Japanese nouns do not have gender like nouns in German, Latin, etc.,
but there are lots of gender-specific ways of saying things. That is,
men and women are inclined to use different pronouns, sometimes
different verb forms and even in certain cases adjectival forms.
Japanese also registers both formality and politeness in virtually any
utterance. Women's speech tends to be more polite, although not
necessarily more formal.
Hope this helps,
Tom Hare
On May 10, 2005, at 3:22 PM, John Baker wrote:
> Hi.
>
> The "Drying Culms" thread stirred a question in me, or
> a series of questions.
>
> Does Japanese (the language) have grammatical gender?
> In German, Latin, French, etc. each noun has a
> grammatical gender (English does not use grammatical
> gender). Moon is masculine in German and feminine in
> French, Latin, etc. Sun is feminine in German but
> masculine in Latin, etc. And lest you think these
> grammatical gender assigments are reality based, woman
> & maiden are both neuter in German. Flower is neuter
> in Latin, masculine in Italian & feminine in French.
>
> If Japanese language uses grammatical gender, what is
> the gender of shakuhachi? Bamboo?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> John Baker
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Best regards,
Tom Hare
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Comparative Literature
Princeton, NJ 08544
thare@princeton.edu
(609)258-7202
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