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Croatian: 005 Do Croatians assign gender to objects?

10/6/2019

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Male tables and female houses?

Sometimes (always?) when I am learning Croatian, I think too much …..
 
In another post (All nouns have gender) I mused:

A philosophical thought: So far as I understand, Croatians don’t regard the object that we call a house as feminine, but its name, the noun kuća, is feminine. Someone might correct me?


The noun that is the name for “table” in Croatian, is stol – a masculine word. The question is: Do Croatians regard tables as masculine objects?

Intuitively, of course, it doesn’t seem sensible to think of a table as being masculine. Nor a house (kuća) as feminine.
 

Picture
                                       stol                                                                                   kuća

​
Ten seconds of reflection provided a convincing logical argument that gender is not assigned to objects - only to the nouns that we use as names of the objects.

Let's consider when two different nouns are used to name the same object – like stolica and stolac. Stolica is a feminine noun, while stolac is a masculine noun. Does the gender of a chair change, depending on what we call it? Feminine if we refer to it as stolica, and masculine if we call it stolac!? Hardly!

Is an armchair male if we call it a naslonjač, but female if we call it a fotelja? Hardly!


And then there is the guy who lives next door. He is a muškarac (man), which is a masculine noun, as you might expect. But he is also a person (osoba, feminine noun).

If we say Ona osoba je moj susjed (That person is my neighbour) we don't think of him as feminine. – only the word we use to refer to him is feminine.

We might refer to our neighbour's son using the masculine noun dječak. But if we refer to him as a child (dijete, neuter noun), is he suddenly no longer masculine? Hardly!

The same, of course, applies to our neighbour's young daughter, who we might refer to as a girl (djevojčica, feminine noun) or a child (dijete, neuter noun).
​

 
​After all of my philosophising and conjecture, I thought of another approach to clarify this issue. Sure enough, I found the answer I was looking for ……….
​
I asked a couple of Croatians if they thought that tables were males and houses females. Why didn't I think of that before? I hurriedly left them when I realised that they were ringing the men in white coats.


Perhaps it would be wise for me to cease learning Croatian? Life would be so much easier ...... 

​
[But much less enjoyable! Don't tell Mateja ...]


​
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  • HOME
    • Navigation: A ROAD MAP
    • Contacts
  • LEARNING CROATIAN
    • CROATIAN: Posts 1 - 10 >
      • 001 Kosa, koza, koža
      • 002 Pronouncing 'au'
      • 003 Can language influence behaviour?
      • 004 First day of the week
      • 005 Do Croatians assign gender to objects?
      • 006 Za četiri dana, na dva dana
      • 007 My brain becomes full!
      • 008 Sretan rođendan ti
      • 009 Na kavu, po kavu, za kavu?
      • 010 Until you don't do it
    • CROATIAN: Posts 11 - 20 >
      • 011 Nazvati nekoga, telefonirati nekomu
      • 012 If she were a man ....
      • 013 Streets with two names?
      • 015 Tri, četiri, sad!
      • 016 I feel like crying!
      • 017 I felt like crying, I will feel like crying
    • DAKLE ŽELIŠ BITI KAO PRAVI HRVAT, JE L' DA? HOME >
      • 001 Ovako!
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      • 001 Crossword puzzle 1
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      • 001 Where are the pronouns?
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      • 004 "u" ili "na" ?
      • 005 The declensions of Tko? and Što?
      • 006 Ja sam na Trgu bana Josipa Jelačića
      • 007 Going and coming: u-iz, but na-sa
      • 008 Sav - All, every
      • 009 Number of subjects and the verb 'biti'
      • 010 Koga nazoveš? Komu telefoniraš?
    • GRAMMAR POSTS 11 - 20 >
      • 011 Declension of place names
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      • 001 Dati - dativ
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      • 001 Questions that define the case of nouns
      • 002 All nouns have gender
      • 003 Nouns in the nominative case
      • 004 Nouns: Declension categories
      • 005 Declension of regular nouns
  • SAYINGS
    • SAYINGS: Posts 1 - 10 >
      • 001 Ne daj se!
      • 002 U tom grmu leži zec!
      • 003 Baš me briga!
      • 004 Mačji kašalj!
      • 005 Što je, tu je!
      • 006 Eto ti ga na!
      • 007 Na licu mjesta
      • 008 Sve si to ti kriv!
  • VOCAB
    • Vocabulary: POSTS 1 - 10 >
      • 001 Even dying is not easy!
      • 002 To laugh or to smile?
      • 003 Nahraniti, sahraniti .... schmahraniti
      • 004 Prefixes that modify verb meanings
      • 005 Prefixes on base verb stati
      • 006 Country names - noun or adjective?
      • 007 Names of towns: A grammatical nightmare
      • 008 Countries: What do we call their citizens?
      • 009 Baš
      • 010 What a joke! vic or šala?
    • Vocab THEMES: HOME >
      • 001 In the time of coronavirus
    • Što je korijen riječi?: HOME >
      • 001 Nadimak
      • 002 Zora, prozor, zoran, ….
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      • 001 Bookara
      • 002 Crossies?
      • 003 Jučer ili sutra?
      • 004 Ućitelji
      • 005 Požuri polako
      • 006 Kakav stil!
      • 007 The people of Magorje
      • 008 Where did the "j" go?
      • 009 koliko je kiše 50 litara po kvadratom metru?
      • 010 The dark side of the moon
    • Vicevi (Jokes)
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      • 001 Licitarska srca
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  • ABOUT CROATIA
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      • 001 Anthem: LIJEPA NAŠA
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    • Where/What/Who is that? HOME >
      • Where/What/Who? Pages 1 - 10 >
        • 001 A girl and a bird
        • 002 His left foot
        • 003 A rebel
        • 004 Čuvarica Omiša
        • 005 Giorgio or Juraj?
        • 006 Tovar and friend
        • 007 Up on high
        • 008 On an island
        • 009 Water wonderland
    • REGIONS, CITIES, TOWNS: HOME >
      • ZAGREB: HOME >
        • 001 Zagreb cathedral
        • 002 Advent in Zagreb
        • 003 Interliber book fair
        • 004 On the tramvaj in Zagreb
      • Dalmacija: HOME >
        • BEING AND SPEAKING DALMATIAN: HOME >
          • 001 Molin?
          • 002 Eleven Dalmatian commandments
          • Dalmatinski rječnik HOME >
            • Keywords A - J
            • Keywords K - N
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        • 001 Autumn tones
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      • 001 A night at the ballet
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