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Which languages don't have a gender system? Thread poster: Sara Senft
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Sara Senft 
United States
Local time: 17:06
Spanish to English
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I've thought about this several times recently. Which languages don't have a gender system?
My perspecive is that English (my native language) doesn't have a FORMAL gender system. I'm noticing more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word.
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Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 23:06
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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Sara Senft wrote:
My perspecive is that English (my native language) doesn't have a FORMAL gender system. I'm noticing more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word.
Hi Sara,
English has *some* gender system but it's very limited. Linguistic notions are best illustrated with examples. Let's take one sentence standing alone as a report without any further context, for instance:
They have brought us a cake.
let's say " they" is two people
In English, they can be M+F, F+F or M+M
In Serbian, if it is F+F you will have a verbal suffix on "brought" ( donijelE) which will immediately indicate it had been two women. "They" will also change to "onE" in case of two women. In this case, M+M and M+F will have the identical suffix/form on "brought", and identical form for "they", so it will not be easily distinguishable. In many other cases, we have separate suffixes even for the latter two combination.
This is what makes English easy for learners because the verbal form stays the same ( no conjunctions) regardless of the subject's gender.
The same change of gender verbal suffixes exist in French and some other languages. When you combine them with seven cases in Serbian, it becomes even more complicated.
Historically speaking, during its development, English had its ways to develop complicated phraseology and collocations system, while staying simple in gender/case/number aspect.
[Edited at 2009-10-05 09:58 GMT]
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Jessica Cade
United States
Local time: 14:06
English to French
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| Good question | Oct 4, 2009 |
The only one I can think of is Japanese
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Henry Hinds
United States
Local time: 15:06
English to Spanish
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In memoriam
You say you notice more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word. Could you perhaps explain or provide some examples? That sounds interesting, it is something I haven't noticed.
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Quang Ngo
Local time: 04:06
English to Vietnamese
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Vietnamese does not have a gender system.
For example:
Cô ấy là giáo viên> She is a teacher
Ông ấy là giáo viên> He is a teacher
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Özden Arıkan
Germany
Local time: 23:06
Member
English to Turkish
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| Gender is mostly a characteristic of Indo-European languages | Oct 5, 2009 |
Languages of the Ural-Altaic family, or Uralic and Altaic families according to another classification, have no gender system. My native language Turkish is among them (Altaic, according to the latter classification.)
You can find more details in this Wikipedia article.
[Edited at 2009-10-05 03:17 GMT]
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inkweaver
Germany
Local time: 23:06
French to German
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Lingua 5B wrote:
The same change of gender verbal suffixes exist in French and German. When you combine them with seven cases in Serbian, it becomes even more complicated.
br>
[Edited at 2009-10-05 00:03 GMT]
In German, verbs don't tell you anything about gender. It is only the personal pronoun which could give you an indication of that, but not in the plural form. To pick up your example, "They brought us a cake" could be translated as "Sie brachten uns einen Kuchen". This does not tell you anything about the gender of the persons referred to by "they" at all - "they" could be all men, all women or both men and women.
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Sara Senft wrote:
I've thought about this several times recently. Which languages don't have a gender system?
My perspecive is that English (my native language) doesn't have a FORMAL gender system. I'm noticing more and more that people often subconsciously attach a gender to an English word.
I think you are right about English not having a FORMAL gender system, but I have one question. We sometimes refer to cars and ships as "she" or "her", but is this informal? I've heard sentences like "start her up" meaning "start the engine of the car". And this is grammatically correct, isn't it?
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Tsogt Gombosuren
Canada
Local time: 15:06
Member (2004)
English to Mongolian
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| Ural-Altaic family languages have no gender system | Oct 5, 2009 |
Özden Arıkan wrote: Languages of the Ural-Altaic family, or Uralic and Altaic families according to another classification, have no gender system. My native language Turkish is among them (Altaic, according to the latter classification.) You can find more details in this Wikipedia article. [Edited at 2009-10-05 03:17 GMT]
But, according to scholars, the archaic Mongolian language did have a very complex gender system and lost this complex system gradually while evolving into its modern form.
[Edited at 2009-10-05 05:08 GMT]
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urbom
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:06
German to English
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JoanneEdwards
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:06
Russian to English
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Kazakh also has no gender system, even the words for he and she are the same - interesting about Mongolian - I had no idea.
Joanne
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Jussi Rosti
Finland
Local time: 00:06
Member (2005)
English to Finnish
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Also no she/he differentiation (belongs to mentioned Uralic group).
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Daniel Weston
United States
Local time: 14:06
French to English
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To answer your question about phrases like "start her up", this is largely informal (slang). I really don't know the origins...
[Edited at 2009-10-05 07:16 GMT]
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| Thank you Daniel | Oct 5, 2009 |
Daniel Weston wrote:
To answer your question about phrases like "start her up", this is largely informal (slang). I really don't know the origins...
[Edited at 2009-10-05 07:16 GMT]
Thank you Daniel, for answering my question. I didn't know that this phrase was a slang, so one could say that these similar phrases are grammatically correct.
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