Canidae Central

Kibib · Fox Joined: 04 Jan 2009 Posts: 56

in german it is

English -> German - male - female
fox -> Fuchs - Rüde - Füchsin/ Fähe
dog -> Hund - Rüde - Hündin
wolf -> Wolf - ...- Wölfin
cat -> Katze - Kater - Katze/ Kätzin

the "Renard" comes from the french where it just means fox, similar to the Reineke what is the name of the fox in german tales.

@ Wilstray: I added you on Devianart (Keiko124)

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BlueWolf · Posted: Tue May 12, 2009 3:52 pm Post subject:

UltraMetaloid wrote:

As for wolves...I'm a bit stuck on that one. The same terms are used as for dogs, but I don't like it. I think they certainly don't deserve to be called a profanity, though some may disagree with me. I want to come up with new english terms for male/female wolf. Something more dignified than 'bitch'. Any ideas?

I do like the Dutch one: 'Wolvin'. I'm not sure how you would pronounce it in English, but the 'in' is more like as 'pin' Smile

Esperanto does just put a 'in' within the word. It does work for *every* word, no exceptions. Really easy:
Lupo = (male) wolf
Lupino = female wolf
Hundo = (male) dog
Hundino = female dog

Quote:

A lot of foreign languages seem to use gender based nouns. I think German has neutral noun forms, as well as male/female. So three different forms, not counting plurality, which would make it six. I wonder why English doesn't do the male/female thing?

Because it's horrible! That means you also have to define genders for things like, house, desktop, tv, etc. I've learned both German and French, both use the gender, and it's really REALLY annoying that you have to remember what gender each word has. And nobody knows why, you just have to remember it Shocked

Quote:

Of course English is kind of a weird language any way you look at it. An English tutor I once had described it as 'A garbage dump of other languages' So many of our words were borrowed and modified versions of other languages, we must have the most unoriginal language in the world.

Oh really? I thought Dutch was a garbage of languages. We have a lot of words borrowed from both English, French and German Razz

Probably some more languages, but I can't recall them right now.

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wildstray · Wolf Puppy Joined: 05 May 2009 Posts: 44 Location: Italy

UltraMetaloid wrote:

When I first learned about foxes, I liked the term, 'vixen'. I thought, man, they have it so much better than dogs do when it comes to nicknames. I also learned that 'dogfox' or 'dog' is used for the male most commonly. Me, I think that foxes are not dogs and to call one a dog is probably a bit of a insult Razz

. But whatever, that's what they are called so I guess it has to do. Males are also sometimes refered to in british slang as 'tods' or 'renards'.

Renard in british? Shocked

As in french... intriguing!

UltraMetaloid wrote:

As for wolves...I'm a bit stuck on that one. The same terms are used as for dogs, but I don't like it. I think they certainly don't deserve to be called a profanity, though some may disagree with me. I want to come up with new english terms for male/female wolf. Something more dignified than 'bitch'. Any ideas?

I agree. Maybe she-wolf for females? It's much better that bitch Wink

UltraMetaloid wrote:

A lot of foreign languages seem to use gender based nouns. I think German has neutral noun forms, as well as male/female. So three different forms, not counting plurality, which would make it six. I wonder why English doesn't do the male/female thing? Of course English is kind of a weird language any way you look at it. An English tutor I once had described it as 'A garbage dump of other languages' So many of our words were borrowed and modified versions of other languages, we must have the most unoriginal language in the world.

In romance/neolatin languages (ex. italian, french, spanish) all nouns have a gender as there isn't a neuter noun (in the most cases the "default" gender is masculine). And there is the plurality.

UltraMetaloid wrote:

I take it your learning English as a second language, correct? Your doing really well. I'm told it's a hard language to learn as your second. Out of curiosity, how much is English used in Italy?

Yep! I learnt english as second language. I was a little bit advantaged due to my father (he worked all over the world), so he teached me some english since I was very young. And I exercise often for work reasons (I work in the ICT field) and, with pleasure, here on the web Very Happy

English is really little used here in Italy... as I said, there's much ignorance here Sad

In 1999 the government launched a campaign to encourage italians to learn english language and the computer use... this campaign was very amusing, but you can understand the cultural level of most italians looking at the tv advertising of that campaing...

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(sincerely, more than italian, I consider myself to be a "citizen of the world" ...as already Diogenes of Sinope was saying Laughing

)

UltraMetaloid wrote:

Oh yeah, by the way, you can call me Ultra for short. Everyone does.

Ok Ultra

wildstray · Wolf Puppy Joined: 05 May 2009 Posts: 44 Location: Italy

Kibib wrote:

@ Wilstray: I added you on Devianart (Keiko124)

I saw and returned the "watch", thanks! Very Happy

...and so I found out that Kibib is one of the three fox cubs saved and now living at Gut Aiderbichl Smile

BlueWolf wrote:

I do like the Dutch one: 'Wolvin'. I'm not sure how you would pronounce it in English, but the 'in' is more like as 'pin' Smile

Esperanto does just put a 'in' within the word. It does work for *every* word, no exceptions. Really easy:
Lupo = (male) wolf
Lupino = female wolf
Hundo = (male) dog
Hundino = female dog

Really simple and clean.

UltraMetaloid · Posted: Wed May 13, 2009 3:14 am Post subject:

When I first took French class in school (it was required to do at least one second language class, but I really don't remember much french from then anymore), I thought the gender nouns thing kind of odd. It makes sense for when referring to animals or such, but otherwise most of the time it just seems unneccesary. Like since when is a chair male or female?

Unless your like a certain unnamed person I know who names the computers he works with Rolling Eyes

; he calls them lady names like Betty or Linda. Hey, whatever floats his boat...

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