I love pointing out that German's think chairs are masculine while the Italians think they are feminine.
I don't know why, but I am fascinated by the fact that these two languages which are, essentially, right next to each other would have different views on the "gender" of that thing you sit on.
Yes, I still think having a "gender" for an inanimate object is daft, and I think every language that does so is somehow inferior to the languages that don't (English, Estonian, Esperanto...) but I'm also interested to know why they chose that gender for that object.
I know several studies have been done of several tribal languages with grammatical genders that have determined the they actually see these inanimate objects as having masculine or feminine characteristics. For example, there's one (I think in the Papua region) in which everything large is "he" and everything small is "she".
I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that all languages with grammatical genders are making "value judgments" about those objects that they call masculine or feminine.
What is it that the Germans see in a chair that makes them think "that's a fine, manly chair"? What is it the Italians would see in the same chair that would make them think "she's far to feminine to be manly"?
What is the point of difference between these two cultures that makes them interpret the same object as endowed with different gender traits?
You should check out the two podcast episodes of Lexicon Valley on this subject if you haven't already (I can't remember if it was you who told me about that one) and also the podcast episode on gender and noun classes by Conlangery (http://conlangery.com/2012/01/23/conlangery-34-gender-and-noun-classes/)
ReplyDeleteYou can blame the Greeks for naming noun classes along real world gender lines. It has stuck ever since. I would rather have it that classes/ grammatical genders weren't labelled male/female/neuter but rather simply A/B/C 1/2/3 etc. For example, any one of the Bantu languages have at least 10 noun classes. Each class is given a number.
I blame the way this issue is taught in schools. A beginner's book in any language (especially ones designed for school students) will present nouns as if they were male and female, maybe with a top hat for male nouns and a pink bow for female nouns (at least that's what my Lithuanian book does). Not only is it insulting to both the learner and to real world gender differences in society but it also causes these problems where people even years after school link inanimate objects with societal stereotypes about real world gender. It's madness :-)
Whether a noun belong in any one class depends on sound form and meaning (maybe all long, sharp and pointy things that end in a vowel go in class 5 etc.) If we called classes 'classes' (1,2,3) and not 'genders' (m,f,n) no one would ask why Mädchen is neuter in German and Irish cailín (girl) is masculine.
The issue is that if a language has a feature then it serves some purpose. Roughly half of all languages have noun classes so they must serve some cognitive function even if we can never be sure exactly why (possibilities include quicker recall and better understanding in noisy environments in conjunction with adjectival and article agreement). If a feature was useless it would be discarded.
'Tis a fine theory, but the articles and pronouns get in the way. In fact, I think the articles and the pronouns are the problem. A noun isn't masculine, feminine OR neuter until we replace it with a he, she or it, or preface it with something like a der, die or das. You can call it a "class 3 noun", if you like, but if you then replace said "class 3 noun" with "he", then it's masculine whether you like it or lump it - and books trying to help you remember which noun is a "he" and which is a "she" will still use stock gender stereotypes to reinforce the concepts.
ReplyDeleteAnd some languages have discarded it. English, for example, used to have gendered articles in early Anglo-Saxon but had already started phasing them out by the time we got to later Anglo-Saxon (just in time for the Normans to bring in their own language issues).
So it would be very interesting to work out what function the gendered language actually does play in the psyche of the people speaking that language.