[Foundation-l] Hindi has three genders that I know of

Bishakha Datta bishakhadatta at gmail.com
Mon Feb 14 15:02:56 UTC 2011


On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>wrote:

> To top it off, Hindi has a form for inanimate objects.
>

Some Indian languages have genders for nouns, others don't. Hindi is one of
those that has two genders:  feminine and masculine nouns [1], including for
inanimate objects [2].

What I would like to learn is if Bishanka has an opinion about being
> addressed as a woman in her mother tongue.
>

My mother tongue is Bengali, which is genderless - it does not have
'gendered' nouns or other aspects of gender like Hindi. So a man and a woman
are addressed in the same way in Bengali. This is what I grew up with, am
used to, and what I like. But that's just my personal preference, not
necessarily my opinion on how women should be addressed in their mother
tongues. (I can't speak for other women on this; I imagine it would differ
from woman to woman.)

Cheers
Bishakha

[1] http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Hindi_1:2_Nouns_and_Adjectives
[2] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Hindi_Lessons/Lesson_4



More information about the wikimedia-l mailing list