Grammatical Gender - Gender in Words Borrowed From One Language By Another

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.

  1. If the noun is animate, natural gender tends to dictate grammatical gender.
  2. The borrowed word tends to take the gender of the native word it replaces.
  3. If the borrowed word happens to have a suffix that the borrowing language uses as a gender marker, the suffix tends to dictate gender.
  4. If the borrowed word rhymes with one or more native words, the latter tend to dictate gender.
  5. The default assignment is the borrowing language's unmarked gender.
  6. Rarely, the word retains the gender it had in the donor language.

Read more about this topic:  Grammatical Gender

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