For languages like French or Spanish that have gendered nouns, what happens when something new is invented, or when some new city/state/country appears on the map? Who gets to decide what gender it is, and how do they decide?
The irony of me trying to answer this question . . . yet it follows: France and Spain each have an Academy of Letters that can decree what new words enter the language. The probably use existing words to determine the new words’ gender.
For towns, in some languages the gender is usually one type regardless of the town’s name.
As I mentioned before, when the first train was built, the French (perhaps instinctively) declared it masculine, due to reasons obvious to those who have studied anatomy.
As I mentioned in this post, it’s mostly a case of following the rules. If it ends in an -a, it’s feminine, that’s all there is to it. I really think that the suggestion that trains are masculine because they’re phallic is a load of bull, to be frank. Ordinateur (computer) is masculine because it ends in -eur, not because it’s masculine to compute. In Dutch, it’s ‘de computer’ because all words ending in -er take de; in Russian ‘kompyutr’ is masculine because words ending in a consonant are generally masculine.
In Dutch, which is what I’m most familiar with, the default setting is for words to take ‘de’ (meaning they’re either masculine or feminine) and not het (meaning they’re neuter). Sometimes they do take ‘het’, for instance when it’s an English word that has an equivalent in Dutch that is neuter. A case in point would be ‘het level’ (as in a computer game), which is neuter because the Dutch word for level (het niveau) is neuter. Not because there’s something inherently genderless in the concept of a level in a computer game.
Sometimes it’s confusing, though. A word that is used increasingly often in Dutch is ‘paper’ (the thing that students hand in, not a newspaper). Officially it’s ‘de paper’ but it just sounds awful to my ears for some reason so I’ll always say ‘het paper’ (maybe because it’s also ‘het essay’ - I’m not sure) and so do a lot of other people. Eventually the taalunie will just have to give up calling it ‘de paper’, but until then…
If you ask a French speaking person the gender of a new word, they will often have a strong intuition. Words ending in e generally come from Latin words ending in a, in which case they will usually be feminine (e.g. filia --> fille), or in second or fourth declension word ending in us, in which case it will usually be masculine (e.g. situs --> site). Also words change gender sometimes. I don’t what the original Latin was, but French has le compte, while Spanish has la cuenta.
Here is an interesting one. When I bought hockey tickets, I noticed that the seller was called “La Canadian Arena Company”. Since the noun in the company name is “company” I can only suppose that, contrary to the usual practice of having new nouns be masculine, this one was feminine, almost surely because it is perceived as a cognate with the feminine noun “la compagnie”.
There is at least one French noun (IIRC correctly, it is “avion”, airplane) that has a different gender in singular and plural. Say “grand avion”, but “grandes avions”.
Oh and while words ending in -eur are generally masculine, it is “la couleur”.
I was always taught that -eur in French was a feminine ending for nouns, unless you’re talking about one of the many exceptions (like le bonheur, le malheur, and l’honneur)? French is the worst in my experience when it comes to exceptions for masculine and feminine nouns - I could never keep it all straight. Here are a few examples of French noun endings and their common exceptions:
Masculine endings:
-able, except for la table
-age, except for la plage, la cage, la page, une image
-aire, except for la grammaire
-eau, except for une eau and la peau
Feminine endings:
-ence, except for le silence
-ée, except for le lycée and le musée
-ice, except for un artifice and le supplice
-ie, except le génie, un incendie, and le parapluie
-ette, except for le squelette
-té, except for un été
-ion, except for un avion, le camion, un million
-oire, except for le laboratoire and le répertoire
-on, except for le poisson and le soupçon
I’m sure there’s some good reason for it all, but I’ve never been able to figure it all out 
Some of the French gender comes from the Latin words that they are derived from. In general, masculine and neuter Latin words became masculine French words, and feminine stayed feminine.
Even in languages that have a regulating academy, which is most of them, the academy’s decisions usually only reflects usage. Words are gendered when they’re created, not when someone rules on them.
Sorry, but this sounds, to be charitable, extremely unlikely. Well, yes, “train” is masculine, but not for this reason. And the word “train” existed before the steam engine, referring to queues of animals or other objects. The earliest citation in this dictionary is from 1165.
I can only speak for French, but it seems to me that most new nouns are masculine by default. In the same way, most new verbs are regular and from the first group. Unless they’re based on another word that’s feminine or a verb of another group.
Yes, foreign proper names take the gender of their cognate in French. Even for acronyms. That’s why we’ll say “le FBI” but “la CIA”.
I’ve never heard this, and my cite doesn’t mention it so I don’t think it’s true. Some words in French have different genders depending on the definition (œuvre is one, for example), and even some oddities (gens which can be both at the same time), but it wouldn’t work this way for newer words like “avion”.
There’s really only one way (except for France’s “grammar police”): they ask native speakers to decide. What we know today as “grammar rules” is just the approximation of what a native speaker would do.
For example, articles is a major research area supporting this idea. If you give a list of nouns to a native speaker, they will invariably give the correct article regardless of whether they have seen the word before or not. The “rule” about articles is just an approximation of what enough native speakers would agree about.
Example:
Typical Rule Found in nearly every Chapter 1 of any ESL textbook: If the noun begins with a consonant, the article is “a,” if the noun begins with a vowel, the article is “an.”
However, what about these words?: universe, ewe, hour, herb?
In actuality, the initial sound, not the letter, determines the article.
The latest research says that we should take native speaker intuition over “grammar rules,” as the former is more accurate. For example:
The group of doctors are going to operate.
Would this sentence be labeled correct or incorrect?
According to the S-V agreement rule, this sentence must be incorrect, as “are” must agree with “The group.”
However, what the research is finding is that in actuality, the rule is based on the presence of and “s” sound somewhere between the first verb word and the next closest noun, and native speakers want to put “doctors are” together rather than “doctors is.” Therefore, the cardinal rule (a logical agreement between the number of subjects and the verb) is incorrect. The actual rule is based on sound, not logic.
You recall incorrectly. Un grand avion, des grands avions. I can’t think of any word that’d change gender from singular to plural, although as **Hypnagogic **says, some (rare) words can have different genders depending on context.
As to how we determine the gender of new words, in my opinion, as a Frenchman, from experience, after much pondering and research and in a final analysis : it’s a clusterfuck, innit ? Some of it’s got to do with simple phonetics (words beginning with certain phonemes won’t roll off the tongue with one gender), some of it with etymology or the gender of other words that share the same construction, and some of it is just a plain instinctual notion. But then, it’s also my deeply ingrained belief that the enterity of the French language is a very elaborate shibboleth - so some of it might just be intended to mess with you foreigners.
Most new and technology-related terms tend to be masculine though. Un avion, un ordinateur, un mp3 (even though song, melody and music are all feminine words), un jpeg (even though photo and image are both feminine words), un email (even though letter is feminine).
Of course, the randomness provides endless fodder for lousy comedians. “The guy who decided torture was feminine was a married man.” ba-dum, tsch “How come dick is feminine ? Don’t they do basic research at the Academy ?” ba-dum, tsch “Cars are feminine, because deep down men want to sleep with them.” ba-dum, tsch.
I’ve heard that “airplane” is one which French speakers often get the wrong gender on, and that this leads to a joke about a dumb blond using the wrong article with one. It’s something like “Oh, look, la <airplane>”, and her boyfriend corrects her, “No, le avion”, and she says “How can you tell, from this distance?”. Of course, it’s funnier when it’s actually in French.
The ESL rule is exactly correct, with no exceptions. The problem is that consonants and vowels are sounds, not letters.
Superhal, find me any ESL book anywhere that claims that whether to use “a” or “an” depends on the initial letter of the alphabet rather than the initial sound of the word. Everybody with any halfway decent knowledge of English grammar knows that the a/an distinction depends upon the intial sound rather than the initial letter. What ESL book ever said otherwise?
In Welsh, a few nouns have different genders in different parts of the country (for practical purposes, different dialects). I understand this is the case in the Romance languages as well. From Cymraeg, Cymrâg, Cymrêg, my trans.:
“Masculine in the South, feminine in the North: clust (ear), cornel (corner), cwpan (cup), piano (piano), poen (pain / worry), tafarn (pub). Feminine in the South, masculine in the North: breuddwyd (dream), cinio (dinner), crib (comb), eiliad (moment), nifer (number), troed (foot).”
Note that a few of these (ear, foot, dream, comb) are fairly basic to the language, while others (cup, pub, number) are borrowings from Latin (which has gender) or English (which mostly doesn’t anymore). Just to illustrate what the difference looks like, because the article in Welsh is the same for both genders:
y breuddwyd bendigedig (the fantastic dream, masc.)
y freuddwyd fendigedig (the fantastic dream, fem.)
y breuddwydion bendigedig (the fantastic dreams, either)
(Masc. forms can change b > f too, just not after the article.)
How so? Un pénis. Or do you mean une queue? Oddly enough, vagina is masculine as well in French. And we also have une étamine and un pistil, which is counter-intuitive enough.
Yes, it’s true, I’ve heard the incorrect une avion more than once. With the definite article, it would simply be l’avion though. Pétale (petal) is another noun French speakers tend to see as feminine even though it’s actually masculine, probably because of the ending -e.
Speaking of airplanes, here’s an Acadian joke (French-English bilingualism and some knowledge of Acadian speech patterns required for understanding):
Fils: Papa, j’ai vu un plane!
Père: On dit “avion”, mon fils.
Fils: OK. J’avions vu un plane!
une bite, actually. Since we’re on the topic of gender confused genitalia, while the word “testicule” is masculine, many French think it’s feminine. Possibly because every slang word for them are. Or maybe because, here again, it’s one of the few masculine words that end with a silent -e.
Speaking of planes, in Spanish small planes with propellers are called “avionetas” and it is a feminine word.
Large planes (even with propellers) and fighter jets are called “aviones” and it is a masculine word.
There is only really just a few words that act like that: amour, délice et orgue. Masculine in the singular, feminine in plural.
I had to look up the third one, I only remembered amour and orgue.
In Greek most countries are feminine. I guess this is because the word “country” (χώρα) in Greek is also feminine.
Is it really that, or is it because most names end in -ia, which is a feminine ending?
Germania, Gallia, Italia, Rossia, Ispania, Tourkia, Irlandia, etc…
O Kandas , to Mexiko, to Perou, to Pakistan, o Agios Marinos, to Vatikano, seem to confirm this, since they have endings that correspond well with the actual gender assigned to them.
For those who speak French (and don’t incedentally have a headache yet) a good example of french linguistic approach can be found here: http://www.linguistik-online.de/11_02/durrer.html
from Sylvie Durrer. Though I have been speaking French for over 30 years, no basic sense seems to rule other than “the powers above” mainly “L’Académie Française”, though others sometimes intervene (State and press for example)