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)
“Plantin’ and readin’, plantin’ and readin’. Fill a man full of lead, stick ‘em in the ground, and then read words on ‘em. Why when ya killed a man, why try to read the Lord in as a partner on the job.”
—Borden Chase [Frank Fowler] (1900–1971)
“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)
“For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)