Gender in French language
March 15, 2005 3:41 PM Subscribe
Please explain to a clueless person how genders are decided in French language...
I'm not studying French, I just wonder about the gender issue. Do sanitary towels immediately become female because of their purpose, as condoms might do for men? Are there discrepancies between predominantly female activities and male nouns, vice versa? What happens when there is a major invention (and mainstream term) like Television or the Internet? Who decides whether it is male or female? Are there broad categories to suggest which definition should be used? It's hard to cut throuigh all the courses on google. My knowledge of foreign language is limited, so careful treading is appreciated!
I'm not studying French, I just wonder about the gender issue. Do sanitary towels immediately become female because of their purpose, as condoms might do for men? Are there discrepancies between predominantly female activities and male nouns, vice versa? What happens when there is a major invention (and mainstream term) like Television or the Internet? Who decides whether it is male or female? Are there broad categories to suggest which definition should be used? It's hard to cut throuigh all the courses on google. My knowledge of foreign language is limited, so careful treading is appreciated!
See the wikipedia entry on grammatical gender. The most relevant passage (from the section on indo-european):
In common nouns, grammatical gender is usually only peripherally related to sex. For example, in Spanish, the word hijo (son) is masculine and hija (daughter) is feminine, as one might expect. This is called natural gender, or sometimes logical gender. Other times, there are elaborate (and mostly incomplete) rules to define the gender of a word. For example, in German, nouns ending in -ung (corresponding to -ing in English) are feminine, and car brand names are masculine. Words with the -lein and -chen ending (meaning smaller, younger) are neuter, thus the grammatical genders of Mädchen (girl) and Fräulein (young woman) are neuter. In some local dialects of German, all nouns for female persons have been shifted to the neuter gender, but the female gender remains for some words denoting objects. All this is still arbitrary, and differs between cultures. The ancient Romans believed the Sun to be masculine and the Moon to be feminine (as in French, Spanish, Italian), but the Germans (and Germanic languages) express the opposite belief. The learner of a language thus must regard the gender as part of the noun, and memorize accordingly to use the language correctly. A frequent recommendation is to memorize the definite article and the noun as a unit.
posted by advil at 3:57 PM on March 15, 2005
In common nouns, grammatical gender is usually only peripherally related to sex. For example, in Spanish, the word hijo (son) is masculine and hija (daughter) is feminine, as one might expect. This is called natural gender, or sometimes logical gender. Other times, there are elaborate (and mostly incomplete) rules to define the gender of a word. For example, in German, nouns ending in -ung (corresponding to -ing in English) are feminine, and car brand names are masculine. Words with the -lein and -chen ending (meaning smaller, younger) are neuter, thus the grammatical genders of Mädchen (girl) and Fräulein (young woman) are neuter. In some local dialects of German, all nouns for female persons have been shifted to the neuter gender, but the female gender remains for some words denoting objects. All this is still arbitrary, and differs between cultures. The ancient Romans believed the Sun to be masculine and the Moon to be feminine (as in French, Spanish, Italian), but the Germans (and Germanic languages) express the opposite belief. The learner of a language thus must regard the gender as part of the noun, and memorize accordingly to use the language correctly. A frequent recommendation is to memorize the definite article and the noun as a unit.
posted by advil at 3:57 PM on March 15, 2005
Response by poster: The thrust of my question is really how do they go about classifying objects that pass into everyday vocabulary like television, hoover, internet, weblog...is any technology immediately male? etc...
posted by fire&wings at 3:59 PM on March 15, 2005
posted by fire&wings at 3:59 PM on March 15, 2005
What happens when there is a major invention (and mainstream term) like Television or the Internet?
Many suffixes can dictate gender. For example, -ion words are (almost?) always feminine, as are -é words (Liberté, égalité, fraternité, even though fraternité seems semantically masculine). So even though television is new, the way the word is constructed is not, so it is feminine. Similarly, -isme words are masculine even though they end in an e: le catholicisme, le sexisme, etc.
(On preview: yes, like advil says.)
Also, I think that borrowed words are almost always masculine, so things from English (le shopping, le shampooing, le week-end, l'Internet) are masculine.
posted by librarina at 4:00 PM on March 15, 2005
Many suffixes can dictate gender. For example, -ion words are (almost?) always feminine, as are -é words (Liberté, égalité, fraternité, even though fraternité seems semantically masculine). So even though television is new, the way the word is constructed is not, so it is feminine. Similarly, -isme words are masculine even though they end in an e: le catholicisme, le sexisme, etc.
(On preview: yes, like advil says.)
Also, I think that borrowed words are almost always masculine, so things from English (le shopping, le shampooing, le week-end, l'Internet) are masculine.
posted by librarina at 4:00 PM on March 15, 2005
annathea's response is right on the mark. There is no rhyme or reason. It just is. And that makes me uncomfortable too :).
posted by dclawyer at 4:05 PM on March 15, 2005
posted by dclawyer at 4:05 PM on March 15, 2005
Well...librarina's response is actually closer to the mark. As a Spanish and French speaker I know that I can guess the gender of entirely new words pretty accurately and this is all based upon their similarity to other words.
Here, for example, is a list of French suffixes and gender. There are tons of exceptions, and you just have to learn those its true but thats different than implying that anything goes.
(Now, as to *why* certain suffixes are associated with a certain gender, that I think is in fact arbitrary)
PS. One upside to this is that the "gender" of nouns is pretty much the same across all Romance languages. So, if you learn them in say French, you will presumably have less trouble in Spanish.
posted by vacapinta at 4:15 PM on March 15, 2005 [2 favorites]
Here, for example, is a list of French suffixes and gender. There are tons of exceptions, and you just have to learn those its true but thats different than implying that anything goes.
(Now, as to *why* certain suffixes are associated with a certain gender, that I think is in fact arbitrary)
PS. One upside to this is that the "gender" of nouns is pretty much the same across all Romance languages. So, if you learn them in say French, you will presumably have less trouble in Spanish.
posted by vacapinta at 4:15 PM on March 15, 2005 [2 favorites]
Wow, vacapinta, that's a great resource! I learned all that stuff via immersion and have never studied the language in that way - I was a French major but started off with the literature classes, skipping all the grammar and stuff.
(And it just taught me that I'm wrong about -é words! They are masculine except la clé, la psyché; -sé, -té, and -tié endings. So I was right about those specific words but wrong about the suffix.)
But yes, I too can guess the gender of new words, just like you say. And knowing a bit of Spanish really helped me with learning this aspect of French.
posted by librarina at 4:23 PM on March 15, 2005
(And it just taught me that I'm wrong about -é words! They are masculine except la clé, la psyché; -sé, -té, and -tié endings. So I was right about those specific words but wrong about the suffix.)
But yes, I too can guess the gender of new words, just like you say. And knowing a bit of Spanish really helped me with learning this aspect of French.
posted by librarina at 4:23 PM on March 15, 2005
It might be easier to stop thinking of the words as classified by "gender", and think of them instead as categories. That made it easier for me when I was studying French.
The Power of Babel by John McWorter is an entertaining well-written history of linguistics. He discusses "gender" (among other things), and how that term/concept really breaks down when you move out of the Indo-European languages. Some languages have 15 'genders'!
posted by luneray at 4:37 PM on March 15, 2005
The Power of Babel by John McWorter is an entertaining well-written history of linguistics. He discusses "gender" (among other things), and how that term/concept really breaks down when you move out of the Indo-European languages. Some languages have 15 'genders'!
posted by luneray at 4:37 PM on March 15, 2005
Expanding on inter-Romance-language gender consistency (which I'm not so sure is set in stone, but I do use it myself as a launching point anyway), if you happen to know the Latin root of a word that may give you some help: la notte [it] la nuit [fr] la noche [es] all come from the latin nox, noctis, which is feminine. And it's fairly dependable to say that most latin nouns whose dictionary forms end in -x, -?is are feminine: pax, pacis: la pace, la paix, la paz. As you can see I try to memorize the article with nouns as well.
la mano[it, es], la main (latin manus, manus f).
Still I'm convinced that this is not completely reliable: I thought la mano would have divergent genders but apparently it doesn't, and I can't think of others. Can anyone confirm or refute this? Not that a handful of counter-cases would ruin the principle -- but if this thread ends without them I'll embrace this principle without reservation.
Oh, also, in general, a tree is masculine and its fruit is feminine: you eat a mela/pomme/manzana but you plant a melo/pommier/manzano. This is also consistent in Latin.
On preview: librarina, there are however tons of e.g. -té-ending nouns, which descend from Latin -tas, -tatis. I'd say if it ends in -té and its english cognate ends in -ty, it's feminine.
And, at any rate, there's still no rhyme or reason to Latin gender, but knowing Latin can make your guesses very snottily educated.
posted by xueexueg at 4:57 PM on March 15, 2005
la mano[it, es], la main (latin manus, manus f).
Still I'm convinced that this is not completely reliable: I thought la mano would have divergent genders but apparently it doesn't, and I can't think of others. Can anyone confirm or refute this? Not that a handful of counter-cases would ruin the principle -- but if this thread ends without them I'll embrace this principle without reservation.
Oh, also, in general, a tree is masculine and its fruit is feminine: you eat a mela/pomme/manzana but you plant a melo/pommier/manzano. This is also consistent in Latin.
On preview: librarina, there are however tons of e.g. -té-ending nouns, which descend from Latin -tas, -tatis. I'd say if it ends in -té and its english cognate ends in -ty, it's feminine.
And, at any rate, there's still no rhyme or reason to Latin gender, but knowing Latin can make your guesses very snottily educated.
posted by xueexueg at 4:57 PM on March 15, 2005
There's an important distinction between the basic "systems" you can learn regarding the gender of French nouns (the words themselves), and any "rules" for whether a given thing should be represented by a masculine or feminine noun.
There are definitely a bunch of different cues you can look at for a given _word_ to guess whether it's masculine or feminine (suffix, etc). That's kind of after the fact, though, and only applies in some cases.
Unless there's some kind of intrinsic gender to the thing itself, though, there's no hard-and-fast system for establishing whether it's become a masculine or feminine noun.
There's been a lot written about whether there's some kind of psychoanalytical bias (aren't most long, pointy objects male?) or a cultural component (does it matter whether it was primarily used by men or women over time?) but there are so many exceptions to any given premise that it's basically pointless.
What it amounts to is that it's basically arbitrary, and you need to develop the portion of your language center that can quickly absorb the gender of a given noun and store it away.
While I spoke French as a youngster with my mom, I didn't start speaking it fluently--more or less--till I was in my teens, and that's always been my own single greatest challenge. Irregular verb forms, absurdly complex tenses...none of that threw me, but noun genders still continually trip me up more than anything else.
posted by LairBob at 6:04 PM on March 15, 2005
There are definitely a bunch of different cues you can look at for a given _word_ to guess whether it's masculine or feminine (suffix, etc). That's kind of after the fact, though, and only applies in some cases.
Unless there's some kind of intrinsic gender to the thing itself, though, there's no hard-and-fast system for establishing whether it's become a masculine or feminine noun.
There's been a lot written about whether there's some kind of psychoanalytical bias (aren't most long, pointy objects male?) or a cultural component (does it matter whether it was primarily used by men or women over time?) but there are so many exceptions to any given premise that it's basically pointless.
What it amounts to is that it's basically arbitrary, and you need to develop the portion of your language center that can quickly absorb the gender of a given noun and store it away.
While I spoke French as a youngster with my mom, I didn't start speaking it fluently--more or less--till I was in my teens, and that's always been my own single greatest challenge. Irregular verb forms, absurdly complex tenses...none of that threw me, but noun genders still continually trip me up more than anything else.
posted by LairBob at 6:04 PM on March 15, 2005
Somewhat comical: the only pattern I think think of off hand is that most things phallic are femine: la tour, une baguette, la queue, une pipe, une pistole, ma bite. Oddly enough, the clinical term < penis>>, alors, c'est masculin!
posted by psmealey at 6:17 PM on March 15, 2005
posted by psmealey at 6:17 PM on March 15, 2005
Except, psmealy, you put food into a baguette, tobacco into a pipe and bullets into a pistol.
When I first learned French I used to try and align genders with the engineering concepts of male/female plugs. Since a chair goes into a table, the chair would be male, the table female.
Surprising how often that's right, even if it was pulled out of my ass.
posted by bonaldi at 6:54 PM on March 15, 2005
When I first learned French I used to try and align genders with the engineering concepts of male/female plugs. Since a chair goes into a table, the chair would be male, the table female.
Surprising how often that's right, even if it was pulled out of my ass.
posted by bonaldi at 6:54 PM on March 15, 2005
There's an important distinction between the basic "systems" you can learn regarding the gender of French nouns (the words themselves), and any "rules" for whether a given thing should be represented by a masculine or feminine noun.
Agreed, Lairbob. But, I was trying to address the original question which was not about "things" but about "words" That is, given a word you've heard for the first time, or a foreign word, how do you ascribe a gender to it.
Since a chair goes into a table, the chair would be male, the table female.
Chair is feminine. :)
posted by vacapinta at 7:55 PM on March 15, 2005
Agreed, Lairbob. But, I was trying to address the original question which was not about "things" but about "words" That is, given a word you've heard for the first time, or a foreign word, how do you ascribe a gender to it.
Since a chair goes into a table, the chair would be male, the table female.
Chair is feminine. :)
posted by vacapinta at 7:55 PM on March 15, 2005
I understand, vacapinta, and your point was totally valid. I was just clarifying that there are a couple of different layers to the whole thing, and it's confusing sometimes.
posted by LairBob at 7:57 PM on March 15, 2005
posted by LairBob at 7:57 PM on March 15, 2005
I became totally disgusted when I discovered pen and pencil had different genders. I don't recall which language it was (French or German). Perhaps pen was fem because ink goes in.
(I was 41 when I studied German. A difficult task undertook at a lousy Volkshochschule. They didn't teach HOW to learn a language, and German grammar has places where I knew no similar places in English. Ouch!)
posted by Goofyy at 8:37 PM on March 15, 2005
(I was 41 when I studied German. A difficult task undertook at a lousy Volkshochschule. They didn't teach HOW to learn a language, and German grammar has places where I knew no similar places in English. Ouch!)
posted by Goofyy at 8:37 PM on March 15, 2005
"die Internet" (not counting the English DIE INTERNET DIE!) gets 1.7 million hits on Google
"der Internet" gets 2.21 million hits.
"das Internet" gets 6.47 million hits.
This appears to confirm what I'd been told in the past - that usually new major technologies and similar nouns that need to be imported into the German language are simply neuter versions of the English word with German pronunciation.
posted by Ryvar at 9:14 PM on March 15, 2005
"der Internet" gets 2.21 million hits.
"das Internet" gets 6.47 million hits.
This appears to confirm what I'd been told in the past - that usually new major technologies and similar nouns that need to be imported into the German language are simply neuter versions of the English word with German pronunciation.
posted by Ryvar at 9:14 PM on March 15, 2005
sci.lang FAQ, scroll down to #28.
posted by gimonca at 6:45 PM PST on March 15 [!]
This is an awesome FAQ. Very interesting. Thanks gimonca
posted by jikel_morten at 9:44 PM on March 15, 2005
posted by gimonca at 6:45 PM PST on March 15 [!]
This is an awesome FAQ. Very interesting. Thanks gimonca
posted by jikel_morten at 9:44 PM on March 15, 2005
bonaldi, the French word "pistole" has different meanings than just "pistol" in English (although it can mean certain types of firearms). More common is "pistolet", which, of course, is masculine. Trying to find rules just doesn't work :).
Goofyy, I don't know about German, but pen and pencil are different genders in French, yeah. I've never really thought about it, but I don't think it's feminine because of the "you put x into it" angle; the word itself, "plume", would have been in use for much longer under its other meaning, "feather".
I know I gave up Spanish partially because while I might be able to guess gender based on French, sometimes it was different, and a number of words that have no gender in french did in spanish. I like Japanese. No such thing as masculine/feminine there, but what hassle is elimited by it is more than made up in the other idiosyncracies of the language, for example in how you count things... What is that you say? Different words for the 10th of the month, 10 people, or 10 glasses of beer? What fun.
posted by splice at 6:44 AM on March 16, 2005
Goofyy, I don't know about German, but pen and pencil are different genders in French, yeah. I've never really thought about it, but I don't think it's feminine because of the "you put x into it" angle; the word itself, "plume", would have been in use for much longer under its other meaning, "feather".
I know I gave up Spanish partially because while I might be able to guess gender based on French, sometimes it was different, and a number of words that have no gender in french did in spanish. I like Japanese. No such thing as masculine/feminine there, but what hassle is elimited by it is more than made up in the other idiosyncracies of the language, for example in how you count things... What is that you say? Different words for the 10th of the month, 10 people, or 10 glasses of beer? What fun.
posted by splice at 6:44 AM on March 16, 2005
a number of words that have no gender in french did in spanish
eh? do you mean german (instead of french)? don't all nouns in both french and spanish have gender?
posted by andrew cooke at 7:37 AM on March 16, 2005
eh? do you mean german (instead of french)? don't all nouns in both french and spanish have gender?
posted by andrew cooke at 7:37 AM on March 16, 2005
One more complicating factor - where in English our (so-called) possessive pronouns take the gender of the (third) person who's doing the possessing, in French the corresponding possessive adjectives take the gender of the thing being possessed. I remember being in France as a teenager with French friends who were trying out their English and one referred to me and my shirt using the phrase "her shirt," which I thought was some kind of dig until they hastily corrected each other, remembering that it's the opposite way in English.
posted by soyjoy at 7:37 AM on March 16, 2005
posted by soyjoy at 7:37 AM on March 16, 2005
I wrote a post called gender reassignment about how French genders often do not conform to what we would logically expect at all, and how I thought some should be changed to be more appropriate...
la bite meaning penis being feminine was one of my examples.
posted by petite anglaise at 8:32 AM on March 16, 2005
la bite meaning penis being feminine was one of my examples.
posted by petite anglaise at 8:32 AM on March 16, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
When you learn French later in life it's not unusual to learn words without their gender assignment, making us yearn for a "rule" we can apply to keep it all straight.
posted by annathea at 3:45 PM on March 15, 2005