Gender in Words Borrowed From One Language By Another
Ibrihim identifies several processes by which a language assigns a gender to a newly borrowed word; these processes follow patterns by which even children, through their subconscious recognition of patterns, can often correctly predict a noun's gender.
- If the noun is animate, natural gender tends to dictate grammatical gender.
- The borrowed word tends to take the gender of the native word it replaces.
- If the borrowed word happens to have a suffix that the borrowing language uses as a gender marker, the suffix tends to dictate gender.
- If the borrowed word rhymes with one or more native words, the latter tend to dictate gender.
- The default assignment is the borrowing language's unmarked gender.
- Rarely, the word retains the gender it had in the donor language.
Read more about this topic: Grammatical Gender
Famous quotes containing the words gender in, gender, words, borrowed and/or language:
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up: to be discarded thence,
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I and Pangur Ban, my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.”
—Unknown. Pangur Bÿn (l. 1–4)
“As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jing by gee by gosh by gum”
—E.E. (Edward Estlin)