2007-02-28 07:23:36 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
Kivunjo is a contender. Here is an excerpt from a piece by Sylvan Zaft.
Swahili is a relatively simple language. It is phonetic. It does not have irregular verbs. However, nouns are distributed throughout six genders. (The word “gender” simply means a certain grammatical class of a noun. In grammar it can but does not have to refer to sex. It can refer to dangerous things or flat things or animals or any other kinds of thing.) Swahili is not the champion language in regard to the number of genders. The Kivunjo language of Tanzania which, like Swahili, belongs to the Bantu family of languages, has sixteen genders.
End of excerpt. I included the part on Swahili for comparative purposes.
2007-02-28 10:43:27 · answer #1 · answered by Jagg 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are only three genders in most world languages: masculine feminine and neuter. Slavic languages have morphological markers for each gender, while most west European laguages make the difference through the articles or pronouns. It is true that some languages differ animate nuns from inaninate ones, but that is not gender.
2007-02-28 09:28:59 · answer #2 · answered by zmayche 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Ok, so maybe I'm an idiot, but aren't there only two genders no matter what the language? Male and female?
2007-02-28 07:33:19 · answer #3 · answered by Steph 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
%. the only that pastimes you the main in my opinion. yet evaluate that German is a little extra troublesome than French or Spanish, because of the totally-inflected grammar, and that Hungarian is lots extra troublesome than French, Spanish or German, because it fairly is not an Indo-ecu language. And that French and Spanish are the only international languages on that checklist, spoken on especially much each and every continent.
2016-10-16 23:09:39 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Even English, it could be argued, has four: masculine, feminine, neuter, and indeterminate (he, she, it, and they in the 3rd person singular).
Polish makes distinctions between animate and inanimate, personal and non-personal in the masculine, for a total of five effective genders.
2007-02-28 09:00:03 · answer #5 · answered by Doc Occam 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i know only languages with three genders, i believe there are no more genders: masculine, feminine and neutral: Russian, German
2007-02-28 07:48:28 · answer #6 · answered by snowdrop 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋