Spanish just got easier....or did it?

[PhilipDT]

try googling your question if you like.

btw (and there is a language shortcut for you), remind me, what is misogynistic about attaching genders to nouns?

Nothing, some people are just native morons.

 

[mariposa]

thanks, i thought i was missing something there.....

 

[darmanad]

try googling your question if you like.

btw (and there is a language shortcut for you), remind me, what is misogynistic about attaching genders to nouns?

OK. Misogynistic may have been an overstatement. I used it because such language gender distinctions implicitly draw/emphasize what I believe are unnecessary differentiations between the sexes. Historically, social differentiations have not been favorable to women.
Now, instead of directing me to google an answer to my question, what about supporting your position that only a native English speaker would think like I did. Have you already googled the subject? Can you provide a valid reason to continue regarding some nouns as fen. and others as masc. when it seems to this native English speaker an unnecessary embellishment.

 

[darmanad]

Nothing, some people are just native morons.

Gratuitous insults seem to be in vogue here. Are you an expat or a local?

 

[mariposa]

"unnecessary embellishment"???? OMG (sorry...)

we are SO not on the same page here. i should provide a "valid" reason why most non-anglo languages which have genders should continue to have them? are you serious????

i'm sorry, i'm outta here (forgive the slang)

 

[jazrgz]

Im local and this debate really makes no sense. What mariposa expressed, that only and english speaking person would ask such question it´s true. I dont see it as an insult or a way to diminish english speaking people but only as a fact.
If you remove fem and masc from the spanish language it would just not be a language. it would simply make no sense and communication through it would just not be accurate enough. Now, i dont know much about other languages but i believe french, italian and portuguese are structured pretty much the same gender-wise (please confirm you french, italian and brazilians out there hehe).
For us, this gender distinction is not embellishment but absolutaly necessary, without it, the language would just be incomplete.
I can speak a bit of english and it´s cool that it doesnt have such distinction and i absolutely understand how hard this fem masc distinction makes it to english native speakers to learn spanish and for instance it makes sense that an english speaking person would question its need.

-Juan Z

 

[mariposa]

juan,

you should be a diplomat! (and i do mean this nicely!!)

 

[PhilipDT]

Gratuitous insults seem to be in vogue here. Are you an expat or a local?

You accused an entire language of inherent misogyny and I´m the one with gratuitous insults?

Expat.

 

[mariposa]

actually, to be honest, spanish is a bit more sexist than say, german. you can have 19 daughters and one son, but you still have 20 hijos.

but this no more justifies stripping an entire language of its genders than it does stripping the entire western food menu of items with complex ingredients.

frozen pizza, anyone?

 

[KatharineAnn]

OK. Misogynistic may have been an overstatement. I used it because such language gender distinctions implicitly draw/emphasize what I believe are unnecessary differentiations between the sexes. Historically, social differentiations have not been favorable to women.
Now, instead of directing me to google an answer to my question, what about supporting your position that only a native English speaker would think like I did. Have you already googled the subject? Can you provide a valid reason to continue regarding some nouns as fen. and others as masc. when it seems to this native English speaker an unnecessary embellishment.

I can. They're called noun classes, and really "gender" as a biological concept has very little to do with it. Yes, there is a light association, in that people and animals do tend to use almost always their respective gender, but for all other nouns which do not have a biological gender, it has almost nothing to do with biological gender (sex).

Noun classes are a characteristic of most languages, which help to distinguish words and therefore meaning. This happens sometimes in Spanish, although it is not that common:

el capital /= la capital
el frente /= la frente
el papa /= la papa

Noun classes also provide grammatical rules that apply specifically to each class. For example, masculine nouns are always modified by masculine adjectives, demonstratives, etc. Feminine nouns are modified by the feminine version. If you say "Ya la compré" you have quite a bit of additional information that the English version "I already bought it" is lacking, namely, you have narrowed down the possibilities quite a lot. You can't have bought the vaso, but perhaps a copa. In Spanish this is very simple, there are not many different sets of grammatical rules, and this narrowing down does not change that much because there are only 2 noun classes.

But what about when there are 10? Some languages have loads of different noun classes that work kind of like masc/fem in Spanish, but a lot more complicated of course! You of course wouldn't argue that they "get rid of" this important part of each language's grammar! Somehow, however, we have come to regard noun gender as referring to something biological and therefore give it more connotations that it really needs.

We don't need to get rid of gender in nouns, but we COULD do without the sexists who express sexist things in any language, be it English or Spanish!

And I also believe that the original comment was very English-speaker-like. This is just because English is very poor in these kinds of noun classes/groupings, whereas most languages (that I know of, at least) do have at least more than 1 variant!