[Multilingual Monday] Grammatical Gender

[aadroma]

Today the topic is grammatical gender. If you've ever studied a language like German, Russian, or Spanish, you know about grammatical gender. While, in English, we think of everything as "it" except for living beings (which then become "he" or "she"), in several languages like Spanish your only choices are é and ella, or "he" and "she". This

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[gorkabear]

For Spanish speakers, not matching the gender is the key to know that a person is a foreign speaker. It's also a lot of fun, because you find women speaking in masculine and men speaking in feminine. I mean, gheyz speak in feminine, so it's more "fun". German gheyz also do that (At least I read it in Ralf König's comics)

"Estoy loca"
"Estoy atacada"

(Yes, I have said that a few times)

Once this said, let me tell you the only trouble Spaniards have with gender. It's when we switch the article

The average Spaniard basically thinks "oh, if it's 'el', it's masculine". Since Spanish hates apostrophes, the rule says that when a feminine word starts with a tonic A, instead of using LA you use EL. El agua, el hacha, el águila (but we say la acción, eh?)

So quite a number of idiot people say "estos aguas" or "estos águilas" or "este hachas" (I heard this today on the radio). Well, we learn in school that those words are feminine. So the correct thing is "estas aguas", "estas águilas" or "esta hacha".

Spanish has also this thing of having a few words which admit both genders. Like "azúcar" (color used to be one of those, too).

Another stupid thing in Spanish, which is completely in fashion, is using @ to include both genders. Like saying "Si alguien está interesad@..." That's imbecility disguised in politically correct language because the RAE and Mr. Lázaro Carreter say that masculine is inclusive! (We say "los padres" and not "mi padre y mi madre", por el Glamour de Dior!)

Then, in Catalan, the language is again the victim of Spanish domination. Those words which gender differs from Spanish get the Spanish gender instead of Catalan. Examples "L'anàlisi certera" (vs. "El análisis certero")

Last, but not least, since we're gay men and aware of gender, there's a whole huge debate on the grammar gender/sex issue. Because, how do you call an intersexual person?