For Polish speakers the idea of using an article before nouns is very difficult to understand. Although it's only a few letters, it causes huge problems in learning foreing languages. That's because in Polish we don't have such a structure. There are two main situations that are not easy to comprehend. Firstly, the choice between definite and indefinite article (and no article) which is not always clear. Secondly, and most importantly concernig the topic I'm writing about, the choice between masculine and feminine gender (obviously, not in the case of English). There are a lot of situations when the grammatical gender of a word is different in different languages. And, as you can easily guess, it does influence the way we think about the world around us.
Let's see an example.
In Spanish the equivalent of the word 'bridge' is masculine.
In German, it's feminine.
Spanish speakers who were supposed to describe a bridge were more likely to use words like "strong" or "long" (stereotypiclally masculine words) and German speakers said that it was "beautiful" or "elegant" (stereotypiclally feminine words).
In such situations, the grammatical gender doesn't depend on us. It has been settled a long time ago and we are not allowed to change it, we need to follow the rules. But there are some cases (widely discussed nowadays) where we can change or add something - I think about the names of professions and job titles. There is a huge amount of words that have or used to have for a long time only one form (ex. strażak [m.] (fire fighter), sędzia [m.] (judge), przedszkolanka [f.] (kindergartner)). That's because in the past (sometimes still) these professions were available only for representatives of a certain sex (fire fighter - stereotypically a man, kindergartner - stereotypically a woman). In some languages, because of clear rules of derivation and existance of articles (in this case, they can really help), it is not a big problem. In French for example, un médecin [m.] (doctor) became une médecin [f.] and the problem was solved. But in Polish the feminine versions sound often very unnatural or even offensive, for example the word sędzina [f.] (the femimine version of the word sędzia [m.] which means 'judge') that associates negatively and doesn't appeal to some women who follow this porfession.
If there's such a big problem with the feminine versions of profession names, why can't we just accept the masculine ones and treat them as general terms? And here we go back to the topic. The way that we use our language may help us to fight against discrimination and help to reach gender equality in the real world. That's why the choice between a feminine noun who sounds a bit weird and the lack od feminine version is not so easy.
Let's see an example.
In Spanish the equivalent of the word 'bridge' is masculine.
In German, it's feminine.
Spanish speakers who were supposed to describe a bridge were more likely to use words like "strong" or "long" (stereotypiclally masculine words) and German speakers said that it was "beautiful" or "elegant" (stereotypiclally feminine words).
In such situations, the grammatical gender doesn't depend on us. It has been settled a long time ago and we are not allowed to change it, we need to follow the rules. But there are some cases (widely discussed nowadays) where we can change or add something - I think about the names of professions and job titles. There is a huge amount of words that have or used to have for a long time only one form (ex. strażak [m.] (fire fighter), sędzia [m.] (judge), przedszkolanka [f.] (kindergartner)). That's because in the past (sometimes still) these professions were available only for representatives of a certain sex (fire fighter - stereotypically a man, kindergartner - stereotypically a woman). In some languages, because of clear rules of derivation and existance of articles (in this case, they can really help), it is not a big problem. In French for example, un médecin [m.] (doctor) became une médecin [f.] and the problem was solved. But in Polish the feminine versions sound often very unnatural or even offensive, for example the word sędzina [f.] (the femimine version of the word sędzia [m.] which means 'judge') that associates negatively and doesn't appeal to some women who follow this porfession.
If there's such a big problem with the feminine versions of profession names, why can't we just accept the masculine ones and treat them as general terms? And here we go back to the topic. The way that we use our language may help us to fight against discrimination and help to reach gender equality in the real world. That's why the choice between a feminine noun who sounds a bit weird and the lack od feminine version is not so easy.
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