripping of drops from the still reminded someone of sweating. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/42 "2002-05-01T02:07:27Z")
In Spanish (at least as late as 1970 when I first studied the grammar) there was **theoretically** a neuter gender: él, ella, ello = he, she, it. But it was really not used much in the living language except for the use of “lo” , as in **cuate** ’s example, an _article_ used in abstract or impersonal forms: “Lo bueno, lo malo, lo belllo” – that which is good, that which is bad, that which is beautiful ; **BUT** OTOH, “el bien, el mal, la belleza” – Good(m), Evil(m), Beauty(f). “Real” nouns are all M or F. In _pronouns_, “lo” is masculine and “indefinite”, or neuter if you will, pronoun in the direct-objective case; but “le” is gender-indifferent and is used for the indirect-object of all genders. “Le di las gracias” = I thanked him/her As BobT found out , sometimes the rule is arbitrary. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/43 "2002-05-01T02:53:19Z")
With gendered nouns, you can use pronouns more often. Suppose you want to say, “I looked into the mirror and saw a rock; I grabbed the rock, threw the rock at the mirror, and the mirror broke.” Using regular English pronouns (without repeating the nouns they refer to), it comes out a mess: “I looked into the mirror and saw a rock; I grabbed it, threw it at it, and it broke.” What broke, the rock or the mirror? But if “mirror” is female and “rock” is male, you can say: “I looked into the mirror and saw a rock; I grabbed him, threw him at her, and she broke.” If you’ve ever seen a multilingual instruction book, you may have noticed that English usually expresses the same idea in half the space of, say, German, so we don’t need to use gender for brevity. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/44 "2002-05-01T05:11:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Manduck \* > \*\* > > That’s because it sits on your face 😃 \*\* [hijack]This qualifies as the funniest post I’ve read in a long time on SDMB. Bravo![/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Yue\_Han](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/eada6e/32.png) [@Yue\_Han](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yue_Han)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/45 "2002-05-01T05:36:32Z")
No expert on Romance languages (stopped my Spanish schoolin’ a few years back) but I can bat clean up on the Chinese questions: > [@](#): > > that is, not only are nouns ungendered, but they do not even have gendered pronouns to refer to humans or animals. I think there is a distinction in written Chinese, though. Until this century the common pronoun for humans in Chinese, _ta_, was ungendered. In an attempt to emulate the West, _ta_ was made masculine and a new word, also pronounced _ta_ but written differently, was made feminine. The new word replaced the radical for ‘person’ with the radical for ‘woman’, thus introducing sexism and the question of which pronoun to use when being vague that we suffer from in English. Aiya. > [@](#): > > Many languages are free word order, unlike English (and, I think Chinese) which has relatively rigid word order. Yep, definitely. In fact, Chinese is quite a bit more rigid than English. > [@](#): > > One thing he mentioned was that you cannot tell the sex of a Chinese from his/her name. Mostly true, although a name usually has some descriptive elements that may be a tipoff. My friend Mo Xiani, for instance, has a name meaning roughly, ‘the aurora of sunset.’ You can probably tell she’s female. –John ---
**Author:** ![Yue\_Han](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/eada6e/32.png) [@Yue\_Han](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yue_Han)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/46 "2002-05-01T05:42:43Z")
Blast, left off a bit from the pronoun discussion. 1. A group of people including both men and women uses the plural form of the masculine pronoun, just as is done in Romance languages. (I think. My primary experience is with Spanish.) 2. You can’t tell the pronouns apart in speech. They ARE different words, just pronounced the same, like English there, their and they’re. It’s just that usually in Chinese you rely on context to differentiate identically pronounced words and for the pronouns that’s not usually an option. –John –John ---
**Author:** ![Balor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@Balor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balor)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/47 "2002-05-01T08:19:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dtilque \* > **Someone above said that Greek has no articles. That’s wrong. Greek certainly did. In fact, articles were one of the eight parts of speech in Greek.** You are quite right. I must have been dreaming when I said that about ancient Greek. Once again my Greek teacher spins in his grave. I have shamed myself before hoi polloi. I must be suffering from premature senility. I used to know what Alzheimer’s disease was, but I’ve forgotten.🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/48 "2002-05-01T16:15:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by cuate \* > \*\* > > Is lo (as in _lo bueno, lo malo, lo feo_ a Spanish “neuter” article? > > One thing I have always wondered is why words ending in -ma are usually masculine in Spanish (their cognates are too). El idioma, el programa, el problema, el sistema and el tema . Not all -ma words are like this (la paloma), but most are. \*\* The explanation I got from one of my Spanish professors is that Greek-derived words in Spanish, such as the ones you mentioned, end up being masculine. Many of these are abstract nouns ending in -ema or -eta. Another bit of linguistic trivia: many Spanish words beginning with -al (algebra, algodon, Alcazar) are derived from Arabic, since the masculine singular definite article in Arabic is -al. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/49 "2002-05-01T17:13:10Z")
> [@](#): > > _istara wrote:_ > “Beard” is feminine in French (la barbe). I’ve always wondered about that one… Maybe it should be translated “merkin.” ---
**Author:** ![Doobieous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/da6949/32.png) [@Doobieous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doobieous)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/50 "2002-05-01T21:43:49Z")
In Tagalog, which is an Austronesian language, words do not have gender, except borrowed words from Spanish such as abogado/a - lawyer. To specify if it is referring to a man or woman, babaing (woman) + noun, or lalaking (man) + noun is used: babaing guro - female teacher lalaking guro - male teacher BUT this does NOT mean the nouns acquire gender this way. Tagalog doesn’t even use a suffix or prefix for plurals, instead using the particle “mga” (said like ma-nga) instead: Mga babae - women. Further while it’s still in my head, there is no specific pronoun indicating he or she. It’s the same word: Siya. It’s just a general third person pronoun. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2002, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442/51 "2002-05-01T22:10:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eva Luna \* > > Another bit of linguistic trivia: many Spanish words beginning with -al (algebra, algodon, Alcazar) are derived from Arabic, since the masculine singular definite article in Arabic is -al. Also Az and Ar words. In spoken Arabic the R, D and Z sounds assimalate the L in al. E.g. Al-sukar, pronounced As-sukar. Mojo: > [@](#): > > Yes, ‘araq literally means ‘sweat’ and metaphorically it’s applied to distilled liquor because the condensation and dripping of drops from the still reminded someone of sweating. I’ve heard more… hmmmm ‘colorful’ (folk) etymologies, although they’re sarcastic of course. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/languages-with-gender-i-just-dont-get-it/106442.md?page=2)