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In the French language, countries can have masculine (green) or feminine (purple) names. Except for certain islands and Mexique, Mozambique, Cambodge and Zimbabwe, the gender depends on whether the country name ends in -e. In the Polish language, countries can have masculine (blue), feminine (red) or neuter (yellow) names. Countries with plural ...
The prepositions à (' to, at ') and de (' of, from ') form contracted forms with the masculine and plural articles le and les: au, du, aux, and des, respectively.. Like the, the French definite article is used with a noun referring to a specific item when both the speaker and the audience know what the item is.
This leads to sentences such as (5a) in English, and (6a) in French. Example of gender-neutral masculine: English (5) a. If anybody comes, tell him. masculine him used to refer to a person of unknown sex b. *If anybody comes, tell her. feminine her is not used to refer to a person of unknown sex Example of collective masculine: French (6) a.
French has a T-V distinction in the second person singular. That is, it uses two different sets of pronouns: tu and vous and their various forms. The usage of tu and vous depends on the kind of relationship (formal or informal) that exists between the speaker and the person with whom they are speaking and the age differences between these subjects. [1]
Languages with grammatical gender, such as French, German, Greek, and Spanish, present unique challenges when it comes to creating gender-neutral language.Unlike genderless languages like English, constructing a gender-neutral sentence can be difficult or impossible in these languages due to the use of gendered nouns and pronouns.
Many nouns ending in -e preceded by double consonants are also masculine (e.g. un cadre, un arbre, un signe, un meuble). Nonetheless, a noun that seems masculine judging by its ending might actually be feminine e.g., la peau 'the skin', une dent 'a tooth' or vice versa e.g., le coude 'the elbow', un squelette 'a skeleton' are masculine.
Dutch - the masculine and the feminine have merged into a common gender in standard Dutch, but a distinction is still made by many when using pronouns. In South-Dutch (Flemish) spoken language all articles, possessives and demonstratives differentiate between masculine and feminine: see gender in Dutch grammar. Faroese; Gaulish; German
Some other languages use different classifying systems, especially in the plural pronouns. One frequently found difference not present in most Indo-European languages is a contrast between inclusive and exclusive "we": a distinction of first-person plural pronouns between including or excluding the addressee.