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Which languages don't have a gender system? Trådens avsändare: Sara Senft
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Sara Senft 
USA
Local time: 07:09
Spanska till Engelska
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I've thought about this several times recently. Which languages don't have a gender system?
My perspecive is that English (my native language) doesn't have a FORMAL gender system. I'm noticing more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word.
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Lingua 5B
Bosnien och Hercegovina
Local time: 13:09
Medlem (2009)
Engelska till Kroatiska
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Sara Senft wrote:
My perspecive is that English (my native language) doesn't have a FORMAL gender system. I'm noticing more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word.
Hi Sara,
English has *some* gender system but it's very limited. Linguistic notions are best illustrated with examples. Let's take one sentence standing alone as a report without any further context, for instance:
They have brought us a cake.
let's say " they" is two people
In English, they can be M+F, F+F or M+M
In Serbian, if it is F+F you will have a verbal suffix on "brought" ( donijelE) which will immediately indicate it had been two women. "They" will also change to "onE" in case of two women. In this case, M+M and M+F will have the identical suffix/form on "brought", and identical form for "they", so it will not be easily distinguishable. In many other cases, we have separate suffixes even for the latter two combination.
This is what makes English easy for learners because the verbal form stays the same ( no conjunctions) regardless of the subject's gender.
The same change of gender verbal suffixes exist in French and some other languages. When you combine them with seven cases in Serbian, it becomes even more complicated.
Historically speaking, during its development, English had its ways to develop complicated phraseology and collocations system, while staying simple in gender/case/number aspect.
[Edited at 2009-10-05 09:58 GMT]
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Jessica Cade
USA
Local time: 04:09
Engelska till Franska
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| Good question | Oct 4, 2009 |
The only one I can think of is Japanese
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Henry Hinds
USA
Local time: 05:09
Engelska till Spanska
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In memoriam
You say you notice more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word. Could you perhaps explain or provide some examples? That sounds interesting, it is something I haven't noticed.
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Quang Ngo
Local time: 18:09
Engelska till Vietnamesiska
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Vietnamese does not have a gender system.
For example:
Cô ấy là giáo viên> She is a teacher
Ông ấy là giáo viên> He is a teacher
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Özden Arıkan
Tyskland
Local time: 13:09
Medlem
Engelska till Turkiska
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| Gender is mostly a characteristic of Indo-European languages | Oct 5, 2009 |
Languages of the Ural-Altaic family, or Uralic and Altaic families according to another classification, have no gender system. My native language Turkish is among them (Altaic, according to the latter classification.)
You can find more details in this Wikipedia article.
[Edited at 2009-10-05 03:17 GMT]
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inkweaver
Tyskland
Local time: 13:09
Franska till Tyska
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Lingua 5B wrote:
The same change of gender verbal suffixes exist in French and German. When you combine them with seven cases in Serbian, it becomes even more complicated.
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[Edited at 2009-10-05 00:03 GMT]
In German, verbs don't tell you anything about gender. It is only the personal pronoun which could give you an indication of that, but not in the plural form. To pick up your example, "They brought us a cake" could be translated as "Sie brachten uns einen Kuchen". This does not tell you anything about the gender of the persons referred to by "they" at all - "they" could be all men, all women or both men and women.
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Sara Senft wrote:
I've thought about this several times recently. Which languages don't have a gender system?
My perspecive is that English (my native language) doesn't have a FORMAL gender system. I'm noticing more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word.
I think you are right about English not having a FORMAL gender system, but I have one question. We sometimes refer to cars and ships as "she" or "her", but is this informal? I've heard sentences like "start her up" meaning "start the engine of the car". And this is grammatically correct, isn't it?
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Tsogt Gombosuren
Kanada
Local time: 05:09
Medlem (2004)
Engelska till Mongoliska
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| Ural-Altaic family languages have no gender system | Oct 5, 2009 |
Özden Arıkan wrote:
Languages of the Ural-Altaic family, or Uralic and Altaic families according to another classification, have no gender system. My native language Turkish is among them (Altaic, according to the latter classification.)
You can find more details in this Wikipedia article.
[Edited at 2009-10-05 03:17 GMT]
But, according to scholars, the archaic Mongolian language did have a very complex gender system and lost this complex system gradually while evolving into its modern form.
[Edited at 2009-10-05 05:08 GMT]
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urbom
Storbritannien
Local time: 12:09
Tyska till Engelska
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JoanneEdwards
Storbritannien
Local time: 12:09
Ryska till Engelska
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Kazakh also has no gender system, even the words for he and she are the same - interesting about Mongolian - I had no idea.
Joanne
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Jussi Rosti
Finland
Local time: 14:09
Medlem (2005)
Engelska till Finska
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Also no she/he differentiation (belongs to mentioned Uralic group).
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To answer your question about phrases like "start her up", this is largely informal (slang). I really don't know the origins...
[Edited at 2009-10-05 07:16 GMT]
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| Thank you Daniel | Oct 5, 2009 |
Daniel Weston wrote:
To answer your question about phrases like "start her up", this is largely informal (slang). I really don't know the origins...
[Edited at 2009-10-05 07:16 GMT]
Thank you Daniel, for answering my question. I didn't know that this phrase was a slang, so one could say that these similar phrases are grammatically correct.
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