Have you ever wondered what languages in our world today use gender pronouns? Well, in this essay you will get a glimpse of some languages that use gender pronouns and some that do not use gender pronouns from interviews that were conducted along with tables that were created from those interviews and other sources. Also, I will be talking about the history of where these languages came from and how they became to be. Some questions will be answered here in the essay to give you a better look at what languages use gender pronouns and how they are used as well. Along with gender pronouns, we will be looking at how a language illustrates the connection between an individual’s understanding of the world and the wider society within which that individual lives and how an adjective conducted from an interview fits within their gender language pronouns in comparison to the noun that was given. In the world today there are more than six thousand five hundred languages spoken.
Out of the six thousand five hundred languages spoken the most predominant ones are English, Spanish, Telugu which is part of Punjabi, and Chinese. However, the four that I chose for this essay are Spanish, Telugu, German, and Southern Sotho. These languages are mostly spoken in Germany, India, Mexico, and parts of South America, and South Africa and they all derive from many different places. For instance, the Spanish language derived from the dialect of Latin that was brought over from the Romans to the Iberian Peninsula in two hundred and ten BC (Before Christ) during the second Punic war. Years after explorers from Europe brought the language over to the new world and it began to rapidly expand to the countries that we know today that speak the language.
Spanish along with English was one of the first languages to be brought over to the new world. Another language that was first recorded and spoken throughout the eastern hemisphere of our planet was German. German derives from the Germanic family language group. The history of the language was first recorded in the 1st century BC when Germanic speakers made contact with the Romans. From there it widely spread throughout parts of Europe such as Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria where it is still spoken today. While these languages derived from different dialects, they have one thing in common.
They both use gender pronouns in their language. Spanish uses masculine and feminine gender pronouns but when speaking they mostly use masculine words. For instance, “a group of females would be called 'Latinas' and a group of males would be called 'Latinos.' However, a group of males and females of Latin American descent would revert to the masculine 'Latinos.' (Rodriguez, A1). This example shows that when talking about a group of both men and women together they refer back to the masculine gender. They refer back to the masculine language because men use to be the predominant gender in society and woman did not have the same rights as men did a long time ago. Even if there was one guy they would still be considered “Latinos”. When interviewing with my friend, I chose four nouns for her to describe to me using five adjectives for each of the nouns.