i like this comment but i feel the need to reply because it touches upon a pet peeve of mine in linguistics: there is a persistent myth in the modern period that grammatical gender is useless, pointless, or somehow arbitrary and is just some sort of vestigial, rotting, lexical limb that made it to the 21st century by fluke.
this is simply not true. just because grammatical gender often appears arbitrary or illogical doesnāt mean it actually is. and just because grammatical gender follows many, many rules does not mean there are no rules. grammatical gender is just a fairly common form of noun class system. as with most forms of noun classing, what the rules are in a given dialect can be a little wishy-washy but they are certainly not arbitrary.
for example, you point out the german MƤdchen as an example of illogical noun gendering. this is an opinion often expressed by foreigners learning the language, and even by linguistically-ignorant germans. it makes sense on the face of it, this word has a similar meaning to the english phrase ālittle girl,ā so it is strange the germans decided to sort this word into the neuter gender, no?
well, no. it isnāt strange and it isnāt illogical, in actuality. -chen is a diminutive in german. for those who are unaware, diminutives are suffixes/prefixes in languages that serve to make nouns feel smaller or more cute in a language. think booklet vs book or dog vs doggie for some english examples.
what are some examples of more german diminutives?
das KƤtzchenĀ - kitten
das HĆ¼ndchen - puppy
das PlƤtzchen - a cookie (depends on dialect exactly what this refers to afaik but generally is always some sort of cookie)
das OhrlƤppchen - earlobe
noticing a trend? these are all neuter! and thus we uncover a little grammatical rule that grammatical gender was trying to tell us. all diminutives are neuter.
most every āarbitraryā example of grammatical gender people provide has some sort of similar reasoning or rule behind it, some story or information it is trying to give you that makes speaking the language that much easier.
just because what it is encoding doesnāt seem useful or logical to (rhetorical) you doesnāt mean it is not. grammatical gender is much more than just gender-washing everyday speech for kicks and does carry useful meaning, if you can be bothered to puzzle it out. attempts iāve seen to āde-genderā spanish (this is just what is local to me) all fundamentally misunderstand what it is theyāre even trying to do and often opt for rotely tearing out the entire gendered case system without offering proper lexical and linguistic infrastructure for the language to actually effectively function without it. these attempts sound clunky because they are clunky! and to be perfectly clear iām not dogging on the premise, just the serious attempts iāve seen implemented in real life speech and their implementation. i think itās relevant bc it showcases how modern misunderstanding of what grammatical gender is can realize as actual, negative manifestations in the non-conceptual world. why this is important to think about more than passingly!
The big thing that people get wrong and which makes me so very tired is that ITāS NOT SOCIETAL GENDER, itās just a case of terrible terminology that weāre stuck with. A chair isnāt feminine or whatever, itās just that words related to femininity happen to be in the same class as other words.
I really wish we could all agree to call it basically anything else, like āgenreā which shares the same root but doesnāt create the connotation to societal gender.
i like this comment but i feel the need to reply because it touches upon a pet peeve of mine in linguistics: there is a persistent myth in the modern period that grammatical gender is useless, pointless, or somehow arbitrary and is just some sort of vestigial, rotting, lexical limb that made it to the 21st century by fluke.
this is simply not true. just because grammatical gender often appears arbitrary or illogical doesnāt mean it actually is. and just because grammatical gender follows many, many rules does not mean there are no rules. grammatical gender is just a fairly common form of noun class system. as with most forms of noun classing, what the rules are in a given dialect can be a little wishy-washy but they are certainly not arbitrary.
for example, you point out the german MƤdchen as an example of illogical noun gendering. this is an opinion often expressed by foreigners learning the language, and even by linguistically-ignorant germans. it makes sense on the face of it, this word has a similar meaning to the english phrase ālittle girl,ā so it is strange the germans decided to sort this word into the neuter gender, no?
well, no. it isnāt strange and it isnāt illogical, in actuality. -chen is a diminutive in german. for those who are unaware, diminutives are suffixes/prefixes in languages that serve to make nouns feel smaller or more cute in a language. think booklet vs book or dog vs doggie for some english examples.
what are some examples of more german diminutives?
das KƤtzchenĀ - kitten
das HĆ¼ndchen - puppy
das PlƤtzchen - a cookie (depends on dialect exactly what this refers to afaik but generally is always some sort of cookie)
das OhrlƤppchen - earlobe
noticing a trend? these are all neuter! and thus we uncover a little grammatical rule that grammatical gender was trying to tell us. all diminutives are neuter.
most every āarbitraryā example of grammatical gender people provide has some sort of similar reasoning or rule behind it, some story or information it is trying to give you that makes speaking the language that much easier.
just because what it is encoding doesnāt seem useful or logical to (rhetorical) you doesnāt mean it is not. grammatical gender is much more than just gender-washing everyday speech for kicks and does carry useful meaning, if you can be bothered to puzzle it out. attempts iāve seen to āde-genderā spanish (this is just what is local to me) all fundamentally misunderstand what it is theyāre even trying to do and often opt for rotely tearing out the entire gendered case system without offering proper lexical and linguistic infrastructure for the language to actually effectively function without it. these attempts sound clunky because they are clunky! and to be perfectly clear iām not dogging on the premise, just the serious attempts iāve seen implemented in real life speech and their implementation. i think itās relevant bc it showcases how modern misunderstanding of what grammatical gender is can realize as actual, negative manifestations in the non-conceptual world. why this is important to think about more than passingly!
edit:formatting
The big thing that people get wrong and which makes me so very tired is that ITāS NOT SOCIETAL GENDER, itās just a case of terrible terminology that weāre stuck with. A chair isnāt feminine or whatever, itās just that words related to femininity happen to be in the same class as other words.
I really wish we could all agree to call it basically anything else, like āgenreā which shares the same root but doesnāt create the connotation to societal gender.