Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Feminine forms of German nouns are usually created by adding -in to the root, which corresponds to the masculine form. For example, the root for secretary is the masculine form Sekretär. Adding the feminine suffix yields Sekretärin ("woman secretary"; plural: Sekretärinnen: "women secretaries").
Furthermore, some see evidence of the intentional preference of the masculine over the feminine. It has been argued that 17th-century grammaticians who wanted to assert male dominance worked to suppress the feminine forms of certain professions, leading to the modern-day rule that prefers the masculine over the feminine in the French language. [4]
Common feminine suffixes used in English names are -a, of Latin or Romance origin (cf. Robert and Roberta); and -e, of French origin (cf. Justin and Justine). Although gender inflection may be used to construct nouns and names for people of different sexes in languages that have grammatical gender, this alone does not constitute grammatical gender.
Writing about translation from Yiddish (a gendered language) to English in the Jewish Feminist Journal, Hinde Ena Burstin says that she does not like gender neutral language as in gendered languages, it is clear what gender is being talked about. For example, "poetese" being a gendered word for "woman poet".
Some (very rare) nouns change gender according to the way they are used: the words amour 'love' and délice 'pleasure' are masculine in singular and feminine in plural; the word orgue 'organ' is masculine, but when used emphatically in plural to refer to a church organ it becomes feminine (les grandes orgues); the plural noun gens 'people ...
The Oxford English Dictionary dates written examples of calling ships she to at least 1308 (in the Middle English period), in materials translated from French, which has grammatical gender. [19] One modern source claims that ships were treated as masculine in early English, and that this changed to feminine by the sixteenth century.
The words he, him, she, her translate to a single word in Swahili, yeye. There are gender specific words for man/woman (mwanamume/mwanamke) and mother/father (mama/baba), so it is not completely gender neutral, although a vast majority of the words do not distinguish between male or female. The language does not have a grammatical gender either ...
Women in Ancient Greece wore himations; and in Ancient Rome women wore the palla, a rectangular mantle, and the maphorion. [54] The typical feminine outfit of aristocratic women of the Renaissance was an undershirt with a gown and a high-waisted overgown, and a plucked forehead and beehive or turban-style hairdo. [54]