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sexism in languages
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| 20. |
18 Nov 2006 Sat 03:54 pm |
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Quoting angel_: Merhaba..
Im German. hope that means nothing bad for you guys...
In my opinion german and english are similar.
for example the word order...
The structure of a turkish sentence is quite hard for me.
Its ok when I read it. (than I can start with the end)
Its much harder for me to understand native turkish speakers.
First of all they talk very fast - I dont get where a word ends and where the next word starts...
I think English, spanish and french are easier to get.
Most of the people talk word for word -
we have words (not only letters who means something - e.g. suffixe)
... just my opinion
but this does not mean that I stop trying to learn turkish
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Merhaba Angel. Tanıştığımıza memnun oldum. Nice to meet you. As an English speaker, I agree that there are similarities between German and English. What you say about Turkish people talking fast is true of any language, don't you think? If you are not familiar with a language it will sound as if the locals are speaking very fast and everything becomes a blur. That's part of the "fun" of learning a new language! 
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| 21. |
18 Nov 2006 Sat 05:11 pm |
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sometimes I think the turkish language is kind of a puzzle...
find the right order, put everything together so that it fits
as a little example:
(verb; yes or no; time; person)
türkce
bilmiyorum
english
I don't know
german
Ich weiß nicht
In english or german you have 3 words - so that means you are not even able to talk that fast. In türkish you have "one" word for the whole sentence.
I think to figure out the meaning (especially for a beginner) is harder.
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| 23. |
19 Nov 2006 Sun 08:25 am |
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Quoting kai:
I think learning Spanish, french or German was easier for me than Turkish...but then again you should try learning Russian ....çok geçimsiz ya! |
Which one is easier? English or Turkish?
Ask this question to a Japanese or Hungarian? I am sure their answer would be definitely Turkish. Because those two languages are very similar to Turkish.
There is a research done on language learnability among the babies that do not speak any language. Guess what, Turkish children are the fastest language learners. Now, that should tell something about the easiness of Turkish.
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| 24. |
19 Nov 2006 Sun 08:32 am |
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I read the following post in a forum. Poster who is a native Dutch speaker is talking about the difficulties of this gender thing.
Quote: Native speakers of a language with genders don't have to look up that information in a dictionary. They just know the correct gender of any word and apply it automatically to what they say or write. Sometimes a word can have more than one gender, with or without difference in meaning. It can also happen that large groups of speakers feel that a word can have two different genders, although dictionaries only
recognise one of them for the standard language.
An example of this is the Dutch word "module". The monolingual dictionary Van Dale 13th edition, and the spelling word lists of 1995 and 2006 say it has the "de" gender. (Northern varieties of Dutch largely have only two genders, neuter and non-neuter, southern varieties also distinguish masculine and feminine.)
According to my own linguistic instinct however, both "de module" and "het module" are possible, even with a slight preference for the latter. Now when writing (i.e. translating) for money, I prefer to follow the standard language, and avoid any dialectal influences. So when I want to use this word "module", I have to look up the correct
gender in the dictionary. I have to look it up every time again, I have great difficulty in remembering it. It's even more difficult than learning and remembering genders in a foreign language (say German or Portuguese), because here my linguistic instinct keeps contradicting the official gender information.
Recently, I ran into this problem again, having to chose between "elk module" and "elke module" ("elk" is the Dutch word for "each" or "every"). I looked up the gender and found it was officially "de". But now comes the interesting part: knowing this didn't help me to decide whether to use add the inflection -e to the word "elk" or not! I had to try it out with other words with known gender: elke man, elke vrouw, elk kind, so if it is "de module", I should write "elke module".
This means that what is stored inside a native speaker's brain is not the gender of each word, but there is separate information as to how to use articles (here: "de" or "het"), and to how to inflect adjectives and pronouns!
Even stranger is that in German, (which I learnt as a foreign learner, at a much later age) I don't have this problem: knowing or looking up the gender is enough to know how to use and inflect articles, adjectives and (where necessary) nouns. So apparently, this non-native information is remembered in a different way.
P.S. I have the same problem with words like "deksel", where the double gender is officially recognised. But then the problem arises when I try to be consistent in the same document or set of documents, and use either the neuter or non-neuter gender everywhere.
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| 25. |
19 Nov 2006 Sun 11:30 am |
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Quoting aslan2: I read the following post in a forum. Poster who is a native Dutch speaker is talking about the difficulties of this gender thing.
Quote: Native speakers of a language with genders don't have to look up that information in a dictionary. They just know the correct gender of any word and apply it automatically to what they say or write. Sometimes a word can have more than one gender, with or without difference in meaning. It can also happen that large groups of speakers feel that a word can have two different genders, although dictionaries only
recognise one of them for the standard language.
An example of this is the Dutch word "module". The monolingual dictionary Van Dale 13th edition, and the spelling word lists of 1995 and 2006 say it has the "de" gender. (Northern varieties of Dutch largely have only two genders, neuter and non-neuter, southern varieties also distinguish masculine and feminine.)
According to my own linguistic instinct however, both "de module" and "het module" are possible, even with a slight preference for the latter. Now when writing (i.e. translating) for money, I prefer to follow the standard language, and avoid any dialectal influences. So when I want to use this word "module", I have to look up the correct
gender in the dictionary. I have to look it up every time again, I have great difficulty in remembering it. It's even more difficult than learning and remembering genders in a foreign language (say German or Portuguese), because here my linguistic instinct keeps contradicting the official gender information.
Recently, I ran into this problem again, having to chose between "elk module" and "elke module" ("elk" is the Dutch word for "each" or "every"). I looked up the gender and found it was officially "de". But now comes the interesting part: knowing this didn't help me to decide whether to use add the inflection -e to the word "elk" or not! I had to try it out with other words with known gender: elke man, elke vrouw, elk kind, so if it is "de module", I should write "elke module".
This means that what is stored inside a native speaker's brain is not the gender of each word, but there is separate information as to how to use articles (here: "de" or "het"), and to how to inflect adjectives and pronouns!
Even stranger is that in German, (which I learnt as a foreign learner, at a much later age) I don't have this problem: knowing or looking up the gender is enough to know how to use and inflect articles, adjectives and (where necessary) nouns. So apparently, this non-native information is remembered in a different way.
P.S. I have the same problem with words like "deksel", where the double gender is officially recognised. But then the problem arises when I try to be consistent in the same document or set of documents, and use either the neuter or non-neuter gender everywhere.
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Nice text Aslan, especially because I am a teacher of the Dutch language to foreigners. That gender stuff is for most learners of my language the most difficult thing. Why? Because there are hardly any rules that say whether to use 'de' or 'het' as the correct article. And to know that gender is necessary for using demonstrative pronouns, adjectives and more (e.g. it is quite different from the Turkish words burada, şurada and orada). It is even so difficult - most words you have to learn the gender by heart - that at official language exams up to bachelor level, they allow you to make mistakes as long as you use an article, it does not matter which. The only thing I do not agree with the writer of this post is that native speakers know just the gender. A lot of mistakes are made in this matter, also by native speakers. Not to mention homonyms with thus different meanings but also different genders!
Can you tell me where you found this post? I am really interested.
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| 26. |
19 Nov 2006 Sun 12:09 pm |
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Quoting Trudy:
Can you tell me where you found this post? I am really interested. |
He's a regular in sci.lang. You can go to Google Groups to read sci.lang posts.
Ruud Harmsen Home Page
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| 27. |
24 Nov 2006 Fri 01:45 pm |
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My mother toungue is Russian. I have been learning five other foreign languages of different level of difficulty as well as origin for some time. And frankly speaking I would prefer the words to have gender and to be identified by it's sex but! - where it would be easy to recognize which gender group they refer to.The rules with that become more complicated at some point and hard to understand, but still these features bring speciality to the language and it's own beauty.
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| 28. |
24 Nov 2006 Fri 02:53 pm |
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Quoting tatiyana: My mother toungue is Russian. I have been learning five other foreign languages of different level of difficulty as well as origin for some time. And frankly speaking I would prefer the words to have gender and to be identified by it's sex but! - where it would be easy to recognize which gender group they refer to.The rules with that become more complicated at some point and hard to understand, but still these features bring speciality to the language and it's own beauty. |
OK. You can see it in that way, but for me it's an extra baggage you have to learn and that, of course, makes things harder in any case in my opinion. I have no idea about Russian but I have some idea of Italian. It definitely makes thing harder no matter how beautiful it may seem to some people.
Italian nouns are divided into two genders: masculine and feminine. The vast majority of singular nouns end in -o or -a. Those ending in -o are almost always masculine, as in libro (book); while those ending in ?a are predominantly feminine, such as penna (pen). Nouns ending in ?o usually take -i in the plural, for example, libri (books); and those ending in -a usually take -e, for instance, penne (pens). There are a small number of words ending in -o and -a which have irregular plurals. For example, the feminine ala (wing) takes -i in the plural, ali, though it remains feminine; while the masculine ditto (finger) becomes feminine in the plural, dita. A number of nouns end in -e in the singular and -i in the plural, such as frase/frasi (sentence/sentences). In most cases, they are considered unpredictable as to gender. A small group of nouns end in -i in the singular, as in crisi (crisis); and an even smaller group in -u, for example, virtù (virtue). Both types are usually feminine and remain unchanged in the plural. Nouns ending in consonants, usually loan words, are almost always masculine, such as film. They remain invariable in the plural. In summary, -o and -i are strongly associated with the masculine and -a and -e with the feminine, though there are numerous exceptions to this tendency.
Certain derivational suffixes are associated with gender as well. Several end in -e, which alone does not clearly mark gender. Examples of suffixes ending in -e are -tore, which is masculine, and -trice which is feminine, as in attore/attrice (actor/actress). The suffix -sione/-zione is almost always feminine, as in nazione (nation), while the augmentative suffix -one is masculine, such as cartone (cardboard). While not a suffix, the ending -ma also indicates gender. Nouns of Greek origin with this ending are masculine, for instance, programma (program).
In certain cases, the same form has two meanings which correspond to different genders. For example, il fronte is a `war front,' while la fronte means `forehead.'
The gender of compound nouns does not always correspond to the usual gender association of its final letter. Many compound nouns ending in -a are masculine, as in il retroterra (inland). When made up of two nouns, a compound noun can take either the gender of the first or the second noun. For example the word caposquadra (team captain) is masculine, while banconota (banknote) is feminine.
Grammatical gender usually corresponds to the natural gender of nouns referring to people and animals, though there are many examples to the contrary. Natural gender can be indicated in a number of ways: (a) different endings in nouns are added to the same root to distinguish between genders, as in ragazzo/ragazza (boy/girl), signore/signora (gentleman/lady); (b) a masculine noun is made feminine by the addition of a suffix, for example, studente/studentessa (male student/female student); (c) there are two forms with different roots, such as uomo (man), donna (woman); (d) there is one form which can be either masculine or feminine depending on the referent. The gender becomes apparent through the choice of article (or other syntactic agreement). This is the case with some nouns ending in -e, -a, and the derivational suffixes -ista and -cida. For example, the masculine article il indicates that the following nouns refer to males: il cantante (the singer), il collega (the colleague), il pianista (the pianist), il fratricida (the fratricide), while reference to females is indicated by using the feminine article la; (e) one form and one gender is used to refer to both sexes, as in la pantera (the panther). This is the case of many professions that were once largely the domain of men, where the masculine is used for both sexes, such as il giudice (the judge).
Italian requires gender agreement between the noun and its determiners, quantifiers, and most modifying adjectives. Possessive pronouns, as well as subject and object third-person singular pronouns, also must agree in gender with the noun to which they refer. In certain cases, past participles show agreement with either the subject or object of the sentence. The gender inflections on these parts of speech follow the same pattern as most Italian nouns, that is, the endings -o/-i indicate masculine singular/plural, while -a/-e indicate feminine singular/plural. The following are some examples of gender agreement in Italian:
Il mio nuovo libro è stato pubblicato.
`My new book has been published.'
I miei nuovi libri sono stati pubblicati.
`My new books have been published.'
La mia nuova poesia è stata pubblicata.
`My new poem has been published.'
Le mie nuove poesie sono state pubblicate.
`My new poems have been published.'
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| 29. |
24 Nov 2006 Fri 03:55 pm |
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Quoting aslan2: Quoting tatiyana: And frankly speaking I would prefer the words to have gender and to be identified by it's sex but! - where it would be easy to recognize which gender group they refer to.The rules with that become more complicated at some point and hard to understand, but still these features bring speciality to the language and it's own beauty. |
OK. But you can see it in that way but for me it's an extra baggage you have to learn and that of course makes things harder in any case in my opinion. |
I absolutely agree!
Quoting aslan2: Italian requires gender agreement between the noun and its determiners, quantifiers, and most modifying adjectives. Possessive pronouns, as well as subject and object third-person singular pronouns, also must agree in gender with the noun to which they refer. In certain cases, past participles show agreement with either the subject or object of the sentence. |
The same goes for French. Gender has an influence on many parts of a sentence and that definitely makes it harder to study.
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| 30. |
25 Nov 2006 Sat 11:54 am |
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if you wana know how good is this try arabic in arabic for each male there is afemal and its really hard to memorize it .
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