Question. Unseen forces, like nature and karma, that are often attributed as having agency are also often assumed to be female (in English at least). Is this the case in other languages and if so why?
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Me neither! I just thought it odd. Maybe it’s just an idiosyncratic case in English tho
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So tons of nouns with female grammatical gender are very typically "masculine" from at least an Anglo perspective. Here is a list of examples: https://www.amouliani.com.gr/istoselides/e_yliko/E/glossa_5/grammatiki/eia_ia.pdf …
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So personally to me the fact a noun has a specific grammatical gender dissociates completely with how otherwise male or female a noun is perceived. And I think this is also shown to be the case in research too. E.g., the role of grammatical gender is not related to other gender.
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Hmmm interesting thanks!
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English treating a noun as female like a boat or something is quite exceptional — it might be covered by this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/01/ask-grown-up-boats-called-she … I'm pretty sure the arguments in that article are not true for other languages. Definitely not any I have come across. IIRC
@chbergma knows more. -
In other languages, as I have said grammatical gender is not about other gender really. Some ideas on the role for it are presented here:https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tops.12316 …
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Not sure if relevant here but in Spanish there are nouns that are "feminine" but their pronoun is masculine such as 'agua' (water). 'El' (masculine) 'agua' clara (femenine).
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How do you know it's f then?
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You learn it
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