In linguistics, code-switching refers to the simultaneous and syntactically and phonologically appropriate use of more than one language. It is fairly common to hear multilingual people use elements of the different languages that they speak when conversing with others that speak the same languages. This mix may occur almost unconsciously in people who have a […]
Archives for February 2020
“(6) Grammatical vs Natural Gender.”
Natural gender is simply the gender of a person, animal or character. Grammatical gender is a way of categorising nouns; it does not necessarily match up with the “natural gender” of the person or object being described. Languages have different ways of assigning gender. Some go by physical characteristics of the object in question. Often […]
“(5) Gender Sticks with you.”
Perhaps even more interestingly, this effect that grammatical genders have on how we view the world also carries over to other languages. When native German and Spanish speakers were given a list of words that have opposing genders in their languages and asked to describe each word in English (they were also fluent in English), researchers […]