In languages for which nouns have assigned genders, who determines the gender of new nouns? Is there some sort of government department, the Ministry of Noun Genderfication, perhaps? Are there debates?
*“Ah, yes, the CD. She is round, like a woman. So the CD, she will be a feminine noun.”
“Oui, Jacques, but the CD is also hard and difficult to break, like a man! I say the CD, he shall be a masculine noun.”
“Feminine!”
“No, masculine!”
“Feminine, I say!”*
In French, such issues would be decided by the Academie Francaise, which is the ultimate arbiter on the French language.
Also in French, English words are almost exclusively masculine.
un CD
un sweat
un T-shirt
un pullover
le week-end
In fact, I can’t think of a borrowed English word that is feminine. But I know there are a few.
Yeah, but aren’t most of the words they review already in popular use? I’ve read the Academie is trying it’s damnest to stomp out the wholesale importation of words like “le fax” by making up long French compound words. So the French populace must sort of “decide” what gender the noun is…
Heh. That presupposes some attempt to rationally assign gender to nouns on the basis of inferred sexual characteristics. As far as I can tell, no such rational process exists - assignment of genders in German, for instance, seemed near random to me, and they actually have a neuter gender to use.
It’s a good question. It’s interesting, as noted above, that the French have apparently just started informally attaching “masculine” to all nouns which are English loan words. Perhaps it’s the first step to getting rid of noun gender in most cases - to an English speaker, it certainly seems like useless grammatical baggage. I remember a German instructor admitting that in informal spoken German, you could generally get away with forgetting about the various different articles based on case and gender, and sort of slur over it by saying “duh” instead of ennunciating “der, die, das, …” etc. But we were to learn noun genders anyway. It’s not as if it really seems to impart any information.
JuanitaTech, thanks for the laugh, your OP is great!
Anyway, German: Most genders for the German words appear arbitrary (though I recently found out there are rules for them - about 50, 10 with massive exceptions, and not applicable to all nouns), so you wouldn´t expect much logic from loan words, right? Again, there are rules, but they are more along the lines of “it feels better that way”.
A few examples:
If there already is a German word for it, the same gender is often used. e.g. “Der Chef/der Vorgesetzte” -> “der Boss”, “die Innenstadt” -> “die City”, and, in accordance with Mark Twain´s pet peeve: “das Mädchen” -> “das Girl”.
One-syllable nouns are often (but not always) masculine, as are compund words derived from them.
Sometimes gender is assigned by association: all dance styles are masculine, because it is “der Tanz” - > der Foxtrott, der Rock´n´Roll (and for some reason also music styles, like der Blues and der Jazz), or alcohol and drinks: “der Alkohol” -> der Whisk(e)y, der Brandy, der Longdrink.
And sometimes, yes sometimes, there is no logic behind it all.
Plus, there are differences between Austrian and German German (not only for anglicisms, but older words as well). Austrians often say “das” instead of the German “die”, and it´s a perfectly accepted regional variety. Take Coke: for reasons I can´t even begin to guess, it is “die Cola” in Germany, and the Austrian “das Cola” is no more or less logical.
Cite: I got the information and most of my examples from this page
I know many native French (Canadian) speakers and they claim that they almost always have a strong feeling what the gender ought to be from the phonetics. I know one woman who has played the game of assigning genders to nonesense syllables and there is a wide agreement on the assignments.
As for borrowed words, yes they are usually masculine (they don’t fit the sound patterns of French so the above paragraph is inoperative). The main exceptions I have seen are words borrowed from English that have obvious french cognates. For instance the legal name of the company that owned the Montreal Forum was “La Canadien Arena Company” and this was explained to me as because “Company” was an obvious cognate of the French feminine noun “Compagnie”.
There are certainly some rules, but the native speakers are unaware of them. I once mentioned in passing to a French-Canadian professor of linguistics that nearly all words (I think there is one exception) that end in “-ion” are feminine and she was astonished, since she had never noticed that–at least consciously.
I believe the “-ion” = feminine is because those words are loan-words from Latin during the renaissance period. In Latin, words ending in “-ion” are feminine, so they kept that gender when the French borrowed them.
Thanks you so much for the answers.
Here are the notes I made on gender in French when I was studying in Quebec:
1. The “Faith, Hope and Charity” Rule: Words describing a particular ideal tend to be feminine, especially if they end in “é”. Examples: “La Foi, l’Espérance, la Charité.” (But, the synonym “espoir” is masculine; see rule 2.)
2. The Rule of Specific Examples: The word for a general thing is often feminine, but a word naming a specific example of the general is usually masculine. Examples: “La terre” (the earth) becomes “le terrain” (a specific lot or plot of earth). “La règle” (“the rule”) becomes “le règlement” (a bylaw or regulation).
3. The Feminine Latinate Rule: All words ending in “-tion” without exception are feminine. These words were borrowed during the Renaissance directly from Latin. Since they are always feminine in Latin, they retained that gender in French. (Bonus! The English humanists often borrowed the same words without anglicizing them, so the same word usually, but not always, has the same meaning in English and French. If you can’t translate an English word, think of the Latinate version and use it with a French accent.)
4. The Masculine Bureau Rule: Almost every word ending in “-eau” is masculine. Examples: le bureau, le manteau. Exceptions: there are at least two exceptions to this rule: la peau (skin) and, perversely enough, l’eau itself (water; feminine).
5. The Masculine Foreigner Rule: Words borrowed from another language, especially English, tend to be masculine in French. (Subject to exceptions when the lending language uses similar gender rules as French: see rule 3). Examples: le pull-over; le week-end.
6. The Feminine Countries Rule: Names of countries ending in “e” are always feminine, with one exception. Examples: La France, la belle Angleterre, la belle Allemagne. The Exception: Le Mexique.
7. The “When in Doubt” Rule: The majority (55%) of French words are masculine. When in doubt, play the odds and assume the word’s masculine. (It makes verb conjugations and adjective accords easier, anyway.)
And the french populace does. Generally, as already mentionned by assigning a masculine gender for “imported” words. For instance, e-mail is masculine. The french word recognized by the “Academie francaise” , courriel (invented by the Quebecois, I believe), is masculine too. It could be also the company selling a new product. The first importer/ producer of vaccum cleaners had to come up with a word, for instance. This was un aspirateur, masculine again. Finally words can arise from new slang (une meuf= une femme= a woman). Gender assigned by the populace, once again. Some words can be created locally for a new product, in which case the inventor/company assign the name and gender.
Actually, the Academie Francaise is rarely involved in the process (it’s not like its members are actively trying to invent words. They just set the rules of use for the existing language), except when it decide to create french words in order to replace an anglo-saxon one already used. Generally without much success, like with the “courriel” mentionned above. Though sometimes, for some reason, the “official” word actually stick. I saw it happen with the “balladeur” (still masculine) which replaced the “walkman”.
By the way, the academie francaise is mainly a college of peer-elected writers, and mainly known here as such (being elected to the Academie is considered the ultimate honor by many french writers who are actively trying to get in). I mention it because it’s quite obvious that in foreign countries (or anglo-saxon countries at least) it’s mainly perceived as a “language regulation board”.
It’s also only one (though by far the most famous) amongst the “academies” (for sciences, arts, archeology, etc…), the one in charge of litterature, grammar, etc…
This is a common misconception. The Académie was founded on order of the king to unify grammatical and spelling usage. Its first task was the creation of a dictionary. Members, however, took so long to compile it that they got trumped by a private author. The Dictionnaire français contenant les mots et les choses by Pierre Richelet was published in 1680, 14 before the Académie’s.
The significance of this is that the role of the Académie is purely symbolic. No one cares, really, about what they say. It is the private dictionaries, namely Larousse and Robert and grammar guides (Grevisse) that are the de facto arbitrers of the French languages. These base their decision on common usage, not on decisions of the Académie. Since 1694, there have only been 9 edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française. Robert and Larousse update theirs yearly.
So, who decides? Ultimately French speakers. Dictionary compilers merely confirm that a certain usage is indeed general (and in doing so, reinforce the trend).
The operative here is “to an English speaker”. To a native French (or Spanish, Italian, German, etc.) speaker, gender flows naturally. It is not, in any way “useless baggage”, though I certainly understand how frustrating a concept it might be to English speakers. Gender is such a fundamental aspect of the language that I can’t even imagine speaking French without genders.
Understanding of gender is largely instinctive and an aesthetic matter, which is why it’s so hard to explain. Hari Seldon anecdotes about nonsense words is accurate, IME. There are, of course, ambiguous words. I remember tests on commonly mistaken word genders (like “rail” and “testicule”) in high school.
A couple of people talked about words “borrowed from Latin”. While French did indeed have some late borrowings from Latin, it is mainly a daughter language, along with many others, and most of its words come directly from Latin, through Late Latin, Early French, etc. I believe that all the “tion” words come directly from Latin, rather than being borrowed. Oh and the one “ion” word that is (supposedly) masculine is “avion” (airplane). I think its gender is in flux. Genders change quite commonly.
To illunstrate the difference between a word coming directly from Latin, there is the pair of words “frele” (frail) and “fragile” (fragile). Of course, “frail” was borrowed from French and “fragile” probably from Latin.
Noticed this on preview…
I don’t believe the usage of “courriel” was sanctionned by the Académie. It’s the ministry of culture that decided it would become official usage for government publications. IIRC.
Actually, digging around, I found a pretty good article on the subject.
It’s interesting to not that in Québec, people tend to give English words feminine genders also. In France, you would say “un job”, but in Québec, you’re much more likely to hear “une job”. It’s not used anymore but “factrie” (factory) is feminine. In franglais, you would say of a woman that she has “des belles curves” (f.), or that you need “une nouvelle clutch”(f.), or that you saw “une bonne game” (f. also). Some more:
Une méchante ride (a hell of a ride)
Une flashlight
Une plogue (plug)
Une chainsaw
jovan: Please don’t tell me the French word for testicle is feminine.
(Ceci n’est pas une smiley.)
Fortunately it’s masculine. The strange thing, though, is that a lot of people mistakenly think it’s feminine. “Testicule” rhymes with “pilule” (pill) and “crapule” (creep) which are feminine, so I guess that’s where the confusion spawns from.
Forgot this:
“Smiley” is most certainly masculine. “Une smiley”? I don’t think so.
Okay, time to break out the McWhorter. He explains that gender distinctions arise when languages begin to compound words such as, say, person-child for boy or realm-child childhood. (These are the examples he gives from Swahili.) The “person” and “realm” portions end up becoming obligatory prefixes, and then eventually each noun in the language requires some class marker. In the case of French, these are suffixes, and today only masculine and feminine survive:
-John McWhorter, The Power of Babel, p. 187.
For anyone who knows any Chinese, it’s interesting to note that, according to McWhorter, the system of measure words (in Mandarin, yi zhang zhuozi, yi liang che, etc.) represent what could one day become “fused gender prefixes.”
A couple of counter-examples. First, to Hari, off the top of my head, is un million. Second, to Northern Piper, how about un bastion?
Also on the subject of avion, I couldn’t resist this little francophone joke:
*Une blonde et son fan se promènent sur le trottoir, la blonde lève les yeux au ciel et dit au fan : “Regarde, une avion !”
Le fan lui répond aussitôt : “C’est pas une avion, c’est un avion.”
La blonde le regarde alors et lui dit : “T’as bien des bons yeux pour voir ça!”*