Death - The first thing you can think of...

Question

Hi people, for an university assignment I have to compare languages. I've just read an article about how languages, especially our motherlanguage, effects the way we're thinking. It's better if I give you a little part of the essay as an example. So to say: while german speakers tend to paint death as a man, russian speakers tend to paint it as a woman because in german death is "der Tod" so it's masculine, in russian it's "smerti" so feminine. But this is just a research. Not a proof. Now my question is to native spanish speakers or if you're mother language is a gender based language, do you think death is a woman or a man? The very first thing you can think of. This is not something only about death, also while learning any other language. Do you find it strange when you learn a new word which has a different gender than the word in your mothertongue?

For example:

das haus (neutral)- la casa (f)

twarz(f)- das gesicht(nt)- la cara(f).

der Nagel(m)- La uña(f)

• Welcome to the forum. Remember, proper punctuation is required on this site. Thank You! - Don_José Jan 20, 2011
• where did I make a mistake? - ekimgkc Jan 20, 2011
• The first letter of your paragraph and the title should be capitalized. Small thing - Leatha Jan 20, 2011

Answer 1

La muerte, un hombre con una guadaña (the word is feminine, but the image isn't )

• also in my native language, the word for death is feminine (smrt) but we have many fairytales etc. where he looks similar to this picture:) - Foxie Jan 20, 2011

Answer 2

I speak both English and French fluently. Death = la mort in French, feminine (cf la muerte in Spanish). I agree with Heidita: I can see a man with a scythe in my mind's eye. In this particular case, I guess the gender (feminine in Spanish and French) does not influence people such as Heidita or myself because of so many graphic representations showing Death as a man. But this is an exception of course, so that Death may not be such a good example to prove or refute this kind of theory ("So to say: while german speakers tend to paint death as a man, russian speakers tend to paint it as a woman because in german death is "der Tod" so it's masculine, in russian it's "smerti" so feminine").

Perhaps you should think of other words that do not convey with them such iconography.

Apart from that, and to answer your question: no, I don't find it strange when learning a new language to discover that substantives have other genders than those in French. As a matter of fact, I don't think about it at all, I just memorize the said substantive with its article (with its gender), and all is well. There is no reason for "la chaise" (chair) to be feminine in French and masculine (der Stuhl) in German for example, apart from etymology of course. I mean no one in their right mind would think that "chair" can be masculine or feminine as such, these are just grammatical genders.

• Exactly. This persistent confusion of grammatical gender with sex is only a problem for people whos native language does not have grammatical gender. - samdie Jan 20, 2011
• my native language doesn't have article or gender but that was never a problem for me. It's just that when someone says teacher first person I can think of is a woman while my teachers were mostly women. It's kind of an habit, not that we're confused. - ekimgkc Jan 20, 2011

Answer 3

As an English speaker I think of death as male. Even though English doesn't identify nouns as male or female, the default gender in most cases is male. This has started to change a bit, but not a lot.

• me too - galsally Jan 20, 2011
• me too:) - ekimgkc Jan 20, 2011
• I too (a correction, not an agreement). - samdie Jan 20, 2011

Answer 4

La muerte. Female, in México. And she is not scary at all in our tradition.

Answer 5

I also think of death as a man. Being an english speaker I have not known it a different way. Sometimes it is depicted as a woman in media but usually thought of as masculine.

Answer 6

I like to think of Death as Brad Pitt as in "Meet Joe Black." Not very intimidating and súper guapo!

Answer 7

This is a very interesting topic. In my native language which is Chinese, there is no male and female different for nouns. Be honest, I never think about this question in my native language because we don't need to.

For example, dog (el perro which is a muscular noun in Spanish), but in Chinese, dog is dog. People would say different kinds of dog, which gender of the dog, but never say "dog" - this word is male or female. This example is for the things with life.

If the thing without life, there is even nothing to do with the gender.

I understand what leatha said above, but in my language, that only happens when we talk about a person whom we don't know if he or she. We usually just use "he" to call this person only in writing because "he" and "she" have some pronunciation, but similar writing in order to separate if this person is male or female. For other things, we even don't consider the question about male or female.

Marco

• The grammar of ones native language can cause major distortions in the way that the world is perceived. - samdie Jan 20, 2011

Answer 8

I suppose that being fluent in English an having lived in England most of my life would give me some undrstanding and insight into the language I speak. However my mother tongue is Spanish having been born in Peru where the official langauge is Spanish

The English language has many words that would appear to have a gender bias within it, like, for example: mankind, chairman, and Master craftsman. However these words were originally intended to have a generic meaning in their original use and context.

Human beings have probably always attempted to devise a way of using language or pictures to symbolise and / or represent ideas in their culture, and death being an experience common to man and therefore crossing cultural lifestyles is going to be represented through words, symbols or even both.. It seems therefore irrelevant whether those forms are depicted as being masculine or feminine, because:

1 it (the form) varies considerably from one language and culture to another.

2 It was originally intended as a means of (or a tool for ) communicating an idea through language not a way to assert male or female superiority within a culture.

3 Until the rise of feminism and political correctness no-one was taking personal offence at the way langauge was being used.

It is interesting that words in Spanish have masculine and feminine forms which differ according to whether the speaker is male or female eg: encantado de conocerte =pleased to meet you (for a male speaker) or encantada de conocerte if you are a woman

wheras they do not have these forms in English

House in English is neutral whereas la casa meaning house in Spanish is feminine as it is in french la maison.

Again in English Death is neutral having no gender wheras it is feminine: in Spanish: la muerte and also feminine in french: la mort

Please forgive me for posting this if you only wanted to hear from natives living in their native countries

• not at all. that was helpful, thanks. - ekimgkc Jan 20, 2011
• You are most welcome thank you for accepting my response :) - FELIZ77 Jan 21, 2011

Answer 9

cool