For example you're watching TV, and say "this is funny." Do you have to have a noun in mind (movie [female], or program [male] (as example)), or can you describe things generically with male adjectives, as long as the noun isn't mentioned by name?
I'll start with English: there's no wiggle room. "He" strictly refers to "man" or "boy" and objects/females NEVER get this pronoun.
this is wonderful news!!!
Are you learning Venezuelan Spanish specifically? That’s my native dialect- in an informal conversation, just refer to any object or situation as una vaina (literally a scabbard, but used to refer to any object) and you’ll also be fine.
yes, Venezuelan specifically lol! My in-laws are all Venezuelan, that's why. I have a question for you. why does everyone say 'entendei?' instead of the typical 'entiendes?' I've never seen that variant on the internet but everyone here says it
Your in-laws are probably from El Zulia, the region that contains the city of Maracaibo or maybe a nearby part of the Andean state Trujillo. Venezuelans refer to these folks generally as maracuchos (strictly speaking, just people from Maracaibo but often used broadly for Zulianos).
They’re voseantes, that is, they use the pronoun vos instead of tú for second person singular. Plenty of regions in Hispanic America are voseante; Argentina is probably the most well known.
However, the conjugation for vos varies from country to country. Venezuelan voseo is the most conservative and the verb endings are the same as European vosotros, -áis, -éis, and -ís for the present indicative.
Beside the great comment from the other user about this, I wanted to mention that "entendei?" it's just a shortened "entendeis?" and it's its meaning is very similar to "you know what I mean?" in English.
That sounds so dirty, but I don't know if it's just because I know what scabbard is in Latin.
Yeah, it’s the same word. Also, vanilla in English is from Spanish vainilla, a diminutive of vaina.
I'm Brazilian and this "masculine is the default" gets so ingrained in our brains that I have a hard time avoiding it in languages I shouldn't do that lol
This just explained so much to me. One of my Mexican friends who likes to occasionally speak English with me will use the masculine for literally everything, even occasionally his own wife 😅. I always thought it was a quirk but never considered why he did it.
It's weird, but when you grow up with everything being referred to as masculine by default it's hard to shake it off. I'm happy to help lol
Conversely, many of my friends and family that come from languages with no gendered pronouns or inflection (Chinese, Korean, etc.) make the mistake of freely swapping "he" and "she" around lol
Tem certeza que masculino é o padrão? "Essa é boa!"
In Portuguese "this is funny" could be "isto é engraçado" ou "esta é engraçada". And it depends on the gender of the mentioned it.
More examples:
Someone trips and falls and you say "Isto é engraçado. Hahahaha."
You are reading a list of jokes, most of them are bad. One of them is good. "Esta é engraçada."
I don't know if what I wrote is actually helpful. Isso não é engraçado.
Since you’re learning Spanish (Holi Venezuela), I’ll talk about Spanish. In Spanish, masculine pronouns function as both the masculine and neutral depending on context.
Here’s an example from the song Yo quiero ser tu vampiro by Fran Laoren (idk why I chose this lol; it’s just what came to mind):
“Dicen por ahí que la vida es un regalo. Y eso es una gran mentira, pero vamos a ignorarlo.”
Even though mentira is feminine, we use eso because life being a gift is that which is a lie. It’s just a neutral idea not attached to either grammatical gender, so we use the neutral eso and lo. If the direct object pronoun had been la (ignorarla), he’d be saying “we are going to ignore [the lie]” rather than “we are going to ignore [the idea that life being a gift is a lie].”
Hope that helps!
muchas gracias por tu respuesta. este tipo Fran es demasiado gracioso y diferente JAJA. quiero explorar cantantes más allá de lo típico que se escucha aquí en eeuu (estoy aceptando recomendaciones!)
Mis favs ahora mismo: - luna ki - rakky ripper - nevo angel - new boix
En España es muy popular este estilo hiperpop/Y2K, al menos entre los jóvenes jej
In Italian, you have to use the right gender. For example, i was saying that I wanted this dish at a restaurant. I had to use the right gender with the word 'this' even though I wasn't saying the name of the dish.
Yeppp! Honestly I love this about italian
damn. Italian is next level
It's useful though. In a situation where you might be referring to a masculine or feminine word, the gender of the adjective alone can help you pinpoint what you're talking about by reducing all possible options by 50%.
It reduces misunderstandings.
I speak 4 gendered languages, so maybe my answer is interesting. I'm gonna try with the following example: I'm watching television and I find the film to be very good, so I want to say to a friend: "It's very good" (the film)
🇪🇸 Spanish: "Es muy buena" (la película) = gendered, feminine
🇦🇩 Catalan: "És molt bona" (la pel·licula) = gendered, feminine
🇵🇹 Portuguese: "É muito bom" (o filme) = gendered, masculine
🇫🇷 French: "Il est très bon" (le film) = gendered, masculine.
The only difference is the compulsory use of articles in French. The other three languages share the feature of showing the gender of the missing subject.
PS: I know some of the sentences may sound weird for a local. I just wanted to use the same words to make the example useful.
I would just say « c’est bien comme film ». No?
Tout à fait, je voulais juste calquer la structure des phrases antérieures 😅
Ahh oui d’accord. Est-ce qu’il y a un équivalent pour « c’est » en ces langues, en Español par exemple ?
En espagnol on a pas besoin d'un sujet dans nos phrases s'il est déjà "présent" dans le contexte.
C'est mon anniversaire = Es mi cumpleaños (littéralement: est mon anniversaire)
C'est génial! = ¡Qué guay! (littéralement: quoi cool)
C'est fini = Se acabó (littéralement: s'est fini)
Oh je vois, merci beaucoup !
In Russian we use adverbs/shortened neuter adjectives (not sure about the grammatical term here). E.g. about a dish, regardless of gender: Ну и как? (How was it?) - Было вкусно (It was delicious - neuter). But even when the noun is explicitly said, it is still applicable: Как тебе фильм? (What did you think about that movie?) - Было интересно / Да, интересный фильм (It was interesting - neuter / Yes, it was an interesting one - masculine).
French uses the masculine form by default. E.g. again about a dish: C'était comment? - C'était bon. But if you mention what dish it was, then it is apparent which gender needs to be used: Elle était comment la tarte? - Elle était bonne. Interestingly, for groups of people the masculine form is also default unless the group is entirely female so if you talk about any group of people where you don't know whom it consists of, you use the masculine pronoun.
In German we can say "das" which is "this" or "es" which is "it" and refers to stuff without gender. It's mostly when talking about a specific thing, so a noun is mentioned.
"das" doesn't refer to things without gender. It refers to neuter nouns, it's a third grammatical gender.
They mean without specifying a gender.
We do in İtalian, yes.
In Spanish, as you probably know already, you can always point at something and refer to it as eso or esto or aquello. Those pronouns are neuter, but they behave grammatically as masculine (as there is no neuter gender in Spanish, the masculine is the default or "unmarked" form to use when you don't know what gender something is).
If the object in question is clearly identified, even if not mentioned, you do have to use the right gender. But there's a lot of room for particular situations there.
[French]
It highly depends! This is too broad to give a specific answer.
We have a neutral way of saying it as well.
"C'est marrant" means it's funny. No gender involved. If the gender is unknown, you'd use masculine. If the gender is known, you have to use the right gender.
Le film est marrant -> il est marrant
La pièce de théâtre est marrante -> elle est marrante
Random cat you see on the street, you don't know if it's a male or female cat, you say "il est marrant" because "chat" is by default male.
If a cat is a known female cat, you can say "elle est marrante"
Random goose -> elle est marrante, because "oie" is female.
I hope this helps because it's not so intuitive at all 😅
There is wiggle room when it comes to animals and babies which can be it, they or he/she also ships and stuff
And french can use il/elle without the noun yeah
In Norwegian some people do and some do not, for example «It is little» is «den er liten» if subject is masculine and «den er lita» if feminine. But many people say «den er liten» even when the subject is feminine too, it is considered more formal.
So basicly the adjectives tell us the gender of the subject when the subject itself is not mentioned
in portuguese (and as well in romance languages) it happens "a cadeira está velha, por isso ela quebrou" could be replaced to "ela está velha, por isso quebrou" (on the second part the pronoun is implied to not make it too repetitive). If it's not something clear it's the masculine gender (the neutral gender in latin mostly changed to masculine)
On your example you can use an adjective that don't get changed (like "legal") or use the masculine because it has also the "neutral gender"
In Serbian, yes, because the demonstrative pronoun “this” is neutral gender, so the adjective “funny” has to accord with it. You cannot describe things generically, because 3rd person personal and all demonstrative and relative pronouns just like all nouns have a gender. Masculine is not the default.
At least in French you can normally use "C'est marrant" (that's funny) which is grammatically masculine but is used for vaguely specifying something.
However I feel there are instances in which you implicitly have a noun in mind in which case you need the correct gender. For example, "Oh elle est bonne, celle-là" is a vague statement to say something is funny, and the noun being implicitly referenced is something like a story (cette histoire-là) which is feminine.
When I lived in France one of my first major confusions was ordering a soda at a fast food restaurant. The seller would ask what I want and I would point and then hesitate, should I say "Celui-là" because Coca-cola is masculine or should I say "celle-là" because drink is feminine? (In practice one could just say "ça"... but my confusion was genuine)
In Serbian, we'd default to neutral gender if:
1) there are no signs to deduce on,
2) gender is irrelevant
3) talking abstractly
Your example is a very good one. We would say "smešno je" or "zabavno je". Both mean it's funny, it's entertaining. Last letters in the adjective define the gender.
And as soon as there are signs of grammatical gender, we would switch.
In Czech and German (and most other indo-european gendered languages), it is grammatically incorrect to use a pronoun not matching the gender of the noun it is referring to.
It would sound really unnatural and weird to use the wrong gendered pronoun for a noun. It would sound just as weird as saying "you am" or referring to a man as "it".
In Polish, there are three genders: feminine, masculine, and neuter. "On" (he) and "ona" (she) mostly refer to people. So if you don't name the thing you're talking about, you use "to" (this) and the neuter gender. For example, "This is funny" would be "To jest śmieszne/zabawne".
I was just thinking about it yesterday. I live in a country where my target language (Portuguese) is spoken, and I bought something in a pharmacy that I wanted to pay for by card. The pharmacist told me to tap the machine with my credit card, but I said "Oh no, it's old." Now, in Portuguese, the noun "card" is masculine, so I used the masculine form if the adjective "old". Note that in both Portuguese and my native tongue, Croatian, you don't have to specify a subject in your sentence, and the masculine form is the default (or, in Croatian, neuter if you have words like "this", "that"...). Which all got me thinking: if the the default gender is masculine/neuter, and you don't mention the subject, could you just use the masculine/neuter form of the adjective? So I imagined myself on the other side of the counter, and well, in Croatian, "card" is feminine and if someone said "Staro je" (lit. "Is old(neuter)"), or "Star je" (lit. "Is old(masc.)"), it would sound very weird, even though, again, the noun "card" is never explicitly mentioned and even though the default gender for objects is not feminine. It seems that we (native speakers of gendered languages) always have this immediate, subconscious knowledge about the gender of an object, that we recall and use (in the sense of using the correct grammatical form) even when it is not specified explicitly. We also make the assumption that the person we are speaking to has the same object/noun in mind, which obviously has to match in gender with the object/noun that we are imagining.
Another example, if someone shows you a song because they are hoping you might like it, in Croatian you could say something like "Dobra je" (lit. "Is good (feminine)"). Even if neither of you mentioned the word "pjesma" (a feminine noun meaning "song") at any point you would use the feminine form of the adjective "good", and defaulting to masculine or neuter forms would sound wrong.
Depends on the language, and if also depends on how many genders a language has. Some will use a masculine default, some will make you match the object every time, some have a neuter to fall back on.
Anyway, that’s not even true for English. Drag queens, plenty of lesbians, and boats would like to have a word with you.
That's what I learned we should do as a Dutch person, but I'm pretty sure no one really does. Sometimes if I'm 100% certain a word is grammatically female I'll refer to it as "she".
Some Dutch people have a tendency to refer to nouns as "her", even when they're not grammatically female words. It's called the "haar-ziekte" (her-illness).
So you'll sometimes here people say things like "A company blah blah blah. Her head-office then sent her this message: blah blah blah."
French has the neutral "cela/ceci/ça. C'est très drôle, it's very funny. C' is short for ça and cela/ceci are pretty much that/this. In this case drôle is the same whether the subject is masculine or feminine. But the masculine form acts as the neuter one when using adjectives that can change.
In Spanish I would generally keep the object’s gender in mind even when it isn’t being referred to by name, just like you’d do with a person. For example, you wouldn’t say “¿Esta cansada?” when referring to a man and you wouldn’t say “Es español.” when referring to a woman. Even in these shorter phrases where their specific name isn’t brought up, there is still a known gender that makes the sentence flow incorrectly if the rules aren’t adhered to.
You can always just say “esto es/esta” if you can’t remember the gender 😆 i’ve been speaking Spanish my whole life and sometimes I can’t remember some random words’ genders and most other people I know, even those who literally work as Spanish teachers, will have a moment on occasion where they mess up the grammatical gender of something random.
Swedish has common (which combines masculine and feminine) and neuter gender. If you're talking about things in a general sense, or if you're using dummy pronouns (which is common in Swedish), you always use neuter gender. If you're talking about a specific thing, you use the version of "this" or "it" that matches the thing's gender.
So "this is funny" would normally use neuter gender, unless you had just mentioned the thing in question, and it's a common gender thing.
In Breton it really depends on what you're doing. Demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those etc.) are gendered but sentences don't always have nouns or pronouns in them and verbs don't conjugate by gender. Breton does topicalization systematically and a common way to write something like "this is funny" would have the adjective in first position and then the verb. For example:
Fentus eo = That's funny or literally "funny is".
If you needed to specify between this one, that or one or that one over yonder you'd have to use a demonstrative pronoun and those are gendered.
However, there are times like in some dialects of English where something unspecified can have the "her" pronoun. The Breton phrase "deomp dezhi" translates almost literally to "let's get at her" or similarly to "let's get her done".
In lithuanian, we use a third gender that is only used when there is no noun.
Depends, but sometimes neutral is the way to go in Polish - like "to jest śmieszne" (it is funny).
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In Punjabi it depends on how big the thing is or whether the person knows your in-laws
what- ?
For a woman with some kind of connection to your extended family, you would use masculine plural forms of reference. For something like a car which is usually feminine, a masculine form of reference would imply a really big car. For something like a mango which is unusually masculine, you would refer to it as feminine if it was really small
There's almost always an object, because that's how sentences work?
To use your example: You: "This is funny." Me: "What is?" You, presumably: "this show."
So "this" would agree with "show."
In Romance languages, generally, the masculine is the default when you don’t have a specific noun in mind.
However, you always have synonyms you can use that have different genders.