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May 20

Does portuguese article relates gender of the thing or gender of the name of the thing?

Imagine a girl is born and his for some reason the father decides to give her the name carlos, if she goes to school, should we say "A carlos foi para escola" ou "O carlos foi para a escola"?177.92.128.62 (talk) 19:35, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The query is strangely phrased, but unless it's a transgender issue, I'd believe it'd be "A Carlos" in this case, although my actual knowledge of Portuguese is slim. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:34, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Like all Romance languages, Portuguese has grammatical gender, which assigns either the masculine gender or the feminine gender to common nouns. If that noun denotes a profession, it usually has two versions: one with the masculine gender for men and one with the feminine gender for women. A male baker is um padeiro, a female baker is uma padeira. Some nouns exist in only one form. An example is the word pessoa, meaning "person". It has the grammatical feminine gender, regardless of whether the person referred to is male or female. An example is seen in these sentences: Pessoas que estavam na rua no momento dos fatos relataram que um homem em uma moto teria entrado no local, atirado e saído em seguida. “Vimos essa pessoa passar na moto ao nosso lado, como se nada tivesse acontecido”, disse uma mulher.^[1] ("People who were on the street at the time of the events reported that a man on a motorcycle had entered the scene, shot and then left. “We saw this person pass by on the bike next to us, as if nothing had happened,” said one woman.") Although "this person" is known to be male, the feminine demonstrative pronoun essa is used in combination with pessoa. Conversely, the noun ser has the grammatical masculine gender, and Portuguese uses ser humano, meaning "human being", to refer to men and women alike. Using ser humana for a woman will be considered a grammatical error, also by Portuguese-speaking feminists. The grammatical gender of a noun has an influence only on attributes immediately attached to it. Take, for example, Mas tenho que encontrar essa pessoa. Ele não vai ficar impune.^[2] ("But I have to find this person. He will not go unpunished.")

None of this applies to proper nouns, such as given names. They do not by themselves have a grammatical gender, but borrow it from the gender of their bearers. In many contexts Jean refers to a man, and then it is o Jean. But in reference to the actrice Jean Seberg, we may find, A Jean Seberg foi de uma beleza deslumbrante.^[3] --Lambiam 06:13, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

An example of a unisex Portuguese given name is Duda, so we can find both O Duda era rápido^[4] and A Duda ficou vermelha.^[5] --Lambiam 06:57, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably a 'thing' in all languages which have grammatical gender: the German for "a beautiful maiden" is probably ein schön Mädchen - and she would never be referred to as es. And Lambiam, the word is actriz, not what you wrote. 2A02:C7C:365E:E700:497A:B97C:8087:CCF8 (talk) 11:59, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Ein schönes Mädchen", actually, according to German rules regarding how adjectives are inflected. Xuxl (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The natural gender notwithstanding, generations of grammarians have tried to make us believe that we should say, Das Mädchen spielt mit seiner Puppe. A grammar book from 1828 fulminates against the substitution of the natural for the grammatical gender as "an unforgivable indulgence".^[6] With result,^{[7][8][9][10]} and as late as 1985 we can find the statement that the agreement between grammatical and natural gender is not always mandatory in German.^[11] --Lambiam 20:02, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it's a deliberate point, but the "masculine" -er ending is due to the adjective following the preposition mit, otherwise die Puppe is feminine. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:00, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think Lambiam was talking about the choice of seiner rather than ihrer. If it were a boy doll, would you be tempted to use ihrem or even seinem? Luckily there are no boy dolls, only action figures. --Trovatore (talk) 15:54, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yeah, of course. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:28, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I might possibly have mixed "sein" up with Swedish "sin" (non-gendered reflexive possessive pronoun), but I guess only the Northern branch of the Germanic languages has made a consistent distinction between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:38, 25 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is not about transgender issues, but now I could see, how could someone think that. Anyway the thing is that you can give any name you want to any person (excluding at the case of laws that make it illegal). Also Lambiam, your explanation contradict itself, first you say it related to the name of the thing (you say A pessoa, no matter if its a male person), then you say, we need to say O Duda, if its a male person called Duda, not caring about the fact the name Duda a feminine gramatical gender.179.186.16.73 (talk) 19:59, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I made a clear distinction between common nouns and proper nouns. The word pessoa is a common noun, not a proper noun. The name Duda is a proper noun, not a common noun. As such, it has no grammatical gender. Please read again what I wrote, keeping that distinction in mind. --Lambiam 20:09, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not at all clear to me that proper nouns have no grammatical gender. For example l'Italia is feminine, but il Belgio is masculine. It is probably true that the grammatical gender of the name of a person will not, in any language I'm familiar with, override the person's natural gender, but it seems a pretty big step from that to "proper nouns don't have gender". --Trovatore (talk) 17:52, 24 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

When I wrote, "They do not by themselves have a grammatical gender, but borrow it from the gender of their bearers", it was in a context in which these proper nouns are supposed to be given names. It is meaningless to apply the notion of gender to countries. --Lambiam 19:42, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

O yes, I am sorry, saw the part about proper nouns now.179.186.16.73 (talk) 02:27, 22 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Proper nouns must have a grammatical gender. For example, our article pt:Manhattan says O primeiro membro da tribo a chegar a Manhattan a descreveu como "ilha de muitas colinas". (The first member of the tribe to arrive at Manhattan described it as "isle of many hills"). The word we translate as "it" is either o (masculine) or a (feminine). In this case it's feminine. I'm not sure why the word tribo (which is masculine) is preceded by da, which is a contraction of de + a ("of" followed by the feminine definite article). 2A02:C7C:365E:E700:45DA:FBEB:299B:CEBA (talk) 10:14, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Leafing through the Portuguese dictionary, the only noun ending in -o (other than -ão) I could find which is not masculine is tribo, from the Latin feminine fourth declension noun tribus, which means a "third part" (cf. Gallia in tres partes divisa est) or a "tribe". 2.26.47.220 (talk) 15:11, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In Italian I can't think of many feminine nouns that end in unstressed o, and no proper nouns. The only example that comes to mind is foto, which is feminine because it's short for fotografia.

However there are quite a few masculine nouns that end in a. Some examples: clima, dramma. I have the notion that most of these come from the same ancient Greek declension. I don't know whether Portuguese follows this pattern or not. --Trovatore (talk) 17:45, 26 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this is absolutely standard - for example, o esquema (eschema in the old orthography), "scheme", and o tema (thema in the old orthography), a Byzantine administrative division or theme. 92.19.175.5 (talk) 10:56, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]