Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 October 20

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October 20

Grammatical gender

In languages that use grammatical gender, in the case of animals whose name exists only as one sex, how are you supposed to refer to an individual of that animal of the opposite sex? February 15, 2009 (talk) 00:12, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I cannot think of any examples, but I would say the normal way would be to say 'a male [animal]' or 'a female [animal]', and any adjectives, etc., that came with it would agree grammatically with the [animal], and not change according to the actual physical gender of the animal in question.--ChokinBako (talk) 00:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the way it works in German. The word for snake is Schlange, which is feminine. A male snake would be "eine männliche Schlange", which is still a feminine noun, so pronouns referring back to it would also be feminine. Another possibility would be "ein Schlangenmännchen" (a snake-male), which as a diminutive is automatically neuter, so pronouns referring back to it would also be neuter. But it's more common to have a word that covers one sex as well as the animal in general (e.g. Katze = female cat but also cat in general) and then a separate word to refer to the opposite sex (e.g. Kater = tomcat). And animal names that are generically masculine can almost always be made feminine by adding the suffix -in (e.g. Hund = male dog/dog in general → Hündin = female dog; Frosch = male frog/frog in general → Fröschin = female frog). Animals whose generic form is neuter, like Pferd "horse" and Schwein "pig" usually have separate names for both sexes, like Hengst "stallion"/Stute "mare" or Eber "boar"/Sau "sow". Ente "duck" and Gans "goose" are both feminine; they take a special ending -erich to make the masculine: Enterich "drake", Gänserich "gander". I don't think that ending is actually productive beyond those two words, though I've heard it used jokingly in words like Schlangerich "male snake", Bienerich "male bee". —Angr 05:56, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

What he said. I poked around in my head to come up with an animal name such as you suggested in my mothertounge, and came up with this: commonplace animals, as a rule, have names for both sexes (like deer-doe or some others in English), the ones that don't have name pairs are either insects or such, or less commonplace, like, say, giraffe or dinosaur, and for these you would just add 'male' or 'female'. TomorrowTime (talk) 05:49, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Your "What he said" (meaning Angr) shows how good English is at concealing our own genders. Strawless (talk) 13:51, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

And yet, he guessed correctly, probably realizing that male Wikipedians disproportionately outnumber female ones. —Angr 14:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Angr's comment wasn't published yet when I was answering - my answer went to ChokinBako :) But Angr elaborated nicely on what I wanted to say. TomorrowTime (talk) 23:05, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

In Czech, it works similarly to German, with one difference: the generic words used for male and female (samec, samice) are nouns rather than adjectives. Example: had (a snake) is a male noun; a female snake is samice hada (lit. a female of a snake) or hadí samice (lit. a snaky female). Consequently, the whole noun phrase is headed by the word for male or female, and therefore its grammatical gender agrees with the physical gender, not with the grammatical gender of the word for the animal in question. — Emil J. 15:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting. Have you got any ethymology data on had? In southern Slavic languages it's either zmija or a variant thereof, which essentially means "female dragon" or the Slovene kača, which I'm not entirely certain where it comes from - I could check my ethymology dictionary and post data here if there is some interest. TomorrowTime (talk) 23:09, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

TT, Czech had is connected with Church Slavonic gadŭ ("reptile, harmful animal"). From the same source is Polish, Russian, and Serbo-Croatian gad ("reptile, anything loathsome"), and OHG quāt ("filth"; cf NHG kot). Source: A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages, Carl Darling Buck, 1949, 3.85 "Snake".

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 00:16, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Czech also has the word zmije, but with a narrower meaning, it means "viper". — Emil J. 09:38, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh wow, Slovene does indeed have gad, but it means "viper" (Vipera berus). And I never once made the connection to the Serbo-Croatian "gadno", an adverb meaning "nasty", "loathsome". TomorrowTime (talk) 10:34, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Glad to be the agent of an epiphany, TT. At the risk of overdoing the pedantic-didactic mode, I will point out two things:

1. It's etymology, with no h. An easy error to make, in a quick posting. :)

2. S-C gadno is the neuter form of an adjective, and therefore can function as an adverb as well; as an adjective we would translate it as "nasty", but as an adverb as "nastily".

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:26, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Not at all, your corrections are welcome. To be frank, I've always had problems distinguishing between adjuncts and adjectives :blush: - not in using them, but in descriptions of grammar. And my school days are pretty far away now... TomorrowTime (talk) 12:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Chinese doesn't mark gender on most animals in their basic terms. However, if you want to specify the gender of the animal, you usually use 公 and 母 to mark male and female respectvely. Northern varieties (including Mandarin) put it before the animal word, southern varieties tend to put it after. Steewi (talk) 00:41, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Like Hungarian and several other languages, Chinese (Putonghua, at least) may be said to have just one word for he, she, and it: tā, in pinyin. In the 1910s there was much agonising among Chinese scholars about the status of the language as an advanced vehicle of civilised culture. To bring it more into line with the perceived greater prestige of inflected languages, like most Indo-European languages, different written forms were devised to distinguish the three genders. As a result current Chinese has 祂 ("he"), 她 ("she"), and 牠 or 它 ("it"). Plural forms are affected also, so that tāmen now has different forms also; for example 她們, or 她们 in simplified characters ("they" [all feminine]). The spoken language is unaffected, except that forms with 牠 "it" might sometimes artificially be used when the objective "it" would normally be unexpressed. Current speakers appear not to know this history or this motivation. A question of some interest arises: should we say that Chinese now has separate words for he, she, and it? Is a non-arbitrary answer possible? The Chinese tend to think in terms of written forms more than spoken forms, for deep linguistic, historical, and cultural reasons. So a Chinese student of linguistics and I preferred different answers, when I raised the question with her (even before I knew the history outlined above).

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 03:59, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Hello Noetica. Nice to see you back, amazing us all with your knowledge. Gwinva (talk) 07:33, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah, Gwinva - once first among my dear co-editors here! Why have I stayed so long away? I hardly know, myself. Take this as a public affirmation that I intend to communicate privately with you soon. Can I be believed? I hope so...    

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:26, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Also with Japanese, gender is not marked with animals. If you want to specify, you would use 雄 and 雌, completely different characters from those used in Chinese. In the same way, though, they are placed before the noun. Thus, 雄牛 is 'bull', while 雌牛 is 'cow'. 牛 on its own can be either of the two in English, depending on context, but in English would be translated as 'cow' when the gender is unknown. Which brings me to an interesting question. In languages which specify gender for animals, which word is used for the generic animal. Is it one of the two gender-specific words (mentioned above: Hund - male, but also means dogs in general; Katze - female, but means cats in general; and now the English 'cow' - female, but means all bovine creatures)?--ChokinBako (talk) 10:48, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, in German at least, for some animals (e.g. dog, lion, tiger, donkey, wolf, bear, fox) the masculine is the generic form, for others (e.g. goose, duck, cat, mouse, snake) the feminine is the generic form, and for still others the generic form is neuter and there are separate words for the male and the female (cow, pig, horse, chicken). An interesting case is "sheep": it's neuter and is the generic form; there's a separate masculine word for "ram", but there is no feminine word meaning "ewe". If you want to specify that a sheep is female you have to just say "female sheep" or "mother sheep". —Angr 20:04, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

That is very interesting, that. Especially considering 'ewe' is a Germanic word, and according to this dictionary, there is a German dialectical word 'Aue' (it doesn't say the dialect, though, or whether it is past or present). All my other dictionaries say 'Mutterschaf', as you say.--ChokinBako (talk) 09:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

spanish or apache languauge translation

could you please tell me the spanish and apache indian translation for : LIKE THE WIND : Thank you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.59.24.158 (talk) 01:27, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

They are two entirely different languages. Spanish would be Como el viento. Grsz^Review! 01:33, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, 'gusta el viento', depending on context.--ChokinBako (talk) 10:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm having trouble finding a context in which the latter would make sense on its own. Remember that in a sentence such as "me gusta el viento", it's the wind that is the subject, and a literal, word-by-word translation would be "me pleases the wind", i.e. "the wind pleases me". --NorwegianBlue ^talk 19:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

There are several Apache languages. Strawless (talk) 13:40, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

debate judge vocabulary

can anyone tell me some debate judges should say? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.45.169.44 (talk) 16:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry, but your meaning is not clear at all. Are you looking for the word 'judgement'? Strawless (talk) 16:25, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Assume he means judges of academic debate competitions. AnonMoos (talk) 19:51, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

If he's Irish, he'll probably be thinking of the judges of the Irish Times National Debating Championship. Even so, I still do not understand the question! Strawless (talk) 20:52, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

---

I misread the question at first as "can anyone tell me some things debate judges should say"? ie if you're judging debates, what vocabulary should you use? (hence the title). My answers:

• Eloquent
• Cogent
• Persuasive
• Fuddled
• Unclear

Any more suggestions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.27.161.108 (talk) 22:34, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

That's what I thought he meant too, when I wrote my reply... AnonMoos (talk) 23:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)