I have been reading a book about the cultural experiences of someone from Iran living in the U.S. and speaking English, even though she was raised speaking Farsi. She got all mixed up with using "he" and "she" and wondered why languages bother to specify sexes.

This all made me wonder...do all languages do this? Does Farsi?

English does so only when referring specifically to things of gender: men and women; cows and bulls; dogs and bitches. And even then we do not change the word or its article to agree with the gender.

We do not arbitrarily allocate a gender to something that has none as do many other languages.

For example, in German, Der Wagen (m), Das Auto (neuter) - both mean "the car"

According to Wikipedia there is no grammatical gender for nouns in Farsi, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender.

Most Indo-European languages have grammatical gender: the Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Romance, Greek, Anatolian, and Indian branches come to mind. So, the Iranian branch probably had grammatical gender earlier on in its history, but has since lost it. As I've mentioned before, not all languages that have grammatical gender (sometimes called noun classes) divide things up by biological sex. For example, the Bantu family of languages in Africa have more than a dozen genders. I've read a study where people speaking a language that has grammatical gender are given new loanwords and have to assign them to a gender; they're pretty consistent about it, which leads one to believe that the assignments are not arbitrary. The second and third person pronouns in Mandarin ni and ta have different characters based on the biological sex of the antecedent. They are pronounced identically. So, Mandarin makes a distinction only in the written language.

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there is no grammatical gender for nouns in Farsi, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender.

My Persian officemate has been here for 20 years and still confuses he and she now and then.

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I've read a study where people speaking a language that has grammatical gender are given new loanwords and have to assign them to a gender; they're pretty consistent about it, which leads one to believe that the assignments are not arbitrary.

I wonder what the process is if it's not arbitrary. Why is the German for "car" masculine and that for "automobile" neuter?

I wonder what the process is if it's not arbitrary.

I'll try to find the reference and let you know.

[Edited after a trip to the family library and a quick googling for online sources.]

One of the best books I've read on grammatical gender is in the Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics series. Published in 1991, written by Professor Greville Corbett, and called simply enough Gender. It should be available in your local university library or new / used in your favorite bookstore (online or not). Chapters 2 through 4 discuss gender assignment (i.e., pp.7-104; 2. Gender Assignment I: Semantic Systems; 3. Gender Assignment II: Formal Systems; 4. Psycholinguistic Status of Gender Assignment).

I found some papers online that discuss gender assignment, too: one, two, three, and four.

The criteria for gender assignment for loanwords are not always the same, but may include semantic, formal rules, phonological, and morphological.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Good question, Richard.

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English does so only when referring specifically to things of gender: men and women; cows and bulls; dogs and bitches. And even then we do not change the word or its article to agree with the gender.

In the book she was referring to words as simple as "he/she," as Neveu indicated. I also have a colleague from China who has been here 20 years and is quite articulate, and yet she still gets "he/she" confused.

In languages with grammatical gender, e.g., Latin or Greek, nouns that can stand for both the male and female sexes of certain animals, but which have a single grammatical gender are called epicene. In modern English, this grammatical term has taken on the pejorative meaning of 'effete' and such like.

Arabic Does, Hungarian dosen't

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
This all made me wonder...do all languages do this? Does Farsi?

Yes, Persian (Farsi) is a gender-neutral language. We don't have "he, she", "him, her", "his, her". We don't have grammatical gender. Persian is so from Middle Persian (ca. 300 BCE). I think most Turkic languages are also gender-neutral.

Personally, I rarely confuse them. But when it comes to French, German and other languages having grammatical gender I confuse which word is f., which m., which n.

My question about English is that which pronoun to use for "God". "He, She" denote a sex while we can't ascribe a sex to God (at least from Islamic point of view). and as far as I know "it" is for inanimate. Am i right?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Alijsh,

Alijsh, it's a contentious issue nowadays. Traditionally the masculine pronouns are used (with a capital letter He,Him, His etc) in Christian religions. However some people - usually trying to make a point - now choose to use feminine pronouns. However to most people these just sound strange and awkward. Most people still use masculine pronouns. You are right that noone would ever use It.

On second thoughts, it seems that I said nonsense. I don't think "He" refers male sex in religious texts. Capital form says it refers to God. By the way, I made a mistake. "it" is for non-humans: animals, objects, etc., isn't it?

Usually, but people do refer to their pets as he or she.

We also refer to some inanimate objects that way. Ships and boats, for example, are often called "she".

As for pronouns in religious texts, in Christian religions God has traditionally been thought of as male. The Lord's Prayer begins

Our Father which art in Heaven (Our father who is in heaven in modern English).

not

Our Mother which art in Heaven.

Also remember that Christianity, unlike Islam, has no prohibition on painting pictures of God and the traditional image is of a bearded man.