What is the sex of your noun?

Leezestarr313 · December 2013

I am always wondering ... In languages other than English, nouns have a sex. The moon is female in French and a lot of other southern European languages, but male in German. The sun is female in German, but male in a lot of other languages. I grew up with having nouns that are female, male and neuter... And somehow the attributions of the sexes make sense.

Do English natives have a feeling for the sex of their nouns and does it make sense?

CAVSTARR313 · December 2013

Penis : Male

Jason78 · December 2013

Caveeze wrote:

Penis : Male

Bwahahahaha!

Jason78 · December 2013

Interesting topic. I think most things in English are male. Except for things adored and or admired like cars and guitars…..ships…etc ….and vagina's of course.

Leezestarr313 · December 2013

Jason78 wrote:

Interesting topic. I think most things in English are male. Except for things adored and or admired like cars and guitars…..ships…etc ….and vagina's of course.

Well, that is interesting ... In German, a car is neutral. A guitar is female. A vagina too. Does anything have a sex for you even though in English it doesn't need to have a sex attributed to it?

The doors seem to have thought that the night is female, which I like

Some people say their town or city is female, I love that too

What interests me is - do you attribute a "her" or "his" or a "he" or "she" to things too even though things don't have a sex in English?

Who Princess · December 2013

Asking questions like that on a board like this can bring nothing but trouble.

But more related to what you're asking about, have you ever read "The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain? I think it describes pretty well how English speakers feel about nouns and gender.

Leezestarr313 · December 2013

Who Princess wrote:

Asking questions like that on a board like this can bring nothing but trouble.

But more related to what you're asking about, have you ever read "The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain? I think it describes pretty well how English speakers feel about nouns and gender.

Never heard of that book, but I will try to find it! Sounds like a fun read

Thanks for the recommendation :thumbup:

Who Princess · December 2013

Leezestarr313 wrote:

Who Princess wrote:

Asking questions like that on a board like this can bring nothing but trouble.

But more related to what you're asking about, have you ever read "The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain? I think it describes pretty well how English speakers feel about nouns and gender.

Never heard of that book, but I will try to find it! Sounds like a fun read Thanks for the recommendation :thumbup:

It's an essay he wrote. It's short, you can find it online.
He gives lots of ridiculous examples of the genders of German nouns and also makes jokes about German sentence structure. Plus the different cases and pronouns. All the things that make English speakers crazy when they try to learn German.

I've always wondered if the reverse were true when Germans learn English.

Leezestarr313 · December 2013

Cool, I will look for the article then!

My Russian teacher at school once said that learning languages can be compared to geometric shapes.
- French is a triangle with a broad base and the tip on the top - it starts complicated but gets easier once you know the rules
- English is the other way around - it starts easy and gets more complicated the deeper you're in
- Russian is a square

I found this to be true. There are times where I have a hard time with English. Adjectives are my weak spot. I want to learn more and use them more frequently. Some sentence structures just confuse me, as well as compounds and idioms ( :fp: ) And I think I am using some tenses in the wrong way.
But it's all a question of time and I know that people enjoy hearing my mistakes too. Just like I enjoy when Cav tries to talk in German

Who Princess · December 2013

Leezestarr313 wrote:

There are times where I have a hard time with English. Adjectives are my weak spot. I want to learn more and use them more frequently. Some sentence structures just confuse me, as well as compounds and idioms ( :fp: ) And I think I am using some tenses in the wrong way.

I'd probably compare learning German to your learning English. It started easy and got harder. I loved German when I studied it but I had no one to speak it with after college and I've forgotten so much of it.

That was such a long time ago that the language has probably changed 1000% since then.

I mostly had trouble with cases and of course with memorizing the correct genders of nouns! Prepositions threw me too--we watch things on TV and Germans watch things in TV.

Leezestarr313 wrote:

But it's all a question of time and I know that people enjoy hearing my mistakes too. Just like I enjoy when Cav tries to talk in German

As well as you write English I'd imagine you speak it quite well. Writing in another language is always much more difficult.

I used to work with a guy from Germany. He told me my German was "sloppy."

When I visited Germany in 1999, I found that Germans had no problem understanding me but I didn't do so well understanding them.

Leezestarr313 · December 2013

I just read that essay - very entertaining

I think I might give it to Cav to read, so he gets a better idea

Yes, Germans sometimes speak sloppy. Where I come from, this is almost what makes the dialect. We slur a lot, leave out endings etc ... When I want to address people from my hometown on facebook, I just use our vernacular. No English speaker with at least a little bit of German knowledge will be able to translate it or have it translated with a online translator :geek:

Over here, I have the problem that either people do not understand me (the word "water" seems to be a tough case for whatever reason) or I have a hard time understanding people. When somebody talks too fast or uses words that I'm not familiar with, I'm lost. That's why I try to avoid phone calls with Americans. I do not have a problem understanding Cav though. At least when he's talking in English

I think one problem with this is, just like Mark Twain said in his essay, that a lot of words sound the same in English. You need the context in order to know what is meant. In German, once you know how to pronounce everything (like it is spelled!), you'll be fine

Well, and Americans talk sloppy too! I guess this is also why I like written convos. I can re-read, correct what I wrote, look words up, digest it in my own tempo.

As for my English :think: people tell me I'm having a German accent. I think my sentence structure sometimes is German too. That depends on the topic though. When it comes to more complex topics, I tend to think them through in German, which screws up my English in return.

rick1zoo2 · December 2013

not sure, let me check...

rollings · December 2013

To me, letters and numbers each have a sex. They are:

A f
B m
C f
D m
E m
F m
G m
H m
I m
J m
K f
L f
M m
N m
O f
P f
Q f
R f
S f
T m
U f
V m
W m
X m
Y m
Z m

1 f
2 m
3 f
4 f
5 m
6 m
7 m
8 m
9 m

Tenzing N. · December 2013

Oddly, those of us who fly planes almost never refer to them as she or her. Mostly just "it". The only time I would say we call the plane her is when it is acting oddly. Like, " what's she doing now?"

arq · December 2013

In Spanish everything has a gender, the human body in Spanish is just a mess of genders

body-M (EL cuerpo)
hand-F (LA mano)
arm-M (EL brazo)
leg-L (LA pierna)
finger-M (El dedo)

and of course the one you really want to know
ASS-M (EL culo)

So boys and girls that was your Spanish lesson for today.

jumbojet · December 2013

Leezestarr313 wrote:

I found this to be true. There are times where I have a hard time with English.

I think this is a perfect example of a perfectionism of a German. If you ask a German "Do you speak English?", they will always reply, "A little bit". Then they're gonna make you a vocabulary show.

When you're native in a language, you mostly don't see it from the eyes of a foreigner who studies it. I had to scratch my head a lot of times when I studied German, here are some surprising stuff I remember;

- Cat is feminine, Dog is masculine. And I think this is pure genius.
- Girl is neutral.

8-) And baby too, of course.

Also, I always felt like there are some very favorite words for Germans that they like to use everywhere for a variety of meanings; like stelle, schlag,gesetz…

I never got intimidated with the long words in German, I think you can see the root of their structure easily once you get into it. My biggest problems were prepositions, as who princess said, and the datives, akkusativs following them.

I also have some stuff for Russian but I'll save it for later.

PJ_Soul · December 2013

Leezestarr313 wrote:

Cool, I will look for the article then!

My Russian teacher at school once said that learning languages can be compared to geometric shapes.
- French is a triangle with a broad base and the tip on the top - it starts complicated but gets easier once you know the rules
- English is the other way around - it starts easy and gets more complicated the deeper you're in
- Russian is a square

I found this to be true. There are times where I have a hard time with English. Adjectives are my weak spot. I want to learn more and use them more frequently. Some sentence structures just confuse me, as well as compounds and idioms ( :fp: ) And I think I am using some tenses in the wrong way.
But it's all a question of time and I know that people enjoy hearing my mistakes too. Just like I enjoy when Cav tries to talk in German

The interesting thing is that you already write way better in English than most native English speakers!

I don't apply gender to nouns in my mind in English unless i am personally attached to the thing in question, and then it becomes very subjective. I do feel that my turntable is a guy.

However, i find the transition to placing gender onto nouns is an easy transition, because the feeling of feminine vs masculine in the French language (which i learned in high school) seems quite natural... it actually almost feels like a visualization of the words for me.

brianlux · December 2013

A very interesting question- one I've wondered about as well. I've also wondered why ships and cars are often referred to (mainly by men) being female as in "ain't she a beauty?" Or guitars. Ever seen a guitar named "Fred"?

Ledbetterman10 · December 2013

I always felt letters can have a sex. Letters like K, J, B, and M are female and letters like D, F, G, and N are male. S, C, and L are kinda transgendered.

rollings · December 2013

Ledbetterman10 wrote:

I always felt letters can have a sex. Letters like K, J, B, and M are female and letters like D, F, G, and N are male. S, C, and L are kinda transgendered.

well, you are right on most of them except your transgendered ones are all really females.

also, B & M are not female. :roll:

see chart below:

8-)

rollings wrote:

To me, letters and numbers each have a sex. They are:

A f
B m
C f
D m
E m
F m
G m
H m
I m
J m
K f
L f
M m
N m
O f
P f
Q f
R f
S f
T m
U f
V m
W m
X m
Y m
Z m

1 f
2 m
3 f
4 f
5 m
6 m
7 m
8 m
9 m

brianlux · December 2013

rollings wrote:

Ledbetterman10 wrote:

I always felt letters can have a sex. Letters like K, J, B, and M are female and letters like D, F, G, and N are male. S, C, and L are kinda transgendered.

well, you are right on most of them except your transgendered ones are all really females.

also, B & M are not female. :roll:

see chart below:

8-)

rollings wrote:

To me, letters and numbers each have a sex. They are:

A f
B m
C f
D m
E m
F m
G m
H m
I m
J m
K f
L f
M m
N m
O f
P f
Q f
R f
S f
T m
U f
V m
W m
X m
Y m
Z m

1 f
2 m
3 f
4 f
5 m
6 m
7 m
8 m
9 m

I agree except you list "x" and "y" as both being male but if I'm not mistaken one is male and the other is female which not only make up the chromosomes of the alphabet but were the Adam and Eve of letters whose offspring comprise the other 24 sibling letters.

What is the sex of your noun?

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