I love the Polish way of naming everything we would refer to as 'it' in English as a he or a she....
Today I found out that my computer, well he broke himself. Damians arm, she was hurting him. Our router, well he was too fast for 'that little guy' (the modem). I remember when a bee was chasing Pawel, 'she' wouldn't leave him alone. It's the same with plants too. I really can't fathom how any of these things become sexed, but I'm glad they do, it never fails to make me smile.
Another hillarious anecdote about Polska!
ReplyDeleteLol. You know, we aren't the only ones to make those distinctions ;) French, for example, also "sex" things ;) For example, "un livre est interessant" ("a book is interesting") becomes "il est interessant" ("he is interesting") or "la montagne est tres belle" ("the mountain is very beautiful") becomes "elle est tres belle" ("she is very beautiful"). Italians do the same thing and I bet Spanish too (though I know nothing of Spanish, so I can be wrong about that). As far as I know (and again, I can be wrong about that, since I've been learning arabic just for like 6 months) in arabic the situation is similar, though they don't use the same word as for humans (hua or hiya is for man and woman, respectively), but they do have two distinc forms for things (hada for "male" things and hadihi for "female" ones). So, it's not that we're the only ones :P
ReplyDeleteregards,
Amy.
I know that of course many languages split nouns into genders but in English we don't use them so as much as a book in French might be an 'il' it would still translate to an 'it' in English because objects are all its. And I can't figure out the explanation for why an object is classified as a 'male' or a 'female' - any ideas? It makes me chuckle everytime :)
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't really know. In Polish usually things that ends with "a" are female, so, for example, "książka" and "góra" and "kobieta" are female while "kubek", "telefon" or "komputer" are male. Though there are exceptions to that rule (most notably, "mężczyzna", while ending with "a", is obviously male, as it means "a man" ;D). And it's good to remember that in Polish we have three genders: male, female and neutral (i.e. "dziecko" - "a child", or "drzewo" - "a tree" are neutral). And things get even more complicated in plural ;)
ReplyDeleteI remember when I was a kid and I was starting to learn English, I never could remember that every thing or plant or animal was "it" in English, I used "he" or "she" for everything :D Of course now it seems to me only natural but it took me some time to understand that.
It's quite interesting question. I wonder if my linguistics teachers will know why we classify things by gender like that and why there is no such thing in English :D I'll ask them after the exam session ;)
ciao,
Amy.
Thanks, I'd be interested to find an answer! I speak some Polish so I know how the genders work I just find it strange to hear it translated literally into English, to wszystko :-)
ReplyDeleteFor me, It really confuses me when I'm trying to follow a conversation and they introduce an inanimate object and refer it as he or she. Then I'm trying to work out who is 'broken' not 'what'.
ReplyDelete