What is the Spanish word for butter? Someone told me it was "burro" but I thought that was a donkey.
36-40, F
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SomeMichGuy · M
BijouPleasurette · 36-40, F
@SomeMichGuy It's genderless as far as I'm concerned. It's neuter. Lol :)
SomeMichGuy · M
@BijouPleasurette Grammatical gender, not sexual gender.
Masculine
il burro (It.)
le beurre (Fr.)
Feminine
la mantequilla (Sp.)
la mantega (Cat.)
a mantiega (Port.)
Neuter
untul (Rom.)
English only kept Germanic grammatical gender (masc., fem., neut.) in third person singular pronouns.
Masculine
il burro (It.)
le beurre (Fr.)
Feminine
la mantequilla (Sp.)
la mantega (Cat.)
a mantiega (Port.)
Neuter
untul (Rom.)
English only kept Germanic grammatical gender (masc., fem., neut.) in third person singular pronouns.
BijouPleasurette · 36-40, F
@SomeMichGuy I never understood this grammatical gender thing when I did French in school. How can non-living things have a gender? 🤔
SomeMichGuy · M
@BijouPleasurette
Again...it's grammatical gender, not sexual gender the way you are thinking.
There are attributes which *nouns* can have, and things associated with nouns (definite or indefinite articles, adjectives, pronouns)--case (tells you what role the noun is playing) & gender are two big ones.
English has grammatical gender in the third person singular pronouns:
masculine: he/him/his,
feminine: she/her/her,
neuter: it/it/its.
It *can* have a relation to sexual gender, because languages with grammatical gender tend to use
masculine grammatical gender for males (the words for a male child, boy, man, uncle, nephew, grandfather, son, grandson, husband; a male dog, cat, horse, a bull, a rooster, ...)
feminine grammatical gender for females (the words for a female child, girl, woman, aunt, niece grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, wife; a female dog, cat, horse, a cow, a hen, ...)
But you can't depend upon that and you have to just memorize the *grammatical* gender when you learn a word.
This ends up being important because of how you say things like "the"... For instance, in German, there are specific ways to say "the" based upon "case" and grammatical gender. Here are the 16 forms of "the" for Masculine singular, Feminine singular, Neuter singular, and Plural forms [all plurals in a given case are the same]:
Nominative der die das die
Accusative den die das die
Dative dem der dem den
Genitive des der des der
Again...it's grammatical gender, not sexual gender the way you are thinking.
There are attributes which *nouns* can have, and things associated with nouns (definite or indefinite articles, adjectives, pronouns)--case (tells you what role the noun is playing) & gender are two big ones.
English has grammatical gender in the third person singular pronouns:
masculine: he/him/his,
feminine: she/her/her,
neuter: it/it/its.
It *can* have a relation to sexual gender, because languages with grammatical gender tend to use
masculine grammatical gender for males (the words for a male child, boy, man, uncle, nephew, grandfather, son, grandson, husband; a male dog, cat, horse, a bull, a rooster, ...)
feminine grammatical gender for females (the words for a female child, girl, woman, aunt, niece grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, wife; a female dog, cat, horse, a cow, a hen, ...)
But you can't depend upon that and you have to just memorize the *grammatical* gender when you learn a word.
This ends up being important because of how you say things like "the"... For instance, in German, there are specific ways to say "the" based upon "case" and grammatical gender. Here are the 16 forms of "the" for Masculine singular, Feminine singular, Neuter singular, and Plural forms [all plurals in a given case are the same]:
Nominative der die das die
Accusative den die das die
Dative dem der dem den
Genitive des der des der
BijouPleasurette · 36-40, F
@SomeMichGuy Living creatures (dog, cat, horse, etc) have gender. Inanimate objects don't.
SomeMichGuy · M
@BijouPleasurette You just don't understand.
This is GRAMMATICAL gender, which exists in some languages, and has a link to real-world gender, but it's NOT the same.
Look it up.
It's real.
That's why English has he/she/it...a holdover from German's er/sie/es...
This is GRAMMATICAL gender, which exists in some languages, and has a link to real-world gender, but it's NOT the same.
Look it up.
It's real.
That's why English has he/she/it...a holdover from German's er/sie/es...
SomeMichGuy · M