Language names gender
For the Wiktionary, it is useful to have a list of the gender of language names. See also the Genders of languages.
Language names gender
[edit]- Arabic (ar) : always feminine (although in many colloquials they become masculine)
- Breton (br) : always masculine
- Dutch (nl) : always neuter
- French (fr) : always masculine
- German (de) : always neuter
- Gujarati (gu) : always feminine
- Hindi (hi) : always feminine
- Italian (it) : always masculine
- Latin (la), normally adjectives. (May stand alone in feminine, with lingua "tongue" understood, or sometimes in masculine, with sermo "speech" understood, though it seems to be more usual for these words to be supplied. There is a context where they may be used as neuter [1] nouns (or possibly masculine, according to Iustinus' Translators guide) on their own; that is, with verbs of translation: librum e Graeco in Latinum convertere "to translate a book out of Greek into Latin".)
- Norwegian: Usually irrelevant as there are few constructions where the gender of a language become visible (audible). E.g. "Jeg snakker norsk" - "I speak Norwegian"; "Hvordan sier/skriver du dette på norsk?" - "How do you say/write this in Norwegian?". As in English there is nothing in the grammatical structure (such as articles) that "reveal" the gender of the language. Languages are, however, always gramatically male: norsk, norsken, engelsk, engelsken, etc.
- Spanish: always masculine
- Polish (pl) : usually adjectives, used with the Polish word język (language/tongue) first or stand alone. Since the word język is masculine, the same are particular adjectives. Less common way: a dedicated noun for a language. It includes shorter forms for some languages like greka (Greek) or łacina (Latin) which are feminine, or nouns with suffixes -szczyzna (like polszczyzna) which are feminine as well.
- Portuguese (pt) : always masculine
- Urdu: always feminine