Grammatical Vs. Natural Gender
The grammatical gender of a word does not always coincide with real gender of its referent. An example of this is the grammatically feminine Spanish word masculinidad "masculinity"; this is because it is composed of masculin- "male" and the suffix -idad similar to English "-ity", which places nouns in the "feminine" noun class. Another example of this is grammatically neuter German word Mädchen "girl"; this is because it is composed of Magd "maidservant", and the diminutive suffix -chen, which places nouns in the "neuter" noun class.
A few more examples:
- Old English wīf (n.) and wīfmann (m.) "woman"
- German Frau (f.) and Weib (n.) "woman"
- Irish cailín (m.) "girl", stail (f.) "stallion".
- Scottish Gaelic boireannach (m.) "woman".
- Slovenian dekle (n.) "girl".
- Spanish gente (f.) "people", even if the collective term refers to a group of men.
Normally, such exceptions are a small minority. However, in some local dialects of German, nouns and proper names for female persons have shifted to the neuter gender (presumably further influenced by the standard word Weib), but the feminine gender remains for words denoting objects.
There is a certain tendency to keep the grammatical gender when a close back-reference is made, but to switch to natural gender when the reference is further away. For example in German, the sentence "The girl has come home from school. She is now doing her homework" can be translated in two ways:
- Das Mädchen (n.) ist aus der Schule gekommen. Es (n.) macht jetzt seine (n.) Hausaufgaben.
- Das Mädchen (n.) ist aus der Schule gekommen. Sie (f.) macht jetzt ihre (f.) Hausaufgaben.
Though the second sentence may appear grammatically incorrect, it is commonly heard in speech. With one or more intervening sentences, the second form becomes more likely. However, no number of adjectives put between the article and the noun (e.g. das schöne, fleißige, langhaarige, blonde, Mädchen) can license a switch from the neutral to the feminine article, so it is always considered wrong to say a sentence like die schöne Mädchen.
Read more about this topic: Grammatical Gender
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