In Serbian there is a word бол/bol meaning "pain", which interestingly has two genders, masculine and feminine. Though both genders can be used in all contexts, usually masculine тај бол has a meaning of physical pain, while feminine та бол tends to mark emotional pain. This is not directly connected to the topic of the video, I know, just wanted to share a fun fact😅
yes there's similar things in quite a few languages. Like in German where "der See" (masc) is the lake but "die See" (fem) is the ocean. In Swedish we have an interesting one which is "en öl" (a beer in common gender) is like a single serving of beer, whilst "ett öl" (a beer in neuter gender) refers to a type of beer. I don't know anything about Serbian, and I think that word you gave is very cool :D
@@kklein Thanks! So it seems to be a widespread phenomenon after all. I've found your videos just yesterday and I must say they're really great for people who are interested in linguistics! I feel your channel deserves much more attention than it has now, but it will eventually become more popular, I'm sure
In Bulgarian, we have the word for gas that can be either male of female. The gender distinction pops up when the definite article is added as the german example - Газът(the gas masc.) this refers to any type substance in gas/vapor form(can be water vapor etc.). Газта(The gas fem.) is strictly for fossil fuel type of gas - methane, propane, LNG or anything that is to be burned.
@@kklein funfact: in Dutch the words for sea and ocean switch with the German counterparts. The sea and the ocean Der See und das Meer Het meer en de zee
the opening of “della mia ex” made me laugh out loud because i learned most of the italian i know from two ex partners. i love relatable youtube content
2:45 an yet it gets even worse. While those masculine words turn into feminine in the plural form, they have separate meanings if you do the masculine plural. "L'osso" means "the bone". "Le ossa" means "the bones", as the organs inside your body. However, "Gli ossi" means "the bones" taken singularly, or referring to animal bones, although this is mostly used in literature. "Il braccio" means "the arm". "Le braccia" means "the arms" as in the anatomical part of the body. "I bracci" means "the arms" as in the arms of an armchair or the arms of a cross. "Il labbro" means "the lip", "le labbra" means the anatomical part of the mouth. "I labbri" refers to the edges of a wound. "Il ciglio" means "the eyelash". "Le ciglia" means "the eyelashes", but "i cigli" means "the edges"
This reminds me of how in Spanish, terms have separate meanings depending on whether the adjective goes before or after the noun: "Mi amigo viejo" refers to my friend, who is of old age, while "Mi viejo amigo" refers to my friend, whom I have known for a long time.
That means a lot, thank you! It's not perfect but I really do try, like I got an actual Romanian friend of mine to check over my pronunciation, checked the IPA and stuff like that. I don't want to be there like "an baaarbaaaaat, dwa baarbatee" lol. And I will make a video about conlanging one day, it's a very interesting topic.
6:07 The "-o" ending comes from the accusative "-um", which was nasalised by the Classical Latin period, then it just became "-u", which evolved to "-o" in most but not all romance languages (some exceptions being Sardinian and Romanian). Anyway, good video, keep it up!
@@blackatleftismyt5001 nope! There's plenty of examples showing it must be the accusative: e.g capo from caput (neuter nom/ acc), not capite (abl). You cand find more about it in most romance linguistics manuals! There's a dozen nouns coming from nominative (moglie, uomo, drago, ladro, sarto) while accusative-descended forms appear in some dialect or as variant (mogliere, omine, dragone, ladrone, sartore) ...
This is also the case in French, where most of the latin-originated word descend from the accusative. This can be explained by the fact that accusative had become the most common grammatical case in spoken latin; and inscriptions found, which were written during the classical Latin period, prove that the -m was already being dropped. This is apparently a common grammatical phenomenon as, in Ancient French (c. IXth century to XIVth century), there were two grammatical regimes: cas-sujet (subject and attribute) and cas-régime (everything else); and the flexional endings for masculine, feminine and plural are directly inherited from the cas-régime, as it was the most commonly used grammatical case! For example, flexional endings for the masculine are as follows: Cas-sujet: -s (singular) / [nothing] (plural) Cas-régime: [nothing] (singular) / -s (plural) Modern French has adopted the cas-régime behavior completely when it dropped the distinction between the two regimes (c. XIVth-XVth centuries). Note: this is probably (I have no proof of this) why English has adopted this grammatical behavior, since it was under heavy French influence in its early days.
@@blackatleftismyt5001 It's a previous disproven theory. I had a Latin prof. who himself was taught and believed that theory (he was raised in Italy btw) until it was disproven. Old French actually retained the nominative and accusative, and had it retained a dative/ablative instead of an accusative, the case suffixes would've been much different.
Yes, all the Italian words come from the accusative without the "-m". For exemple, wolf, lupum, lupu, lupo. Some words from the nominative, homo, uomo.
@@unioneitaliana7107 Yeah think of “amica” (← Lat. “amicam”). And the plural “amiche” (although it doesn’t look like it), comes from Lat. “amicas” (the -s being dropped also made the final -a turn into -e). The reflex of the nominative “amicae” would’ve been *amice, but instead we get the unpalatalised “amiche” (/k/), which suggests that the nom. pl. can’t possibly be the source
@@ChristianJiang To my knowledge, the -s wasn't simply dropped, but rather palatalised, which explains many irregular 2nd person singular verb forms; sei < ses (V. Latin), ai < as(V. Latin), puoi < pos(V. Latin). The palatalisation of the sibilant caused new diphthongs which were mostly monophthongised when unstressed. Thus prendi < prendei < prendes. The -i of the 2nd person singular ARE-conjugation may be explained as a regularisation, influenced by the -i ending existant in the other conjugations
@@ChristianJiang italian has been a spoken language until the end of thhe middle age, and the pronounciation of the word amicae was a hard c, not like "ciao" but like "cane", when they transcribed from spoken to written language they used as a rule to put an h between the hard c and e, so it does come from amicae for this reason
@@paolobollo4450 I’m saying that, if it were to come from amicae, the reflex would be “amice”, without the /k/ sound. In the same way other instances of /kai/ in Latin have turned into /t͡ʃe/: caesar /ˈkae̯.sar/ → cesare /ˈt͡ʃe.za.re/ (also doesn’t come from the nominative). This is the evidence that makes us think that “amiche” (hard C, /k/) can’t possibly derive from “amicae” (which would have evolved into something like a soft C given its environment). We therefore need to assume that the word actually comes from an oblique case, in this case the accusative “amicas”. And, as other people have explained better than I could have, the final -s palatalised into an -e sound, and the hard C was maintained.
In reality it isn't precisely true: all case collapsed in one single case when the final consonants were dropped. So nominative, vocative and accusative brachium became brachiu then brachio just like dative and ablative. With all cases with the same termination, there are pratically no cases at all. Similar evolution for masculine and feminine. The loss of genitive had a different development (already replaced by de+ablative in late latin, a use derived from a different complement in classical latin).
@@FSantoro91 What I said concerns the first two declensions while “flumen” is of the third. The third declension has had a more complicated development because the stem of the nominative is different from that of the other cases (eg. Jupiter: Iupiter in the nominative, but Iovis, Iovi, Iovem, Iove in the other cases). In the transition to Italian, one of the two paradigms prevailed while the other was absorbed by analogy. There is no rule for which prevailed. Thus in some nouns the nominative form prevailed (man=homo, hominis > “uomo” not “uomino”; time=tempus, temporis > “tempo” not “temporo”) in others prevailed that of the other cases, accusative but even dative etc. (virgin=virgo, virginis, virginem > “vergine”). In the Old Italian sometimes both forms survived (virtue=virtus, virtutis > “virtù” but also the ancient and poetical “virtute”; freedom=libertas, libertatis > “libertà” but also the ancient “libertate”). Things are even more complicated because the third declension has undergone the influence of the second and so for example the plural is no longer in -es but in -i as if it were from the second (river in the plural is not “fiumes” but “fiumi” as for the second declension, wolf is not “lupos” but “lupi”), also in this case by analogy. However, in the specific case “flumen” is neuter and therefore it is not only accusative, but also nominative and vocative. So you can't say if it comes from the accusative rather than the nominative. With the loss of the final consonants I mentioned, the nominative, the accusative and the vocative evolved flumen> flume> “fiume”, while for the ablative and the dative fluminis / flumine, this form was absorbed to the more frequent form (that with 3 identical cases): “fiume”. Obviously this is a possible reconstruction. Other linguists proposed a different pattern.
Glad to see my language represented! I don't usually hear much about Romanian lol. I've just found your channel and I was shocked when I saw that your channel is so small because from the amount of videos and topics and overall quality I would've guessed a bigger amount of subscribers. Keep up the good work!
@@TibiHIPHOP Vero? , Sorella dell'est, allora voglio una cosa , cuando di si non piu da , perche Siamo figli di Roma, ti amo Romania l'italia sempre sara tua casa.
French has three ambigeneric nouns too (masculine to feminine in the plural): "amour", "délice" & "orgue"... Why those three words beats me Another great video! Also, so good to see your channel growing!
wow! I didn't even think about that. But yes, le grand orgue, les grandes orgues. Had no clue about the others, but I guess you don't often hear the plural of "amour".
Then there's "gens"... *Taken from Larousse, I'm too lazy to translate it:* Le mot gens est particulièrement capricieux quant au genre. L'adjectif (ou le participe) s'accorde avec lui selon les règles suivantes. *Gens immédiatement précédé d'un adjectif épithète.* Lorsque l'adjectif épithète précède immédiatement gens, il est au féminin : de vieilles gens, de bonnes gens. *Gens précédé d'un adjectif apposé.* Lorsque l'adjectif qui précède gens en est séparé par une virgule, il est au masculin : confiants et naïfs, les gens le croient. *Gens précédé de deux adjectifs dont le second se termine aux deux genres par un e muet.* Lorsque gens est précédé de deux adjectifs dont le second se termine aux deux genres par un e muet, le premier adjectif est au masculin : de vrais braves gens ; ces prétendus honnêtes gens nous ont trompés. *Gens suivi d'un adjectif.* Lorsque l'adjectif suit gens, il est au masculin : des gens bruyants ; des gens intelligents. *Tous, toutes précédant gens.* Lorsque gens désigne des personnes déterminées, il est précédé de tous au masculin : tous ces gens ; tous les gens sensés. En revanche, c'est toutes, au féminin, qui précède gens quand il en est séparé par un adjectif dont le masculin se distingue du féminin par l'absence d'e muet : toutes les bonnes gens qui nous ont aidés. *Gens de...*. L'adjectif est toujours au masculin avec les expressions gens de robe, gens d'Église, gens d'épée, gens de guerre, gens de lettres, gens de loi : il fréquente de brillants gens de lettres et d'ennuyeux gens de loi. *Jeunes gens.* Toujours au masculin : de joyeux jeunes gens. *Gens au sens de « domestiques » ou de « partisans ».* Toujours au masculin : nos gens sont sûrs et dévoués."
we have some in Spanish as well! el agua and el hada, which are actually feminine, have a masculine article in the singular form. I can't think of any other though
@@sofiadri2638 those are different though, it's because they begin with an "a" sound so la agua or la hada sounds weird, similarly in french we do the same with "son/sa" so feminine nouns that begin with a take son instead of sa
okay you've been on the platform for 4 months (i mean the first video on this channel was 4 months ago) and already cracked the code -short enough for people to not get bored -jam packed with jokes and witty lines to keep people's attention -educational so people feel like they've learned something which makes them feel better about themselves and gives them the excuse for watching youtube all day for "educational purposes" -a slightly monotone sarcastic voice which is calm enough for people not to get annoyed quickly (as oppose to the OVERLY DRAMATIC INTRO VOICES some youtubers have) all in all amazing videos and channel so riddle me this: How have you only got 16.7k subscribers? (at the date of commenting)
I remember when I learned German, the pronouns had to match the gender of the noun, not the physical gender. So all dogs were "he" and all cats were "she." Madness.
@@gery8218 (just for clarification for non-Germans:) that is correct that we have these, but they are separate nouns and normally only used when the gender of that animal is concerned, the default still is male for dogs and female for cats (this also applies to a lot of other animal descriptors).
We actually have seperate gender specific words for almost every animal though most have fallen out of fashion. E.g. a male dog is "der Rüde" while a female dog is "die Hündin" whereas a dog in general with no specification is "der Hund". "der Kater" (male cat), "die Katze" (female cat, also colloquially used to refere to cats in general) Just like a male pig is "der Eber", a female "die Sau" and the general animal "das Schwein". Female cattle is "die Kuh" if it already has given birth or "die Färse" otherwise, a male "der Stier" or "der Bulle" if it is used for breeding, a castrated male "der Ochse" and the general animal "das Rind". der Hahn - die Hänne - das Huhn (chicken), der Hengst (castrated "der Wallach") - die Stute - das Pferd (horse) Etc. English also still has some of these gender specific words like "bitch", "boar" and "sow", "cow" and "bull", "rooster" etc.
Italian words than end with O usually come from Latin words that ended in either -us or -um. Now, in Latin, to get the plural forms, you changed -us for -i (gladius > gladii), and -um for -a (pilum > pila). This difference survives in italian, only now all words end the same way, so its kind of confusing. So, dito > dita comes from digitum > digita
In Welsh, there's 3 categories for gender which are masculine, feminine, and "we can't decide which gender this should be so using either one for this word is grammatically correct" (the last category applying to "cwpan" (cup) and, fittingly, "amrywiaeth" (diversity)). I do wonder if gender in Welsh will eventually die out though, because genders mostly affect mutations (which are often used haphazardly in everyday life) and the words for 2, 3 and 4. Technically speaking, adjectives should agree with the gender and number of nouns but those forms aren't that common anymore outside of set terms (e.g. "mwyar duon" (blacks berries) and the feminine "gota" instead of "cwta" in "buwch goch gota" (ladybird, but literally "little red cow", where "buwch" (cow) is feminine).
I'd like to point out that, despite the similarities, Italian (as well as, for that matter, Old French and the other Romance languages which lost grammatical case) noun forms come from the accusative case, not the dative or ablative.
They mostly come from the accusative but at least in italian all cases converged with the first to disappear being genitive. Because of this confluence we have words that come from nominative, and dative as well: "tempo" (time) from nominative "tempus" and not "tempor+any other case ending"
@@felicepompa1702 this happened in OFr too, see sire (nom) and sieur (obl) becoming French sire, sieur, and seigneur... all from two forms of the same noun.
Interesting, I am from a region in Germany close to France (the part that was colonized by the Romans) and our dialect also only has two genders as opposed to the three in other German dialects. Though we oddly enough have masculine and neuter with the feminine having been absorbed into the neuter (d'r - masc., et - neu.(/fem.) definite articles). I wonder wether this is also a result of the amount of vulgar latin that ought to have been used and left its influences here and/or our close proximity and influence of the Romance language French
I too am from the part that was roman and I don't know what you are talking about. I have both speakers of Badisch and Schwäbisch and even swiss german around me and badisch has all 3 genders (d', die, (de)s) and Schwäbisch has almost same (d'r, d(ie), (de)s). What dialect has "et" ? Wtf
Same happens in the Brazilian dialect of German: Hunsrik Riogranser. But the articles are the same as standard German (Der - Masculine, Das - Feminine, Die - Plural), and some words seem to remain just in the plural (die Katze and die Sonne remain like this, but das Frau and das Kuh).
Your take on Romanian was so respectful! Glad to see my language in the context of grammatical gender. Probably you already know, the words themselves in Romanian are considered ambigeneric in functionality but not in what they are in relation to gramatical case and phonetic spelling, i think??? A word like "an apple" is primarily considered neutral simply because it's plural version is feminine as opposed to the masculine singular. The language, for the most part priorities singular forms as "the base" for a word, meaning there is a primar use of the gramatical gender and a secondary one
It's really interesting, in Asturian, a romance language from northern Spain there is also a neutral gender in nouns but it only shows up in the termination of the adjectives that are linked to that noun, which end in -u for male, -o for neuter and -a for female. This neutral gender also appears only in uncountable nouns like people, clothes, sand, water, etc. So for example you've got: "el home tontu" (the stupid man), "la muyer tonta" (the stupid woman) and "la xente tonto" (the stupid people). It should be said that this word for people is singular, not plural like in English. Another example would be "el sable seco" (the dry sand).
Oh man... When i saw your first video i was expecting your channel to have at least 50k subscribers, when i saw that you didn't had more than 400 subs, it felt so wrong!! I know that sadly there's no so many people who enjoy these cool nerdy fun facts of languages, but trust me that we, who really enjoy all of this, are extreme glad that they found your channel. Keep up the good work!! you make extremely good videos ^^
You should keep in mind that Romanian actually has distinct plural suffixes adapted to the neuter gender, although not in every neutral gender word. Even in your example, “pixuri”, the suffix “-uri” is neutral gender specific, thus I would not argue that this word and others like it are truly ambigeneric. If it had followed the ambigeneric pattern, it would’ve been “un pix, două pixe”, “pixe” here being the “true” feminine form that the hypothetical feminine noun “pix” would have taken in the plural. Other examples of “truly” neutral nouns, that use the “-uri” plural suffix, are “un geam, două geamuri [not “geame”]”, “un ceas, două ceasuri [not “cease”]” or “un dulap, două dulapuri [not “dulape”]”.
Great video! Actually the regional languages of southern Italy have as many as FOUR grammatical genders: masculine ("jo bardasso, i bardassi" , the boy/s), feminine ("la casa, le case", the house/s), mass neuter ("lo pane", bread) and alternating neuter ("jo raccio, le raccia" the arm/s), the last one being the gender you described in this video. If you want to know more about this topic, I recommend you to read "Gender from Latin to Romance" by Loporcaro.
As for the origin of Romanian "pix, pixuri" inflectional class, it comes from the reanalysis of Latin "tempor-a" (where tempor- is the root and -a is the neuter-plural ending) as "temp-ora", and the extension of this pattern to other nouns.
As a romanian born and raised in italy I can notice the differences between the two, but I never sat there actually thinking about why that is the case, so this was definitely interesting. Also very good pronunciation on both italian and romanian 👌
Well, in most romance languages the masculine became the neutral too, so it's comprehensible that Italian and Romanian have this strange gender-swapping nouns because the singular neutral is masculine anyway, and it's neutral so it doesn't matter if the plural is feminine. I can live with this
Thing is, the masculine has always been the neutral, even in Latin It comes from the Indo-European system, divided between animate and inanimate genders The inanimate gender got lost, while the animate turned into the feminine and masculine, while (at least in Latin) the neutral came from the inanimate The feminine changed more than the masculine, still close to the animate gender, thus the default gender is the masculine The origin of gender swapping words comes clearly from the abandonment of the neutral gender, forcing words to become masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural
I was wondering why our cousins don't have a neuter gender while we do even though they do have words that depending on plural or singular are different genders, and some being exactly the same words as in Romanian. this video gives a really simple and concise explanation. well done and thank you! bună treabă!
Its always nice seeing a new up and coming RU-vid channel in your recommendations with a catalog(ue) of excellent videos that you can spend an evening watching. I will watch your career with great interest
I just wanted to add a little clarification: the morphology of modern day Romance is generally derived from the accusative form of the Latin word...at least in the singular form... there's a debate on whether the -i ending of masculine plurals in italian is a direct derivative of -i of nominative masculine plural of Latin or it has come from the accusative -os with the intermediate forms -oj and oi (compare to "noi" meaning "us" from Latin "nos"). But generally speaking in Italian and the majority of romance languages (except maybe old French) the form a word takes in the singular comes from the accusative, with the subsequent nasalization of the final -m and the eventual loss of the nasal altogether. Example: lupum---> lupu(nasalized) and then lupu and lupo. Same with the other declension. Rosam--->rosã---> rosa. That's why Sardinian nouns end in -u when masculine. And that's why "mano", "hand" is feminine, because it was a forth declension name in -ūs that ended in -ūm in the accusative, hence why -o in Italian. I hope it's not too long :)
Just a small observation as a former latin scholar: "braccio" doesn't come directly from Dative "brachio", even though they share the same desinence! Instead, most of the italian words come from the accusative. Roughly, the passage should be this: Brachium > brachiu > brachio > braccio
For four months on RU-vid, these videos are incredibly well made! They're paced well, and the illustrations really help to convey the ideas your talking about well. I'm sure you'll hit 1K subscribers very soon.
I just found you channel and I am in love! I had no idea languages and scripts could be so interesting, and you videos really opened my eyes. I really hope you make more videos in the future
There's a RU-vidr named Xidnaf who did linguistics vids, some other stuff ss well but I was there for thr linguistics. He stopped youtubering (yes that's a word) quite some time ago and I was really sad, because I really loved his style. You, in my very humble opinion, are a spiritual successor to that channel, and I want to thank you for that, earned an instant sub for your spelling reform video! And you earned this comment - I haven't commented on anything on RU-vid in 7ish years, if not more.
Awesome video! didn't know this thing about romanian, but it really sounds like it's super similar to italian. Especially as the braccio -> braccia, orecchio -> orecchie, dito -> dita is so common that it kind of is more of a declination class than an exception, especially as the usually taught rule "only applies to body parts" is actually wrong: lenzuolo (bed sheet) -> lenzuola, grido (scream) -> grida, fondamento -> fondamenta I would therefore advocate seeing it as a whole declination class. Also funnily, italian plurals are much more irregular than I would've thought in the very beginning, if you count Comico -> comiCI (sound change), autista -> autisti (a ending in mascular noun) as declinations instead of exceptions
"el agua" is feminine though. You have "el agua fría", not "el agua frío". It happens with other nouns that start with a stressed letter a. Another example - "el ala", also feminine. It's basically a result of some weird sound assimilation. Those are basically very few rare cases where "el" acts as a feminine article.
@@dkpricies3141 The thing is, I don't think it happens in Spanish. The Spanish person who replied earlier said that it's their first time in life seeing "las días". Because, well, it's actually "los días"... It's not that your examples are basic, there are just no examples, at least as far as I'm aware of. But I'm ready to be proven wrong!
@@SKO_PL they are examples as far as I’m aware I’ve been doing Spanish for 10 years (currently at uni) and as far as what I’ve been told by native speakers and what my dictionary says that is the case
I just discovered your videos and I have to say, your content is on par with the bigger linguistics YT channels. I have a feeling that this channel is gonna be big in no time. See you at the top 😉
Native french speaker here! We have a few words that are masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural too! "Amour", "délice", "orgue" are the three that get cited most often, though I'm pretty sure I remember being taught a few more back in my early school days. It's definitely rarer than in Italian and Romanian but it's still there!
In south italy a lot of people confuse "dita" (fingers) with "diti" due dialect. Or use "bracci" to say "arms" but "Bracci" is used for technical things not human things. All of this is due the dialect.
It's always strange when you speak a language natively and then you stumble on a video that explains it to people that don't know that tongue like you do. So then you listen and you start saying "damn that is kinda strange on a general standpoint" especially when you're studying another language and you find these exact mechanism and you go and say "god this is so dumb why would it change"
Also, common nouns like parts of the body, members of the family, are generally more resistant to grammar and pronunciation shifts. It's why English "father" still has that a phoneme even though no other English word does.
We also have this kind of plurals in French, but only for two nouns : "amours" (loves) and "orgues" (organs). Both are masculine when singular and feminine when plural, but even French speaking people tend to ommit that and think the're always masculine, because plural articles "les" (like you showed at 1:52) and "des" are identical with both genders, so the feminine plural is only visible when put with an adjective.
I swear everytime someone doesn`t understand something about romanian they go: ``That`s it, I`m done, I`ll call slavic on this one!``. I`ve even heard people blaming the weather on slavs , which is weird !? What is a slavic weather, may I ask? Non-fancy sunny latin weather you mean? And although the romanian cuisine has a lot of influences and the history is very charming, I can listen to hours of how this and this cook invented this and this food to impress some french chef from Paris, but I often hear : `` typical slavic food``. Maybe this means not fancy, boring slavic food. Don`t get me wrong, I derailed a bit, I just think it is funny when this happens and we are guilty of this too, an example being Alexandru Rossetti mentioned in this video, but sometimes people think we are trying to be quirky and decided to be latin. My favorite is when people say : bUt yOU dRess LiKe sLaVs ! as if they are saying: stop fooling yourselves. I never hear this about hungarians, what are they ? Huns dressed like germans singing german music and eating goulash? Everybody eats goulash. We are not fooling ourselves, we are happy being latin in our own little latin bubble , with our own little language, together with Moldova.
Well I don't know how deep u actually dug into it and so on, but ur hypothesis about "il bracchio" and "le bracchia" is actually right and quite well known among Latin academics. If u look into the late "vulgar Latin" (yes I'm aware of the ambiguity of this word choice, I mean the Latin of the lower classes spoken in the 3rd-6th century AD. For more information watch Scorpio Martianus' take on it.) and for example try reading the "Cena Trimalchionis" fragment by Petronius, u will find a hell load of words that kinda moved from neuter into masculine, sometimes retaining certain forms (eg. the Nominative Plural). So u're most definetely on the right track with this in case u didn't already know it! [I don't really know a lot about Romanian though tbh, the examples seem weird to me... Maybe there actually is more to it in that case, which would also make sense given it's unique and isolated position.]
I’d like to add that Italian for braccio (arm) we have to plurals, the feminine le braccia when referring to human arms and the masculine i bracci when referring to appendices on mechanical devices.
In Hebrew, there's a similar phenomenon, but it doesn't actually change the gender of the noun, just the plural form of the word itself, while the conjugation and agreement of verbs and adjectives remain the same in the rest of the sentence. Plural forms generally end in either -im (male) or -ot (female). However, some male nouns will end with -ot when plural and some female nouns end with -im, being an exception to this "rule." There is no regularity or predictability for this exception, and it happens fairly often, so the only way to know is to memorize which nouns have which plural ending. As a native speaker, or eventually when you have heard enough Hebrew, you will automatically know when a plural noun sounds right or wrong without having to think about it.
Even in Spanish, there are a lot of nouns that are used with the article of the opposite gender, like "azúcar" and "agua". Both are femenine nouns but use masculine articles "el azúcar" and "el agua", but the adjectives used with both are femenine "el azúcar blanca" and "el agua fría". In the case of "agua" when using its plural form, you'd use the correct article with it "Las aguas" not "Los aguas"
I am super impressed at your ability to pronounce romanian! You have the best pronounciation i've ever heard for a foreigner! Like 10 times better than the so called polygolts on youtube who can only say "ce faci".
The one thing I would correct is that linguists pretty much agree that Romance singular nouns descend from the Latin accusative singular. So braccio actually comes from brac(c)hium. How this happened is that even in the classical era final M was often not pronounced as a consonant, instead nasalizing the preceding vowel, like /bɾak(ː)iũ/. Later on the nasality was lost, and final U changed to O.
Something similar happens in Spanish. The word "agua" is feminine, but no one calls it "la agua", it's "el agua". But when it's plural, it's not "los aguas", but "las aguas".
Italian nouns come from the accusative form, not from the dative. The -m was lost during the classical period in rural Latin and the "U" became "O" in the Florentine language. Many dialects keep the final "U"
Also in italian this feature has been somewhat extended in meaning and use. First of all, it's been used in words which weren't neuter in latin (muro in Italian comes from the masculine noun murus). Secondly, the meaning has been changed somewhat: in these masculine nouns sometimes there is the regular masculine plural, but it often carries a different connotation. Some examples: muro (wall): i muri (the walls of an house) le mura (the walls of a city or a fortress) dito (finger): le dita (the fingers of a hand) i diti indici/medi/etc. (the index/middle/etc. fingers, thus used for specific fingers) osso (bones): le ossa (the bones, as in the collection of bones in a skeleton) gli ossi della schiena/ delle gambe/ delle braccia/ etc. (the leg/back/arm bones, as in specific bones) so baseically the feminine plural usually carries the meaning of the ensemble, while the masculine plural is usually used for the plural of specific things (the index fingers, the backbones, the walls of a house, etc.)
In italian we actually do use the masculine versions of plural Dito and Braccio: if we're referring to fingers as separate entities rather then the "ensemble" you'd say Diti instead of Dita. Examples: "She lost her pinky fingers" becomes "Lei ha perso i *diti* mignoli" while "She lost some *fingers*" becomes "Lei ha perso delle *dita*". With Braccio it's somewhat similar, if we're referring to the arms of a person the plural is Braccia but if it's any other type of "arm" then it's Bracci. Examples: "The jewish menorah has 7 *arms*" becomes "La menorah ebraica ha 7 *bracci*" while "He held me in his *arms*" becomes "Mi ha stretto tra le sue *braccia*". You also mentioned Osso (bone) becoming Ossa and that one also can be Ossi. "Cuttlefish *bones*" becomes "*Ossi* di seppia"
5:53 It's difficult to explain the evolution of the neuter gender of Latin without mentioning the appearance of articles in Vulgar Latin. It is believed that in I a.D. Latin speakers began to create articles, usually from the demonstratives ille, illa, illud (masculine, feminine, neuter). Vulgar Latin also began to reshape the old class system, mainly dropping vocative and ablative, as well as simplifying the endings of some cases. The accusative was the "strongest form", so to speak, as it was the only one to survive in most romance languages. The articles, in accusative, were Masculine *illu, *illus Feminine *illa, *illas Neuter *illu, *illa As you can see, the neuter articles and, by extension, nouns, began to be considered as masculine nouns in the singular and feminine in the plural. Interestingly enough, this characteristic was also shared in the nominative and accusative of neuter nouns in Classical Latin. In the end, some languages like Occitan and Catalan reanalyzed neuter nouns to either masculine or feminine catageories, depending on their most common use, either in plural or singular. This is ther reason why Latin "opus" (neuter) became Catalan "obra" (feminine), both meaning "construction". It was more common, as it is nowadays in Catalan, to say "Opera faciunt", "Fan obres", "They are making constructions" than just saying it in the singular.
well, it’s really a matter of what you call em. in romania, we are taught these words are neuter and when they analyze them teachers tell children to count the nouns, “one ____, two ______” to determine the gender, if it’s neuter, then we write it down as neuter. very simple
Actually we say "I bracci" but when we refer to mechanical arms like in "I bracci della bilancia". So yeah in italian we have more plural depending on the context.
Most words in Italian do not stem from the dative case, but from the accusative case where first the consonant m is dropped and in case the last vowel is u it consequently shifts to o (vowel a doesn't change). Exceptions to this, of course, occur. So your example should be bracchium, bracchiu, bracchio which then evolves into braccio owing to a further phonological change. In addition, dative and ablative were later abandoned in favour of nominative and accusative, but, in turn, being almost identical once the m is dropped (except for their vowel length, which speakers tended to ignore) they started to be confused for each another.
Funfact: In italian you can say “I Bracci” but it means another thing, it refers only to a mechanical arm, like the ones you can find in a vending maschine or on an assembly line. The same thing applies to the word “L’Orecchio” (The Ear), the plural is “Le Orecchie”, but only for the anatomical part (in this case Orecchio is masculine and Orecchie is feminine), but if you say “L’Orecchia” (sing. fem.) the plural is “Gli Orecchi” (plur. masc) and it refers only to things similar to an Ear, like a fold at the top of a page of a book. Recap: L’Orecchio (Singular and Masculine) > Le Orecchie (Plural and Feminine) - Only the anatomical part. Le Orecchie (Singular and Feminine) > Gli Orecchi (Plural and Masculine) - All other things “similar” to “Human Ears”.
I live in an Italian region called "Friuli" where a particular language is spoken. I'm still trying to understand why in Friulian letters such as "ç", "cj", "gj" and the vowels with circumflex accent exist and where they come from.
in most slavic languages, the word with the root g*l*v* (glava, golva, golova, glova) can switch semantical gender without changing its grammatical gender, while still changing the gender of the verbs acommpanying it. E.g., polish "głowa" can mean "head" as a body part and also "head" of an organisation - in both cases the verbs that such head performs would be of feminine gender, unless the "head" of an organisation is a man, in such case - the "head" stays grammatically feminine, but it's semantic gender swap makes all verbs it performs belong to the masculine gender -but not in all cases, verbs are affected in such a way if it is specified that this "head" means a male leader of something - if it is not specified, we usually keep using the feminine verbs until the gender of the subject is specified
Found one mistake while watching this video: in the vulgar latin period the dative case already collapsed, so it's not possible that the dative form survived until now. In fact, the accusative/nominative ending changed during time ( -> -> ) and survived until now.
I’m a Romanian speaker and they teach Romanian has a neutral gender. But truly, no modern Romance language has a true neutral gender in the sense German or Slavic languages. Romanian had transgender nouns which are masculine in singular but feminine in plural. Spanish does that sometimes too with “el agua” but “las aguas”
El agua is feminine, you use el only because agua starts with a stressed A. If something separates those words, the normal la comes back: la gran agua, not el gran agua.
I don't speak Italian, and I completely understood what you said at the beginning. I don't speak any romance languages (I call English both a romance language and a germanic one) except English and the tiniest bit of Spanish.
Nice vid, but as a Romanian, I have two tiny corrections: -in Romanian, defninite articles are stuck at the end of words. For example, man is bărbat and the man is bărbatul. This is why Romanian speakers sound distinct from speakers of other Romance languages. When you listen to a Romanian person speak, you won’t hear any definite articles. The only articles are the numerical variety. -technically, the eastern portion of the language chart you showed at the beginning is a little bit inaccurate. Although Vlach is treated as a separate language from Romanian by many people, most modern linguists categorize it as the “Wallachian dialect” of the south as opposed to the “Moldavian dialect” of the south. So it’s treated as a dialect of Romanian. Not wrong, just slightly inaccurate.
Ah, such a wonderful morning, waking up to a new video :D Thanks for the video, it was really fun! My language has genders, but the distinction exists only in singular, in plural endings are all the same. So I never thought any language could do this -- which is not the first time I say it in comments of your video, you keep surprising with the most interesting things! I can't wait to see your channel growing to great numbers, and then I'll be able to say that I have seen the beginning of it :)
that's so nice, thank you!!! What language is that? I speak Swedish and German and their gender distinctions disappear in the plural as well (der, die, das --> die)
@@kklein it's Russian. As far as I'm aware in all East Slavic languages plural forms are the same (though I mostly talk about the endings of adjectives, because noun endings are more dependent on the sounds of the root than on the gender), but the distinction is kept in Western ones. I am positive about Czech and Polish keeping the distinction (though not in all cases, and in Polish it goes from three distinct genders to only two in plural), but I haven't looked closely at the other languages there.
@@alsy6813 the endings in russian, just like in most other slavic languages vary quite a bit but im pretty sure they do keep the genders, at least in russian
@@arsenixkikokoro I don't say that they don't, only that with all the different varieties in nouns it's easier to look at adjectives to talk about gender, because the difference there is shown more clearly. As a native speaker, I could say that my sense of gender is more dependent on what demonstratives/adjectives/pronouns fit a noun than on the noun itself. I could talk about nouns like хорошая девушка/хороший дедушка ("a good girl"/"a good grandfather") that look nearly the same but are of different genders, and the difference is clearly illustrated by the adjectives, but I'd rather talk about the other phenomenon. Even though with the popularity of feminism many words have received additional feminine forms, traditionally many words for professions were masculine in themselves but could be used as feminine in certain contexts. Even when a noun has two forms, it's still possible to use the masculine one in every context. For example, the word "учитель" ("teacher") can be both masculine and feminine depending on context: хорошая учитель/хороший учитель, while the separate feminine form cannot switch gender: хорошая учительница. Thus, adjectives are a better indicator of gender than the nouns themselves. Besides, and I am sorry if I didn't make it clear, I talked specifically about plural forms there. My sentence wasn't entirely correct, though; masculine and feminine words indeed take plural endings depending only on the sound: мужчины/женщины, девушки/мальчики (men/women, girls/boys), but neutral nouns in singular forms end on -o and in plural ones on -a, it's a visible distinction. Yet, even though it helps guessing the gender of the singular form, the word itself functions the very same way, as indicated with adjectives: хорошие мужчины, хорошие женщины, хорошие окна. Words that are used purely in plural (часы "a clock", ножницы "scissors") are considered genderless even though it's still possible to guess what gender their singular form could be (час, masculine (which is an existing word, "an hour") and ножница, feminine (which is not used by itself and based only on my language intuition)). Using the same logic on Czech, it's easy to see the differences there: mladý muž -- mladí muži (young man -- young men), mladá dívka -- mladé dívky (young girl -- young girls), mladé okno -- mladá okna (young window -- young windows). Bottom line -- I am sorry if anything I have written here is unclear, or not scientifically correct, or not called with the correct terms; it's more based on my understanding of the language as a native speaker than on any hard data. Yet, if grammatical genders are reflected in associated words (as they are first and foremost in Russian), it's more important to look at how these associated words (adjectives in my examples) behave. UPD: "хороший/хорошая учитель" is the most arguable point here, and it will not be fair to not mention it. It could be said that the feminine phrase is incorrect because there exists the word "учительница", and it should be used instead of masculine учитель in every case. With the latest trend of making up new feminine nouns to pair with traditionally masculine ones, it's considered bad and exclusive of women to use the old ones neutrally by some people. Yet, I stand on the other side that disagrees with the notion that Russian needs any more gendered words; it already has enough, and it's better to speak more neutrally -- especially because this would not exclude nonbinary people from the conversation, as dichotomy of учитель/учительница does. As a nonbinary person myself, I love being able to hide in unspecified gender nouns and feminine ones only annoy me because they make it obligatory to misgender me in every sentence. And just like that, we'd spend an hour arguing over what's the "correct" Russian and how everyone should speak, because it's certainly the most important thing to discuss here now. I thought I'd better mention this, so it doesn't look like I'm ignoring the other side of учитель/учительница argument entirely. I just profoundly disagree and think that the bits of gender neutrality should be preserved, not destroyed.
@@alsy6813 i understand everything youre saying, im a Slav myself (even learnt a little bit of Russian many years ago) and a lot of what you say also applies to my language :) we have 12 declension patterns (4 for each gender) but the adjectives stay the same, so pretty much the same situation over here also, "nožnica" made me smirk, its quite humorous to say that since its mostly nonsensical :D
Please make a video explaining why Romanian is the only romance language that has the articles at the end of words, as a native sometimes I struggle writing the plural form of some words, take for example the word “mărgele” (pearls) when it is definite it becomes “mărgelele”, that just is so hard to write lmao
