language and gender

[lobolance]

Two of my favorite topics (one by love, the other by necessity), discussed in a fascinating article about how language does indeed affet how we think about things.

HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? [6.12.09]
By Lera Boroditsky

I think I snagged this originally from jaylake.

of particular note: "Does treating chairs as masculine and beds as feminine in the grammar make Russian speakers think of chairs as being more like men and beds as more like women in some way? It turns out that it does. In one study, we asked German and Spanish speakers to describe objects having opposite gender assignment in those two languages. The descriptions they gave differed in a way predicted by grammatical gender. For example, when asked to describe a "key" — a word that is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish — the German speakers were more likely to use words like "hard," "heavy," "jagged," "metal," "serrated," and "useful," whereas Spanish speakers were more likely to say "golden," "intricate," "little," "lovely," "shiny," and "tiny." To describe a "bridge," which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish, the German speakers said "beautiful," "elegant," "fragile," "peaceful," "pretty," and "slender," and the Spanish speakers said "big," "dangerous," "long," "strong," "sturdy," and "towering." This was true even though all testing was done in English, a language without grammatical gender. "

Though the whole thing is fascinating (if you're a language freak), and linguistic genders are just one tasty bit.

Comments

[dodgingwndshlds.livejournal.com]

Linguistically, this is interesting, but I wonder about the differences in cultural meanings. Do the gender roles of German folks engender (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun) words like "hard," "heavy," "useful," etc with masculine traits themselves? I know American and presumably British culture do, but what about German.. Plus, Spanish is spoken in 23 different countries with different cultures and social and gender norms.

I think the results of this study show that these two languages show differences in gendered nouns and how that relates to the view of gender in American (and possibly British) culture.. But native German and Spanish speakers aren't normally Americans. Do we know for sure that they hold the same gender views we do? For all we know, "hard," "heavy," and "useful" maybe attributes of women in German culture.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

interesting.

you do know about "ta," right? Mandarin third person singular isn't male or female, it's neither. The male-or-female of the "ta" is built out of the context of the sentence. This was explained to me by a Mandarin speaker after I asked why many Mandarin speakers in English have a perfect 50% match rate for sentences like, "When my husband comes here, I will ask her to do bla bla bla."

It is interesting watching Mandarin speakers in English building their sense of "him" and "her" when their other language doesn't include it in that way. I find it interesting as an example of how changing language can make a person have to imagine things they previously couldn't imagine. Powerful magic, that.