el Colegio versus la Universidad No wonder we need/have gender reveal parties, and some go on to create huge forest fires. That got me to wonder about Spanish words. ) I realize that languages are not perfect, and many times there is no real reason behind usage. This is known as metaphorical gender (as opposed to natural or grammatical gender). According to linguist John McWhorter, English is the only language in all of Europe that has no gender marking of the le crayon/ la plume type (From: Doing our own thing (2003)'. Gendered pronouns are occasionally applied to sexless objects in English, such as ships, tools, or robots. Sure enough, German speakers described bridges as beautiful, elegant, fragile, pretty, and slender, while Spanish speakers said they were big, dangerous, strong, sturdy, and towering. These rules also apply to other triple-gender nouns, including ideas, inanimate objects, and words like infant and child. The word “bridge” is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish. Spanish speakers, on the other hand, used words such as golden, intricate, little, lovely, and tiny when describing keys. German speakers in the study tended to describe keys as hard, heavy, jagged, metal, and useful. For example, the word “key” is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish. Speaking English and using materials written in English, the researchers asked a group of native Spanish speakers and a group of native German speakers -all of whom were proficient in English- to generate three adjectives for each item on the list.Īcross the board, object gender influenced the participants’ judgments. Modern English also does not use gendered articles, which extends to not assigning an arbitrary gender to inanimate objects. Yet while Quintilian emphatically teaches his. They created a list of 24 objects that have opposite genders in Spanish and German in each language, half of the objects were masculine and half were feminine. 35), the grammar- ian cites Vergil as an authority who can assign genders to inanimate objects apparently at will. In 2002, researchers set out to answer that question. This refers to the process of assigning human characteristics and actions to objects and animals. Presently, most childrens literature has animated characters, a technique called anthropomorphism. This was a common approach that took root during the Victorian era. Can grammatical gender influence speakers’ cognitive processes when they’re speaking another language entirely? In summary, most of the childrens literature books animate inanimate.
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