Gender of loanwords

[Chuma]

If I understand my old Swedish teacher right, there is a tendency for Swedish loanwords to keep the gender of the original word. Obviously this would only apply to certain languages, including German and Latin. Could this be true? Are there similar tendencies in other languages?

[hwhatting]

It's basically the same principle in German, especially for learned borrowings. OTOH, sometimes loans get sorted into a different gender based on their shape - e.g., while French words in -age are normally male, loans with that suffix are normally female in German (Visage, Blamage, Garage, Massage). Loans from English seem to be sorted into a gender based on their shape or on the gender of words from the same semantic field, e.g. Baseball, Basketball, Football (= "American football"; "soccer" is Fußball, a loan translation) are male, because Geman Ball "ball" is male, Show is female because Schau is, etc..
In Russian, the shape normally determines the gender - loans in -a are mostly female, loans ending in a consonant are mostly male, only loans in vowels other than -a are all over the place (and mostly indeclinable), although my impression is that there's a tendency for such loans designing animate entities to be male and inanimate entities to be neuter (but see e.g. ко́фе "coffee", which is male).
Polish has similar rules like Russian, with differences in the details. While e.g. Russian often doesn't decline loans in stressed -o (пальто́, кино́), although they are neuter and Russian has indigneous neuters in stressed -o, Polish does decline them (NB: in Polish, the ending is unstressed due to the general penultimate accent). Loans in -um, despite ending in a consonant, don't become male, but keep their neuter gender; they're indeclinable in the singular, but decline in the plural (muzeum, pl. muzea, audytorium, pl. auditoria).

[merijn]

In Dutch I have been told (I am a native speaker of Dutch, but these are things you are not aware of as native speakers) that the default noun-class for loans from English is the common gender, but if there is a word that is close semantically to an existing word that is neuter, it is neuter. So it is de synthesizer but het interview because interview is close to gesprek "conversation". For words from German, the original gender is usually maintained I think with masculine and feminine nouns collapsing into common gender, and the same is mostly true for Latin and Ancient Greek as well (the most prominent exception I can think of is the suffix -ism, which is neuter). I am not sure what happens with loans from French.

WRT Zulu, I don't know what Zulu does with loans from other Bantu languages, my guess is that if they are from another Nguni language (Nguni languages are very closely related) they will remain in the same noun class, and loans from other Bantu languages will remain in the same noun class if it is clear for speakers that it is the same noun class.
Zulu loans from English fall either in noun class 1a*/2a**, 5/6, 7/8 or 9/6. 5/6 loans are older loans and it doesn't seem to be productive anymore as the noun class for loans. Most loans from 1a/2a also seem to be older loans, but I have come across newer loans (I can't remember any though). It is also the noun class for personal names, and I have seen it used as the noun class for company names as well (although noun class 9/6 seems to be more common for that). Noun class 7/8 is used for loans that start with a cluster starting with an s in English (the noun prefix for noun class 7 is (i)si-)*** for instance isi-timela pl izi-timela "train" (from "steamer"). Noun class 9/6 is used for the vast majority of new loans (ifacebook, itv, iwebsite etc.). The normal noun class prefix for noun class 9 is (i)N*** where the N stands for prenasalization. However, in recent loans the prenasalization is not present. Also the plural is in noun class 6, not in noun class 10 as most native nouns in noun class 9 (although a few very common words have noun class 6 plurals.) Noun class 9, without the prenasalization is also the noun class for title's of books, movies and songs, names of products and similar things. Occasionally you will find loans in other noun classes, sometimes because of phonological reasons, and sometimes for no reason at all, but those are clearly the exceptions.

*Technically, what is traditionally called noun class 1a, the term I used here as well, is two noun classes, one consisting of people (although the word for government is sometimes in this noun class as well) which trigger noun class 1 agreement, and is thus noun class 1a proper, and one that consists of non-persons and triggers noun class 3 agreement, and is usually called noun class 3a. Both have their plural in noun class 2a though
** In the pairs the first number designates the singular noun class, and the second the plural.
***The part that is in brackets is the augment, or initial vowel. It is commonly described as part of the noun class prefix in older grammar books but it is better to regard it as an independent determiner-like prefix.

ADDED AFTER READ HWHATTING'S POST
In Dutch words on -age are usually common gender, but not het voltage, the words ending in -bal are common if they denote the ball itself, but neuter if they denote the game and not the ball: de basketbal=the ball, but het basketbal=the game of basketbal.

[vec]

In Icelandic, the form the word takes after incorporating necessary nominative endings determines gender. There is often disparity between the Icelandic gender and the original gender. Icelandic has comparatively few Romance, Latin and Greek borrowings, but in the case of the latter two, there is often a set academic system for Icelandicizing the words, which more or less retains original gender.

[Izambri]

Catalan retains the gender whenever it's possible. When the original language doesn't make gender distinction, some criteria are applied:

1. When the loanword has a reference gender, this is retained. For example, samurai (m) vs. geisha (f), for obvious reasons.

2. The termination of the original word determines the gender in Catalan. For example, sauna, jungla... are all femenine because they end in -a, which is the main and most productive femenine mark. There are exceptions, like pijama (m).

In Catalan the masculine is more productive than the femenine when making new words. The same applies when adopting foreign words. So, for example, neuter words in the original language would become masculine in Catalan. For example, fonema, plasma, karma, nirvana... are all masculine, but neuter in their original languages (Greek, for the first two, and Sanskrit for the other two).

But there are exceptions to this rule. For example, sari (m), although the original, in Hindi, is femenine.

Sometimes, when other Romance languages have adopted certain foreign words, Catalan also adopts these words with the chosen gender. For example, in Catalan biwa is masculine because other Romance languages, when adopting that Japanese word, assigned that gender.

Other reasons to assign this or that gender are semantic associations. For example, web is femenine (la web) because is commonly associated with pàgina web "webpage" (pàgina is femenine); although is also used in masculine (el web) when lloc web "website" is implied (lloc "place" is masculine).

[Bob Johnson]

For example, in Catalan biwa is masculine because other Romance languages, when adopting that Japanese word, assigned that gender.

Could this be transfer from llaüt/laúd/luth/liuto? (all masc.)

.. or maybe all that is from the Arabic, also masc.

[Izambri]

For example, in Catalan biwa is masculine because other Romance languages, when adopting that Japanese word, assigned that gender.

Could this be transfer from llaüt/laúd/luth/liuto? (all masc.)

.. or maybe all that is from the Arabic, also masc.

According to the source I consulted it's due to what I explained: Catalan has adopted the gender that other Romance languages took.

That source is TERMCAT, a public institution that, among other things, regulates the adoption on loanwords and the creation of neologisms in Catalan.

[Ser]

Spanish works in the same way as Catalan, except that there's also influence from words in the semantic field (c'mon, Catalan surely has some examples of this...).

There's a quite a number of ways to refer to a USB card in Salvadoran Spanish, all of them feminine apparently due to the influence of memoria or maybe tarjeta: una memoria, una (memoria/tarjeta) USB /weseˈbe/, una flash /flaʃ/ [flaʃ], una memory /ˈmemoɾi/. The word for "laptop" is feminine due to the influence of computadora 'computer': una láptop. Every name given to a plate in a restaurant in particular has a strong association with the gender of the generic name for that food, so you get una Big Mac® /bigˈmak/, una Whopper® /ˈwopeɾ/ (influence of una hamburguesa), or una Meat Lovers® /mitˈlobeɾ(s)/ (influence of una pizza /"pi(t)sa/).

...So in the end it's a combination of knowledge of the original gender (if any), the ending of a word, and words related in the semantic field.

This creates quite a number of differences across dialects as you would expect, such as the word for "pajamas", which is el pijama /piˈxama/ in Spain but la piyama /piˈʝama/ in El Salvador. "Webcam" is el webcam /ˈwebkam/ in Puerto Rico but la webcam in El Salvador.

[Chuma]

So even from things like Sanskrit, you say? Seems odd that people in Europe would even know anything about gender in Sanskrit. But then again they would kind of have to know the word in order to import it, so I guess they might know the gender too.

In Swedish gender is largely determined by the ending of the word. So if we get a new -um word, it would probably be neuter, since most other -um words are. But the reason why they are all neuter to begin with could be because it's from Latin. That would be my guess, since most Swedish people these days are not very good at Latin.

There has been something of a debate in Sweden over how many genders we have. A few decades ago we would say that there were four genders. Now most linguists say that there are only two. Some people (well, Aszev) say that there are three. There are also five declensions - or six, according to some people - and they are strongly connected to the genders. The genders determine definite/indefinite forms, and the declension determines singular/plural. To my knowledge, there is no universal rule that says gender has to be associated with definiteness, so we could also refer to the gender/declension combinations as gender. I think that would yield 4-8 genders, depending on how many exceptions you accept.

So my point is, while most linguists are taking the pragmatic approach "definiteness inflection = gender", it seems there is actually good reason to include more genders, first because they are correlated with the declensions, and second because they are correlated with the gender in other languages. If for example a German speaker would learn Swedish, it might interest them to know that there is a correlation, if indeed there is, since there are a lot of cognates.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

So my point is, while most linguists are taking the pragmatic approach "definiteness inflection = gender"

It's not just that, it's agreement too. If you were to claim that stol and katt were of different genders because they decline differently in the plural (stolar and katter), you'd be at a loss explaining why they both take common gender agreement with adjectives and are both referred to with the pronoun den rather than det, and take the article en instead of ett.

[Chuma]

True, there is more to it than just the definiteness forms. There's definitely more difference between neuter and non-neuter than between any other potential genders. It seems that the four-gender system is to some extent historical, a tradition with not much basis in reality.

But there's no reason why genders all have to be different in every way possible. You could certainly say that they are different genders and still happen to be similar in some respects.

Also, just a thought: Could we perhaps describe the agreement of adjectives as agreeing with the form rather than the gender? After all, they all get the same agreement form in plural, regardless of gender. Don't know if that makes sense.

[hwhatting]

So my point is, while most linguists are taking the pragmatic approach "definiteness inflection = gender"

It's not just that, it's agreement too. If you were to claim that stol and katt were of different genders because they decline differently in the plural (stolar and katter), you'd be at a loss explaining why they both take common gender agreement with adjectives and are both referred to with the pronoun den rather than det, and take the article en instead of ett.

Generally, gender is defined by agreement; in European IE languagues the agreement is normally with pronouns and adjectives. So you can have gender even if all your nouns inflect the same way. On the other hand, different sets of endings that don't correspond to differences in agreement are not gender, but inflection classes.

Also, just a thought: Could we perhaps describe the agreement of adjectives as agreeing with the form rather than the gender? After all, they all get the same agreement form in plural, regardless of gender. Don't know if that makes sense.

In general, genders are defined by the maximum of different agreements, even if these differences are collapsed in some categories. E.g., many languages collapse gender distinctions in the plural; in German, the three genders are distinguished in the singular, but not in the plural, so German has three genders, which aren't distinguished in the plural. Russian distinguishes four genders with agreement in the singular (male animate/ personal, male non-animate/personal, female, and neuter) and two in the plural (animate/personal vs. non-animate/personal), but with the quirk that the in the plural the animate/personal vs. non-animate/personal distinction also extends to female nouns. So actually, Russian has five genders:
1) male animate/ personal, 2) male non-animate/personal, 3) female animate/ personal, 4) female non-animate/personal and 5) neuter. In many text books, you'll read that Russian has "three genders plus an animacy distinction"; this is just sloppy defining plus a remnant from classical grammar, where only three genders were known.
If it makes things easier for you, mentally substitute "agreement class" every time you hear or say "gender".

[Chuma]

That's a reasonable definition. I think I've seen it before, too. Altho technically we should then (in German, Swedish etc.) consider plural to be a gender, as indeed they often do in Bantu languages. Some would also consider the pronoun agreement in English (he/she) to be gender, so it's all a little bit vague.

Anyway, that's all a matter of terminology. As I said, it might be useful for a German learning Swedish to know that there is a connection between the genders, but it would also be fine to let them know that German masculine words are often second declension, etc. The important part is whether there really is such a connection. It seems to me like there is, but I don't know how reliable it is. My German teachers never mentioned it. I would suspect that the change to two-gender system is also partially because we now speak less German and more English.

[hwhatting]

That's a reasonable definition. I think I've seen it before, too. Altho technically we should then (in German, Swedish etc.) consider plural to be a gender, as indeed they often do in Bantu languages. Some would also consider the pronoun agreement in English (he/she) to be gender, so it's all a little bit vague.

I can't talk about Bantu (that's merijn's specialty ), but in general, plural is not a gender. Although like gender it triggers agreement, number, like case, is an inflection category of nouns, which is only mirrored in the agreement system (in those languages that have that kind of agreement, obviously). Gender is different in that a noun isn't inflected for gender - you can say the singular of Vater "father" is Vater, the plural Väter, the genitive (sg.) is Vaters, etc., but you cannot form the *female of Vater*1). So, gender is an agreement category where nouns are sorted into one of several categories that trigger agreement, but which they aren't themselves inflected for.
As for English, I'd say it has gender, even if it's mostly easily predictable.
*1) Of, course, you can say that there's a female equivalent to Vater (Mutter "mother"), but that's a different noun. The same is true about motion - it's a derivational process, not an inflectional process.

(Edited wording)

[linguoboy]

That's a reasonable definition. I think I've seen it before, too. Altho technically we should then (in German, Swedish etc.) consider plural to be a gender, as indeed they often do in Bantu languages.

So then you have four genders in German, only one of which affects verbal agreement? That strikes me as very odd. Where else do you see a pattern like that?

Some would also consider the pronoun agreement in English (he/she) to be gender, so it's all a little bit vague.

How is it "vague"? Pronoun agreement is a kind of agreement as surely as, say, adjective agreement is.

[Chuma]

That's a reasonable definition. I think I've seen it before, too. Altho technically we should then (in German, Swedish etc.) consider plural to be a gender, as indeed they often do in Bantu languages.

So then you have four genders in German, only one of which affects verbal agreement? That strikes me as very odd. Where else do you see a pattern like that?

Well, there's the Swedish system, where only one of the four genders affects pronoun agreement...
No, seriously; I'm not saying we should actually call plural a gender, but logically, surely we could have several genders/categories which affect one kind of agreement, but only some of them affect another? I don't have any examples, but it doesn't sound implausible to me.

Some would also consider the pronoun agreement in English (he/she) to be gender, so it's all a little bit vague.

How is it "vague"? Pronoun agreement is a kind of agreement as surely as, say, adjective agreement is.

I mean, by that definition English has genders, but many people wouldn't count English as having gender; thus "gender" is vague, ambiguous.

Also, if we use that definition, Swedish has four genders after all, since we have "he" and "she" as well. But only one of them affects verbal agreement, arguably.

[hwhatting]

Also, if we use that definition, Swedish has four genders after all, since we have "he" and "she" as well. But only one of them affects verbal agreement, arguably.

I tried to figure the Swedish gender system out from the Swedish Grammar page on wikipedia. Three questions:
1) How do the pronouns work? Can han and hon replace all instances of den (so that han and hon are only special cases of den) or are they`re common words for which you can use only den, not han or hon?
2) Can han and hon also stand in for neuter words?
3) Where does gender affect verbal agreement?

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Also, if we use that definition, Swedish has four genders after all, since we have "he" and "she" as well. But only one of them affects verbal agreement, arguably.

I tried to figure the Swedish gender system out from the Swedish Grammar page on wikipedia. Three questions:
1) How do the pronouns work? Can han and hon replace all instances of den (so that han and hon are only special cases of den) or are they`re common words for which you can use only den, not han or hon?
2) Can han and hon also stand in for neuter words?
3) Where does gender affect verbal agreement?

1) Han and hon work like he and she in English: they can only refer to humans or animals. Any other words are referred to by den or det depending on gender.
2) No. Except in the rare cases where you have a neuter noun denoting a person, such as statsråd 'member of parliament', where using the grammatically appropriate neuter det would sound very stilted.
3) Swedish has no verbal agreement, so I take it that must have been a typo for adjectival agreement.

[hwhatting]

Also, if we use that definition, Swedish has four genders after all, since we have "he" and "she" as well. But only one of them affects verbal agreement, arguably.

I tried to figure the Swedish gender system out from the Swedish Grammar page on wikipedia. Three questions:
1) How do the pronouns work? Can han and hon replace all instances of den (so that han and hon are only special cases of den) or are they`re common words for which you can use only den, not han or hon?
2) Can han and hon also stand in for neuter words?
3) Where does gender affect verbal agreement?

1) Han and hon work like he and she in English: they can only refer to humans or animals. Any other words are referred to by den or det depending on gender.
2) No. Except in the rare cases where you have a neuter noun denoting a person, such as statsråd 'member of parliament', where using the grammatically appropriate neuter det would sound very stilted.
3) Swedish has no verbal agreement, so I take it that must have been a typo for adjectival agreement.

Thanks! So this looks like Swedish has at minimum four genders (common-male, common-female, common non-male/female, and neuter), if one doesn't count, things like han / hon for neuter nouns, but sees them as the result of conflicting triggering rules, or six genders (common-male, common-female, common non-male/female, neuter-male, neuter-female, neuter non-male/female), with neuter-male & neuter-female forming a very small class.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Thanks! So this looks like Swedish has at minimum four genders (common-male, common-female, common non-male/female, and neuter), if one doesn't count, things like han / hon for neuter nouns, but sees them as the result of conflicting triggering rules, or six genders (common-male, common-female, common non-male/female, neuter-male, neuter-female, neuter non-male/female), with neuter-male & neuter-female forming a very small class.

Such an analysis would imply English has three genders.

I prefer to see it as two genders with a natural sex-based pronoun distinction on top for animate referents. As evidenced by the fact that even neuter nouns can be replaced by han or hon if the semantics are right, the natural sex distinction is not a subclass of the common gender. Animals can be referred to by han/hon, as is usual for pets for example, or den/det (according to grammatical gender) if your personal connection to it is weak (much like in English). Adding to that the fact that all agreement and declension is determined by the common/neuter distinction and ignoring male/female, it seems bloated to posit your six-way gender mess when two will do.

[Thry]

/flaʃ/ [flaʃ].

lol you guys are too finos.

/flas/ [flah] IMD.
flashcard /flas.ka4d/ ['flah.ka4]

[Magb]

Don't some Swedes* exhibit masculine/feminine agreement in adjectives, e.g. store = m., stora = f./n., or is that mostly/entirely gone by now?

* Not counting the Swedes who clearly distinguish masculine/feminine in other ways, that is.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

Don't some Swedes* exhibit masculine/feminine agreement in adjectives, e.g. store = m., stora = f./n., or is that mostly/entirely gone by now?

* Not counting the Swedes who clearly distinguish masculine/feminine in other ways, that is.

I think those who do it consistently are rare and would be very likely to exhibit other unusual traces of the three gender system as well. But that's right that some people (in certain regiolects perhaps) may have at least vestiges of the -e/-a distinction in adjectives, most likely occurring primarily with the most common adjectives and certain saliently male nouns.

[Izambri]

Spanish works in the same way as Catalan, except that there's also influence from words in the semantic field (c'mon, Catalan surely has some examples of this...).

I already mentioned that.

[Gulliver]

That's a reasonable definition. I think I've seen it before, too. Altho technically we should then (in German, Swedish etc.) consider plural to be a gender, as indeed they often do in Bantu languages.

So then you have four genders in German, only one of which affects verbal agreement?

Or there are four genders, three of which affect verbal agreement in identical ways, similar to how Sie gehen, sie gehen and wir gehen are conjugated identically.