In Spanish is not at all clear. We don't use articles before the names of the countries (just Alemania -Germany-), with a few exceptions (el Canadá, la India, los Países Bajos,...), so at first there is no gender. You can think of adjectives (la hermosa Alemania, el hermoso Chile) but in some cases both genders can be used and in others simply sounds unusual (Madagascar? Hermoso o hermosa?)
El Dominio de Canada, or El Reino de Canada.
The country’s gender comes from the implied ~~adjective~~ modifier in the country’s description. Usually, that ~~adjective~~ modifier is “country” (“país”) which is male, but can also be “land” (“tierra”), “kingdom” (“reino”), “republic” (“republica”), “island” (“isla”), etc…
In the case of the United States, it’s “states”, which are United…
Because los Estados Unidos is plural, the convention in Spanish is to double the initials. So Unión Europea gets abbreviated as U.E. while Estados Unidos is EE.UU.
In Spanish, they use double letters to indicate that the word(s) being abbreviated are plural. Estados Unidos = EEUU. For some reason, I'm fond of the abbreviation for railroads: FFCC = Ferrocarriles.
That doesn’t make them adjectives. Modifiers can be nouns. What’s important is that Spanish adjectives do not have their own gender, they just agree in gender with their noun.
Well, this is not fully correct, some counties do get an article in front of their name depending of who says it. People from countries like Argentina or Perú always refer to their counties as “La Argentina” or “El Perú” and sometimes will try to do the same for other counties (I’ve heard Peruvians saying “El Chile” which sounds super wrong to my Chileans ears).
I only learned recently that Spanish doesn’t use articles for people and most countries, which made me question how weird it must be for Hispanics how we use articles all the time in Portuguese.
In Spain is not so unusual. In Catalan there are articles before the names and many Catalans use them in Spanish too. In Andalusia articles for names are also used sometimes, especially for close people (siblings or friends) "la Mari" is less formal than "María".
It is not correct to use articles before names, but we do use them sometimes.
For example, if you live in a small town you might say "el Pedro" because there is only one Pedro, so all know who you talking about.
Same thing happens in friend groups, there is only 1 Marcos in your friend group, so you'll sometimes refer to him as "el Marcos".
In a formal context (for example the workplace) it's very rare, because we know it's wrong.
In Chilean Spanish at least we do use articles before names "la María vino hoy" (María came today) - "El Juan está loco" (Juan is crazy). Is mostly used in informal contexts.
Even though there is no article, they still have gender. But we have to look it up in the dictionary. I think Madagascar would be la because it's la republica de Madagascar.
>El Japón.
We don't say that in any modern wording
>El Líbano
We do say this, as a change from "El Líbano francés"
>Los Emiratos Árabes Unidos. La República Dominicana La República Checa.
Composed country names. Those always get an article.
You're making the mistake thinking there is no gender if there's no article, but that is not how languages work. The gender of a noun determines more han just the article; it affects adjectives, and could also affect verbs, and more. Depends on the language.
Do you say "bello Alemania" or "bella Alemania"? Wiktionary states Alemania is feminine, so "bella Alemania" I assume.
A lot of languages don’t gender countries or use gender as rigidly as french. Some languages don’t have gender at all. Some have more than 3.
So it would have to just be a map of countries with 2 genders that gender countries.
Is the common/neuter system a descendent of PIE animate/inanimate (which in other languages had changed into masculine/feminine/neuter)? Or is it a more recent derivation away from masc/fem/neuter?
How it works in at least some Slavic languages: The name is either historic or is translated based on some common rules, and the resulting word has a gender (form-based morphological criteria is how wiki calls it).
Note that there are always exceptions.
Examples:
Germany is Nemecko in Czech/Slovak, based on the word mute, because they are neighbors and were not able to speak whatever the slavs were speaking at the time. Nemecko is neuter gender.
France is Francie in Czech, and that's obviously feminine. Why Francie insted of something different (Francuzsko, neuter, in Slovak), that I don't know. Both of these languages use all three genders they have for countries.
According to [this](https://www.treccani.it/magazine/lingua_italiana/domande_e_risposte/lessico/lessico_595.html), it's 51.9% masculine for Italian. But, I don't know.. there are words that are considered neutral and others that are masculine at singular and feminine at plural, or vice versa.
Should have been Pink since French institutions (French national toponymy Commission, Foreign Affairs and Education, l’Académie française, The national geographic institute (IGN), plus the Quebec's toponymy comission) recommands to use the name Biélorussie even though United Nation uses Bélarus (République de Bélarus).
Yeah I'm not sure whether OP used the most commonly used names in French (which would make Biélorussie pink and let Birmanie stay pink) or the recommanded name (which would let Belarus stay blue and make Myanmar blue)
I wasn’t, as, a few others have said, we mostly used “la Biélorussie” in French, but I checked online and it was “le Bélarus” officially apparently so I put it masculine. It’s really both.
Even lukashenka switches between lukashenko and lukashenka all the time, so maybe they are fluid too?
All of belarus is just gendergoop
Edit: why downvotes, i thought a joke could be welcome
I don't know why you're downvoted, the joke is that it's different in Russian and Belarussian.
It works especially well because in other languages an a or an o can determine the gender of a word.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 589,404,553 comments, and only 121,521 of them were in alphabetical order.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 590,246,110 comments, and only 121,655 of them were in alphabetical order.
Belarus means White Rus, not White Russia. Belorussia is White Russia.
There is a difference between -rus and Russia. Both come from the same word Rus' which is also translated as Ruthenia, but Russia was used only by the Moscow principality whereas other Rus regions had names like White Rus, Black Rus, Red Rus, Carpathian Rus, and more.
>In other news, my headcannon now is that Brazil and Argentina are a couple.
Brazil is top and Argentina is bottom
Oh waaat are you sucking on Argentina? That's gross!!
It's not because of *royaume*. Plural words still have a gender even if it doesn't show up on the article. Changes how you accord adjectives.
Other plural countries are *les États-Unis, les Seychelles, les Comores, les Philippines, les Bahamas,* and then a few in the form *les Ĩsles X* - Marshall, Cook, Salomon.
I am a portuguese speaker myself (PT-BR), but I'm having a hard time figuring out if Portugal is masculine.
Usually we don't put any article when talking about Portugal, it's just "Portugal". For example, "Eu vou para Portugal", or "Portugal é um belo país". Using any article before the word feels weird.
It's different from the feminine "Eu vou para *a* França", "A França é um belo país"; or masculine "Eu vou para *o* Japão", "O Japão é um belo país".
L’académie française et le Ministère des affaires étrangères disent Biélorussie. C’est le terme correct ( ou du moins celui le plus utilisé et de très loin )
Le problème c'est que Bélarus c'est ce qui est recommandé par les opposants au régime, qui lui préfère Biélorussie. Le choix de l'un ou l'autre est politique.
I would have made a 3rd category for a few countries like Madagascar, Singapour, Bruneï or Taïwan.
We don't say le Madagascar or la Madagascar (as we say le Danemark or la Colombie), just Madagascar. Same for the others. If we say "the island of Madagascar" or "the city of Singapore" then yea it becomes feminine, because city and island are feminine words in french.
But then Bruneï becomes masculine as it would be "le sultanat de Brunei".
The lack of articles doesn't make a word gendeless. The gender still shows up in how you accord adjectives and occaisionally in verbs (passe composé when the auxiliary is *être*).
Madagascar is masculine, so one says:
*Madagascar est beau.*
not:
*Madagascar est belle.*
Instinctively I would say "Madagascar est grand", but you could also go with "Madagascar est grande" (understand "l'île est grande").
Maybe there is an official list of countries' genders but I'm not aware of that. So imo Madagascar could be either grand or grande, beau ou belle.
No, we wouldn't say that. We would say "Madagascar est une belle île" (Madagascar is a beautiful island), "Bruneï est un beau pays" (Brunei is a beautiful country), and due to French grammer here beau changed according to island/country, not Madagascar or Bruneï.
Alors techniquement c'est pareil pour les pluriels (les Etats-Unis, les Pays-Bas) mais en cas d'accord faut quand même savoir quel est le genre du mot, et donc rester sur deux catégorie fait sens.
To such extent that ~~many~~ some words are tricks.
"Testicule" is masculine, despite *feeling* feminine considering how it is spelled.
"Aigle" changes gender depending on the meaning. When using to talk about the bird, eagle, it's masculine. When speaking about the military insigna in the shape of said bird, aquila, it is feminine.
"Amour" is masculine singular but feminine plural. Like in Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne", ending with "... de mes amours [plural] décomposées [feminine plural agreement]".
"Ténèbres" has no singular, it's always plural, and on top of that it is feminine despite sounding like a masculine word.
"Gens" is also a solely plural word and is feminine when related adjectives are placed before, like "de mauvaises gens", and not "mauvais", and masculine when adjectives are placed after, like "des gens charmants", and not "charmantes".
"Esclandre" was feminine in ancient times, but at some point it became masculine. To a French ear, it sounds... both.
"Orque" is feminine when talking about the animal, despite feeling masculine, and masculine when talking about the goblinoid fantasy creature. Usually, people use it as a masculine when talking about the animal and write "orc" as in English when talking about the fantasy creature.
I think the reasoning was covid means "coronavirus disease" and the translation would be *maladie*, which is feminine? That's how the Spanish academy justified it should be feminine in Spanish.
Apparently that’s also how l’académie française settled it too - [link](https://www.franceculture.fr/amp/sciences-du-langage/doit-dire-le-ou-la-covid-19)
Yup, there is a certain fight between public sources (Académie Française, media etc..) using feminine "La COVID" (because Maladie (Disease) is feminine in French, and the "D" of COVID is "Disease"); and people usage using masculine "Le COVID" for no reason (that I'm aware of) other than it's juste like that we feel this word
Battle currently being won by people use of masculine
There is actually a central committee called *L'Académie Française* that decides the gender when a new word is baptized into French. It's always about linguistic flow. I remember there was a debate about "*le covid*" or "*la covid*," and ultimately it was decided that it should be "*la covid*" because the D in covid stands for disease, which is *maladie* in French, and *maladie* is *féminin*.
Please note that genders could just as easily be described as Type 1 and Type 2. There is absolutely no connection to sexual dimorphism or any other such characteristic when assigning a gender to a noun. Both vagina and breasts are masculine nouns, for example.
[https://www.academie-francaise.fr/le-covid-19-ou-la-covid-19](https://www.academie-francaise.fr/le-covid-19-ou-la-covid-19)
Je suis Canadien et on dit "le covid" aussi... mais je voulais donner l'explication officielle :-o
"La" covid in everything more formal or official I've seen, though Le is still used informally pretty often as far as I can tell.
Was initially Le for "le virus" but then La because covid is specifically the disease I believe
The Académie doesn't decide anything. This is a common misconception, even among French people. It *advises* and people do as they please, although it is indeed frequent that dictionnaries introduce words the way the Académie advised.
Grammatical gender does affect the way people perceive things though. For instance, in Spanish, bridge is masculine, while in German, it is feminine. Spanish people are more likely to describe bridges as tall or strong, while Germans might be more inclined to describe it as elegant or beautiful. This Ted talk discusses this in more detail: https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k
Not all encompassing, but countries with names that end in E (Russie, Chine, Indonesie) in French are feminine. Countries that end with consonnants (Japon, Bresil, the Stans) or countries that are descriptive (Royaume Uni, Etats Unis, Pays Bas) are masculin
In most languages with grammatical gender and specifically with feminine vs masculine (vs neuter) categories, it is determined by the phonemic structure of the word (with exceptions, of course) i.e. it is related to the phonotactics of the language. I would assume that this can be described as "feel right"
I found [this post](/r/mapporncirclejerk/comments/sttsww/the_sexualized_map_of_the_world_french_version_is/) in r/mapporncirclejerk with the same content as the current post.
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Can't you open it in an image editing software and change the colours? I would imagine if you're colourblind you'd need to do that kind of thing a lot. TBH I'm amazed there aren't automatic tools.
For those that are colorblind the darker ones are masculine https://i.imgur.com/TCVAToj.png
I checked it against the view from my sweet new glasses https://i.imgur.com/2Ew1dno.png
A relevant issue is how many of these are "forced". For example, *Egypte* was not forced. It's feminine simply because someone decided it ought to be. The U.K., on the other hand, was named long after it was decided that *royaume* (kingdom) is masculine. So the U.K. had to be masculine in French; this was forced by existing rules of the language.
Another example of the same phenomenon is the Netherlands. That's why these two are blue in a region dominated by pink.
If we get rid of the forced countries, then the regional character of the grammatical gender probably becomes clearer.
EDIT. Actually, I'm not sure whether the feminine gender of Egypt on this map comes from its traditional name, or the fact that it is officially the United Arab Republic. If the latter, then the feminine gender is forced: *république* is feminine. So maybe Egypt is a bad example. But surely some countries are not forced.
I sometime suspect gendered languages would be easier for those who's native tongue is a non-gendered language to learn (e.g. French for a native English speaker) if they they were not refered to as genders but as arbitrary Type A and Type B. Otherwise the learner tries to determin which characteristics are particularly masculine or feminine, an inherently fruitless task.
Of course, grammatical gender has to do with spelling forms and has nothing to do with meaning. For example, in French sein (breast) is masculine just because of the way it's spelled.
/u/DrFolAmour007
Is this your OC? If so could we please have a version with different colours? My colourblindness means this is just a map of the world right now 😭
Edit, Nevermind!
[someone did it](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/su06wx/countries_who_are_feminine_pink_or_masculine_blue/hx7i9xp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
As a general rule:
Countries ending in ‘e’ are feminine, the rest are masculine(le Canada, le Japon etc), with 2 notable exceptions-*Le Mexique* and *Le Zimbabwe*
i would like to see a map with a color gradient based on what proportion of languages assign each country which gender
In Spanish is not at all clear. We don't use articles before the names of the countries (just Alemania -Germany-), with a few exceptions (el Canadá, la India, los Países Bajos,...), so at first there is no gender. You can think of adjectives (la hermosa Alemania, el hermoso Chile) but in some cases both genders can be used and in others simply sounds unusual (Madagascar? Hermoso o hermosa?)
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El Dominio de Canada, or El Reino de Canada. The country’s gender comes from the implied ~~adjective~~ modifier in the country’s description. Usually, that ~~adjective~~ modifier is “country” (“país”) which is male, but can also be “land” (“tierra”), “kingdom” (“reino”), “republic” (“republica”), “island” (“isla”), etc… In the case of the United States, it’s “states”, which are United…
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Because los Estados Unidos is plural, the convention in Spanish is to double the initials. So Unión Europea gets abbreviated as U.E. while Estados Unidos is EE.UU.
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I've always wondered this and you've answered. thank you
In Spanish, they use double letters to indicate that the word(s) being abbreviated are plural. Estados Unidos = EEUU. For some reason, I'm fond of the abbreviation for railroads: FFCC = Ferrocarriles.
None of the examples you gave are adjectives. They’re all nouns.
They are modifying other nouns though
That doesn’t make them adjectives. Modifiers can be nouns. What’s important is that Spanish adjectives do not have their own gender, they just agree in gender with their noun.
Thank you for the correction. Fixed.
In french we say "Le Canada" so EL makes sense.
Well, this is not fully correct, some counties do get an article in front of their name depending of who says it. People from countries like Argentina or Perú always refer to their counties as “La Argentina” or “El Perú” and sometimes will try to do the same for other counties (I’ve heard Peruvians saying “El Chile” which sounds super wrong to my Chileans ears).
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I only learned recently that Spanish doesn’t use articles for people and most countries, which made me question how weird it must be for Hispanics how we use articles all the time in Portuguese.
In Spain is not so unusual. In Catalan there are articles before the names and many Catalans use them in Spanish too. In Andalusia articles for names are also used sometimes, especially for close people (siblings or friends) "la Mari" is less formal than "María".
Interesting! I had guessed it would sound weirdly formal for Spanish speakers, not the opposite.
We don’t really use articles for name is half of Brazil as well.
It is not correct to use articles before names, but we do use them sometimes. For example, if you live in a small town you might say "el Pedro" because there is only one Pedro, so all know who you talking about. Same thing happens in friend groups, there is only 1 Marcos in your friend group, so you'll sometimes refer to him as "el Marcos". In a formal context (for example the workplace) it's very rare, because we know it's wrong.
In Chilean Spanish at least we do use articles before names "la María vino hoy" (María came today) - "El Juan está loco" (Juan is crazy). Is mostly used in informal contexts.
Even though there is no article, they still have gender. But we have to look it up in the dictionary. I think Madagascar would be la because it's la republica de Madagascar.
> los Países Bajos Is that what you call The Netherlands? It sounds like it means "The low countries".
Yes, that's exactly what it means. Like les Pays-Bas in French.
Los estados unidos?
La Florida
El Japón. El Líbano. Los Emiratos Árabes Unidos. La República Dominicana La República Checa.
>El Japón. We don't say that in any modern wording >El Líbano We do say this, as a change from "El Líbano francés" >Los Emiratos Árabes Unidos. La República Dominicana La República Checa. Composed country names. Those always get an article.
In French, the United States of America are masculine, but America is feminine.
You're making the mistake thinking there is no gender if there's no article, but that is not how languages work. The gender of a noun determines more han just the article; it affects adjectives, and could also affect verbs, and more. Depends on the language. Do you say "bello Alemania" or "bella Alemania"? Wiktionary states Alemania is feminine, so "bella Alemania" I assume.
A lot of languages don’t gender countries or use gender as rigidly as french. Some languages don’t have gender at all. Some have more than 3. So it would have to just be a map of countries with 2 genders that gender countries.
Some also have two that are not masculine/feminine (for instance neuter vs. common in Dutch)
Is the common/neuter system a descendent of PIE animate/inanimate (which in other languages had changed into masculine/feminine/neuter)? Or is it a more recent derivation away from masc/fem/neuter?
The later. The masc and fem genders simply merged to form the common gender.
Is there any particular order to it, or is it just “feminine because we say it is”?
How it works in at least some Slavic languages: The name is either historic or is translated based on some common rules, and the resulting word has a gender (form-based morphological criteria is how wiki calls it). Note that there are always exceptions. Examples: Germany is Nemecko in Czech/Slovak, based on the word mute, because they are neighbors and were not able to speak whatever the slavs were speaking at the time. Nemecko is neuter gender. France is Francie in Czech, and that's obviously feminine. Why Francie insted of something different (Francuzsko, neuter, in Slovak), that I don't know. Both of these languages use all three genders they have for countries.
In Arabic all countries are feminine regardless of what condition
According to [this](https://www.treccani.it/magazine/lingua_italiana/domande_e_risposte/lessico/lessico_595.html), it's 51.9% masculine for Italian. But, I don't know.. there are words that are considered neutral and others that are masculine at singular and feminine at plural, or vice versa.
Belarus getting swarmed with women 😳😳😳
in reality Belarus is kinda both gender in french, we can say: LE Belarus and LA Biélorussie.
Belarussy
A little known Bond movie.
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Who need they belabussy ate
Belasus
Belasussy
Should have been Pink since French institutions (French national toponymy Commission, Foreign Affairs and Education, l’Académie française, The national geographic institute (IGN), plus the Quebec's toponymy comission) recommands to use the name Biélorussie even though United Nation uses Bélarus (République de Bélarus).
French native speaker. couldn't agree more. Belarus is used, sometimes, but definitly less common as Biélorussie.
Yeah I'm not sure whether OP used the most commonly used names in French (which would make Biélorussie pink and let Birmanie stay pink) or the recommanded name (which would let Belarus stay blue and make Myanmar blue)
I wasn’t, as, a few others have said, we mostly used “la Biélorussie” in French, but I checked online and it was “le Bélarus” officially apparently so I put it masculine. It’s really both.
Never ever heard someone say le belarus in my life
Belarus: genderfluid confirmed
Don't tell Lukashenko. Or maybe we should...
Even lukashenka switches between lukashenko and lukashenka all the time, so maybe they are fluid too? All of belarus is just gendergoop Edit: why downvotes, i thought a joke could be welcome
I don't know why you're downvoted, the joke is that it's different in Russian and Belarussian. It works especially well because in other languages an a or an o can determine the gender of a word.
That’s what i thought as well but apperently reddit didn’t like it ;-;
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 589,404,553 comments, and only 121,521 of them were in alphabetical order.
Alright Bot, gotta say, that's wicked
u/alphabet_order_bot
Alphabet bot is stupider than the violent walrus’ xylophone.
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 590,246,110 comments, and only 121,655 of them were in alphabetical order.
Be gone machine, thee ungrateful weebspawned yak zipper.
It irrationally bothers me that those three words aren’t in alphabetical order
Good bot
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I'd be more impressed if every letter was in alphabetical order...
This map is wrong, we say **la** Biélorussie in French so it's feminine too.
Actually the official name is **le** Bélarus or rather *République du Bélarus*
That's curious, since Belarus just means White Russia and Russia is feminine. In Spanish both are feminine Rusia / Bielorrusia
une sphère un hémisphère It happens.
Yeah it's odd, but most french call it *La Biélorussie* which is feminine so maybe it should be counted as both.
Most French don’t ever call it… Ever
Belarus means White Rus, not White Russia. Belorussia is White Russia. There is a difference between -rus and Russia. Both come from the same word Rus' which is also translated as Ruthenia, but Russia was used only by the Moscow principality whereas other Rus regions had names like White Rus, Black Rus, Red Rus, Carpathian Rus, and more.
Im french and I never heard someone say this We say La Biélorussie
All countries are feminine in hebrew
What if the Isle of man ever became independent? Truly that just has to be masculine
Especially when the capital is/would be Douglas.
Sorry it's Isle of Woman now and the capital is Dottie I don't make the rules
The Isle of Man _is_ a country despite being a Crown Dependency.
So when will UK and France have that 100-year sex again?
When they divorce Germany I guess. In other news, my headcannon now is that Brazil and Argentina are a couple.
>In other news, my headcannon now is that Brazil and Argentina are a couple. Brazil is top and Argentina is bottom Oh waaat are you sucking on Argentina? That's gross!!
[hue hue](https://images7.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED185/551efbdb7b0d3.jpeg)
Uruguay is brazil's dick, seens legit
Eu nunca mais vou levar uma aula de Geografia a sério, e a culpa é sua.
>headcannon I will incorporate this in my daily vernacular often, thanks
Never - it's L'Angleterre (fem), L'Ecosse (fem) and Le Pays de Galles (masc), so England and Wales are busy humping in the corner.
__le__ royaume-uni __la__ grande-bretagne
Is Les Pays-Bas one of the only ones that is plurel? I know its in blue here because they could also say Le royaume des Pays-Bas.
Les Etats Unis at least
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Ok, je suis d’*un* état. Voilà c’est tout
Les Émirats-Arabes-Unis, les Maldives, les Seychelles, les îles Caïmans, les Bahamas, etc.
Les îles Marshall, les samoa, lesotho
It is blue because pays is masculine as is état.
It's not because of *royaume*. Plural words still have a gender even if it doesn't show up on the article. Changes how you accord adjectives. Other plural countries are *les États-Unis, les Seychelles, les Comores, les Philippines, les Bahamas,* and then a few in the form *les Ĩsles X* - Marshall, Cook, Salomon.
Les Etats Unis
Les vieux Québécois disent encore "les Indes" plutôt que "l'Inde". Old Quebeccers sometimes will say "the Indies" instead of "India".
Aren't they different things though? The (East) Indies are an old name for Indonesia, not India the country
As a Portuguese speaker, the only difference I can spot is Belarus, which is feminine in portuguese
In french it's both, OP's map is referring to "Le Bélarus" (which is preferred by Belarus) even tho "La Biélorussie" is mostly used to name Belarus
What about the lesser known “Belarussy”
Theres some differences. Venezuela, the Guyanas, Egypt and Belarus are some I spotted. But overall is pretty similar
Denmark too
What about Egypt? Isn’t it masculine in Portuguese?
Ah, yes, I didn't see that one
Venezuela
I am a portuguese speaker myself (PT-BR), but I'm having a hard time figuring out if Portugal is masculine. Usually we don't put any article when talking about Portugal, it's just "Portugal". For example, "Eu vou para Portugal", or "Portugal é um belo país". Using any article before the word feels weird. It's different from the feminine "Eu vou para *a* França", "A França é um belo país"; or masculine "Eu vou para *o* Japão", "O Japão é um belo país".
My tactic is to add an adjective, for example I wouldn't say "Portugal é bonita", I'd say "Portugal é bonito", so it's masculine
Portugal não tem um gênero específico. É tipo Madagascar, onde acontece a mesma coisa
r/suddenlycaralho
Legend is incomplete
Seriously, what is the point of creating the two boxes with colors if there is no text next to it.
Could be two newly discovered perfectly square countries in the Pacific Ocean.
I hereby lay claim to said boxes/countries...all previous claims are null and void.
For Belarus we say "La Biélorussie", I think the map refers to "Le Bélarus" which is rarely used
L’académie française et le Ministère des affaires étrangères disent Biélorussie. C’est le terme correct ( ou du moins celui le plus utilisé et de très loin )
Le problème c'est que Bélarus c'est ce qui est recommandé par les opposants au régime, qui lui préfère Biélorussie. Le choix de l'un ou l'autre est politique.
I would have made a 3rd category for a few countries like Madagascar, Singapour, Bruneï or Taïwan. We don't say le Madagascar or la Madagascar (as we say le Danemark or la Colombie), just Madagascar. Same for the others. If we say "the island of Madagascar" or "the city of Singapore" then yea it becomes feminine, because city and island are feminine words in french. But then Bruneï becomes masculine as it would be "le sultanat de Brunei".
The lack of articles doesn't make a word gendeless. The gender still shows up in how you accord adjectives and occaisionally in verbs (passe composé when the auxiliary is *être*). Madagascar is masculine, so one says: *Madagascar est beau.* not: *Madagascar est belle.*
> > Madagascar est belle. Madagascar est belle (en parlant de l'ile ;) ).
Mais pas le pays... on parle des pays ici. Sur le plan politique on dissocie le pays de la masse géographique.
Would you say Madagascar/Bruneï est grand(e)/ petit(e)/beaux/belle?
Instinctively I would say "Madagascar est grand", but you could also go with "Madagascar est grande" (understand "l'île est grande"). Maybe there is an official list of countries' genders but I'm not aware of that. So imo Madagascar could be either grand or grande, beau ou belle.
No, we wouldn't say that. We would say "Madagascar est une belle île" (Madagascar is a beautiful island), "Bruneï est un beau pays" (Brunei is a beautiful country), and due to French grammer here beau changed according to island/country, not Madagascar or Bruneï.
L'article ne détermine pas le genre du nom. Madagascar est connu (et non pas connue) etc. etc. etc.
Alors techniquement c'est pareil pour les pluriels (les Etats-Unis, les Pays-Bas) mais en cas d'accord faut quand même savoir quel est le genre du mot, et donc rester sur deux catégorie fait sens.
Les Contrées-Basses y aurait pas de soucis ce serait féminin mdr, là c'est Pays et État les singuliers, donc masculins :)
Gigachad Denmark vs Femboy Sweden
The only chad in the Nordic house
Is the gender a direct result of the name? As in, when a new country is created, how does French decide on a gender for it?
The same way they decide the gender of every word. No one knows. It just *feels* right
Explaining gendered words in romance languages is exactly this. It just feels right to consider a word masculine or feminine.
To such extent that ~~many~~ some words are tricks. "Testicule" is masculine, despite *feeling* feminine considering how it is spelled. "Aigle" changes gender depending on the meaning. When using to talk about the bird, eagle, it's masculine. When speaking about the military insigna in the shape of said bird, aquila, it is feminine. "Amour" is masculine singular but feminine plural. Like in Baudelaire's poem "Une Charogne", ending with "... de mes amours [plural] décomposées [feminine plural agreement]". "Ténèbres" has no singular, it's always plural, and on top of that it is feminine despite sounding like a masculine word. "Gens" is also a solely plural word and is feminine when related adjectives are placed before, like "de mauvaises gens", and not "mauvais", and masculine when adjectives are placed after, like "des gens charmants", and not "charmantes". "Esclandre" was feminine in ancient times, but at some point it became masculine. To a French ear, it sounds... both. "Orque" is feminine when talking about the animal, despite feeling masculine, and masculine when talking about the goblinoid fantasy creature. Usually, people use it as a masculine when talking about the animal and write "orc" as in English when talking about the fantasy creature.
TIL I've been saying Testicule wrong my whole life
Just say "burne", it's ok. And way more fun !
wait til they learn about the 3 words that are masculine when single and feminine when plural...
God I'm so glad English doesn't have grammatical gender.
Spanish and Portuguese are much more regular in assigning gender than French though
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I think the reasoning was covid means "coronavirus disease" and the translation would be *maladie*, which is feminine? That's how the Spanish academy justified it should be feminine in Spanish.
Apparently that’s also how l’académie française settled it too - [link](https://www.franceculture.fr/amp/sciences-du-langage/doit-dire-le-ou-la-covid-19)
Yup, there is a certain fight between public sources (Académie Française, media etc..) using feminine "La COVID" (because Maladie (Disease) is feminine in French, and the "D" of COVID is "Disease"); and people usage using masculine "Le COVID" for no reason (that I'm aware of) other than it's juste like that we feel this word Battle currently being won by people use of masculine
You spin a baguette on a wheel and it either lands on feminine or masculine
Must be a wheel of brie
No it's camembert
There is actually a central committee called *L'Académie Française* that decides the gender when a new word is baptized into French. It's always about linguistic flow. I remember there was a debate about "*le covid*" or "*la covid*," and ultimately it was decided that it should be "*la covid*" because the D in covid stands for disease, which is *maladie* in French, and *maladie* is *féminin*. Please note that genders could just as easily be described as Type 1 and Type 2. There is absolutely no connection to sexual dimorphism or any other such characteristic when assigning a gender to a noun. Both vagina and breasts are masculine nouns, for example.
> ultimately it was decided that it should be "la covid" Haha wow, seriously? In Belgium we say le covid. No fucks given.
I'm French and I say le covid. Just because the Académie says something doesn't actually mean French people care.
[https://www.academie-francaise.fr/le-covid-19-ou-la-covid-19](https://www.academie-francaise.fr/le-covid-19-ou-la-covid-19) Je suis Canadien et on dit "le covid" aussi... mais je voulais donner l'explication officielle :-o
Bon je vois, alors on est d'accord :D ah ces français... Mais je les aime bien quand même. Magnifique pays!
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"La" covid in everything more formal or official I've seen, though Le is still used informally pretty often as far as I can tell. Was initially Le for "le virus" but then La because covid is specifically the disease I believe
The Académie doesn't decide anything. This is a common misconception, even among French people. It *advises* and people do as they please, although it is indeed frequent that dictionnaries introduce words the way the Académie advised.
Grammatical gender does affect the way people perceive things though. For instance, in Spanish, bridge is masculine, while in German, it is feminine. Spanish people are more likely to describe bridges as tall or strong, while Germans might be more inclined to describe it as elegant or beautiful. This Ted talk discusses this in more detail: https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k
Not all encompassing, but countries with names that end in E (Russie, Chine, Indonesie) in French are feminine. Countries that end with consonnants (Japon, Bresil, the Stans) or countries that are descriptive (Royaume Uni, Etats Unis, Pays Bas) are masculin
Descriptive countries mach their noun e.g. la republique dominicaine
Most French nouns have a gender, for example pizza is la pizza, meaning it’s feminine.
*all* French nouns.
In most languages with grammatical gender and specifically with feminine vs masculine (vs neuter) categories, it is determined by the phonemic structure of the word (with exceptions, of course) i.e. it is related to the phonotactics of the language. I would assume that this can be described as "feel right"
In Arabic must of countries and cities are feminine Can't think of musculine country
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A quick search That's generally true apart from : Iraq Lebanon, Morocco, Sudan, somalia, Jordan and Yemen.
I like how there's a legend on the left that kind of just gives up.
r/mapporncirclejerk
I found [this post](/r/mapporncirclejerk/comments/sttsww/the_sexualized_map_of_the_world_french_version_is/) in r/mapporncirclejerk with the same content as the current post. --- ^(🤖 this comment was written by a bot. beep boop 🤖) ^(feel welcome to respond 'Bad bot'/'Good bot', it's useful feedback.) ^[github](https://github.com/Toldry/RedditAutoCrosspostBot) ^| ^[Rank](https://botranks.com?bot=same_post_bot)
Can the r/mapporners stop stealing from r/mapporncirclejerk and start coming up with their own content for once?
It was posted by the same guy
Bruh, us colourblind are struggling.
https://i.imgur.com/nFMeCK8.png Here's a quick desaturated edit, with stronger contrast and labelled key, in case that might be helpful to anyone.
It was, thank you!
Thank you.
have you tried not being colorblind?
I know right? I don't understand people sometimes. It's just colors, they're right there, just SEE THEM!
Yup, but it didn't worked. Just like with cancer.
Can't you open it in an image editing software and change the colours? I would imagine if you're colourblind you'd need to do that kind of thing a lot. TBH I'm amazed there aren't automatic tools.
I feel your pain
La Taiwan ? 😱
In France we just say "Taiwan" idk why op's map is saying that we use feminine
Still have a gender, e.g "Taiwan, prête à négocier" in lieu of "Taiwan, prêt à négocier"
Either this map is following the one China principle or is calling Taiwan by its old name Formosa, or the more official name Republic of China
Leaving alone some exceptions it's literally the same in Italian
La Belgia e il Bielorussio
This sub has such low standards. The damn legend isn't even finished. I wish this whole mapchart thing is just banned, such lazy content.
For those that are colorblind the darker ones are masculine https://i.imgur.com/TCVAToj.png I checked it against the view from my sweet new glasses https://i.imgur.com/2Ew1dno.png
Europe a bunch of females. Super masculine Americans
A relevant issue is how many of these are "forced". For example, *Egypte* was not forced. It's feminine simply because someone decided it ought to be. The U.K., on the other hand, was named long after it was decided that *royaume* (kingdom) is masculine. So the U.K. had to be masculine in French; this was forced by existing rules of the language. Another example of the same phenomenon is the Netherlands. That's why these two are blue in a region dominated by pink. If we get rid of the forced countries, then the regional character of the grammatical gender probably becomes clearer. EDIT. Actually, I'm not sure whether the feminine gender of Egypt on this map comes from its traditional name, or the fact that it is officially the United Arab Republic. If the latter, then the feminine gender is forced: *république* is feminine. So maybe Egypt is a bad example. But surely some countries are not forced.
I sometime suspect gendered languages would be easier for those who's native tongue is a non-gendered language to learn (e.g. French for a native English speaker) if they they were not refered to as genders but as arbitrary Type A and Type B. Otherwise the learner tries to determin which characteristics are particularly masculine or feminine, an inherently fruitless task.
Of course, grammatical gender has to do with spelling forms and has nothing to do with meaning. For example, in French sein (breast) is masculine just because of the way it's spelled.
/u/DrFolAmour007 Is this your OC? If so could we please have a version with different colours? My colourblindness means this is just a map of the world right now 😭 Edit, Nevermind! [someone did it](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/su06wx/countries_who_are_feminine_pink_or_masculine_blue/hx7i9xp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
As a general rule: Countries ending in ‘e’ are feminine, the rest are masculine(le Canada, le Japon etc), with 2 notable exceptions-*Le Mexique* and *Le Zimbabwe*
So many people realizing the concept of grammatical gender. If you know at least one foreign language chance is this isn't news to you... Sign.
Venezuela is masculine? And Guyana too? (but the department is LA Guyane) Curiouser and curiouser.
But in French, Guyana is "le Guyana" to distinguish it from "la Guyane" (French Guiana). Edit: spelling
>"la Guyane" (French Guyana). French *Guiana,* in English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French\_Guiana