So what's the deal with gendered nouns?

[Number3Pencils]

I'm only in my second semester of Russian, but shouldn't that be "новый министр образовании ответила на вопросы журналистов"?

No, it's образования. Образование (education) is neuter, and the genitive case ([minister] of education) is formed with an а/я ending (я in this case, since it follows и). Trust me, I'm a native speaker...

Oh. I guess I assumed it was образования in the nominative. As I say, it's only my second semester. [whining]And Russian is hard![/whining]
Carry on

[Justinlrb]

Even English has this distinction! For instance, you can use "he"/"she" only to refer to animate things — sometimes only human things — and "it" only to refer to inanimate things and some animals.

I got to thinking about this and the distinction between things that can be called he or she and those that cannot seems to be a little more complicated.
First I thought of a cartoon by Gary Larson where a guy calls a vat of lye she.
Then last night in the movie I was watching somebody called America She.

Just something I thought was interesting.

[Jorpho]

Dinosaur Comics just ran a rather charming little series on gendered nouns. It raises some points I was not familiar with. And is also hilarious.
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1915
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1916
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1917

[Twelfthroot]

In addition to the totally valid points raised by T. rex, I've found that one nice thing about having yin-yangy noun classes in Spanish is that you get "two versions" or some words.

El orden -- Order, as in not chaos
La orden -- Order, as in command

Un cometa -- A comet
Una cometa -- A kite

El papa -- The pope
La papa -- The potato

Un perro -- A dog
Una perra -- A female dog

Additionally there are plenty of words that change endings as well but whose meanings change in more than just natural gender (naranja orange, naranjo orange tree; gorra and gorro different kinds of cap).

[RebeccaRGB]

el mañana - tomorrow
la mañana - the morning

[gmalivuk]

el mañana - tomorrow

When does anyone ever say "the tomorrow"?

[goofy]

Every language has its beauties and its annoyances and it's silly to ask why on earth they have them, when we have such silliness as "tough", "though", "thought", "through", "thorough"...

Well, those were due to the casual whims of Noah Webster several hundred years ago, right?

No, Webster had nothing to do with these spellings fyi.

[Iulus Cofield]

Webster's most obvious (lasting) contributions to American spellings are ise --> ize, our --> or, and re --> er. He also gets credit for a few anomalous ones that didn't become systemic such as plough --> plow and gaol --> jail.

[eSOANEM]

gaol --> jail.

As far as I know, that change predates Webster hence it being standard this side of the pond.

[gmalivuk]

Yeah, it was being spelled with an i at least as far back as the 14th century, and Shakespeare spelled it that way, with Milton using the newfangled J in 1674.

[Iulus Cofield]

I think the lesson here is to never trust Webster when the extra 45 seconds to log into the OED will tell you the truth.

Edit: Furthermore, <plow> is attested from about 1400.

[gmalivuk]

Well, gaol/jail might indeed be a distinction in how different countries *officially* refer to the place, in which case Webster's dictionary no doubt did have a significant impact on the American preference for the latter.

[Jorpho]

Every language has its beauties and its annoyances and it's silly to ask why on earth they have them, when we have such silliness as "tough", "though", "thought", "through", "thorough"...

Well, those were due to the casual whims of Noah Webster several hundred years ago, right?

No, Webster had nothing to do with these spellings fyi.

Dear me. All this time I thought ghoti was strictly a jab at Webster.

Whose idea were those, then?

[Iulus Cofield]

People who wanted English pronunciation to be easier, specifically by eliminating the ever unpopular velar fricative, whatever vowel shift happened to <women>, and palatizing. I'm actually guessing on those specifics, I'm not an expert in historical English phonology. But any spelling system will get wonky as pronunciations shift through the generations. Greeks haven't complained nearly as much as English speakers, even though their spelling has remained basically the same since the Classical period.

[gmalivuk]

Whose idea were those, then?

They weren't anybody's idea. That's approximately how those words have been spelled for centuries, despite tons of pronunciation changes in the meantime.

You really thought Webster, who was attempting to simplify and regularize English spelling, invented those words or something? And then magically had them take hold in all varieties of English, while much more sensible changes like gaol to jail were mostly Americanisms?

[Jorpho]

Whose idea were those, then?

They weren't anybody's idea. That's approximately how those words have been spelled for centuries, despite tons of pronunciation changes in the meantime.

You really thought Webster, who was attempting to simplify and regularize English spelling, invented those words or something? And then magically had them take hold in all varieties of English, while much more sensible changes like gaol to jail were mostly Americanisms?

Not exactly. I was under the impression that until Webster finally put these things down, no one in particular cared at all about any kind of standardized English spelling. (With literacy rates being as low as they were, and the printing press being a relatively recent invention, this does not seem quite so farfetched.)

[cntrational]

From what I've heard, most English spelling was standardized through general agreement when printing was invented.

[Everclarity]

el mañana - tomorrow

When does anyone ever say "the tomorrow"?

Nobody does, which is why the word mañana often requires clarification: "Mañana de hoy o mañana del día que viene o mañana de la?.... AYE 'tomorrow'"

Linguistic clarifications are far easier in bilingual communities.

As for gender among nouns... much like the use of animate/inanimate codification in languages, such as Euskera or the Vasque language: These codifications *used* to correlate to the things they discussed. In the history of the language, all living items were animate, just as all non-living were inanimate, but as the language evolved and new metaphors were formed and slowly converted into dead metaphors, etc... the distinction became arbitrary.

The same has happened with gender, to the point that it's so arbitrary that the gender changes based on dialect: Northern Spain sometimes says "el mar," while Southern Spain tends toward "la mar."

Unfortunately, though, for those who wish to 'correct' the language to gender neutral, much like those who advocate the flow-disruptive "his/her," they'll find themselves ambiguating many nouns: "el manzano" is a tree that produces apples, while "la manzana" is the apple produced by the tree; "el cafetero" often refers to a coffee maker on a plantation, while "la cafetera" often refers to the coffee maker in your kitchen.

Personally, I think that gender's still around so that speakers of gendered languages have more ways to play with their language; yesterday my female coworker said I could be my own "jefa" (the feminine of "boss"), so I told her that as my own "jefa" I'd have to be "trabajadora" (the feminine of hard-working). Oh, worth noting that I'm male.