Gender in English and Arabic

with Reference to Translation

by
Najat Abdul Muttalib (M.A. in Translation)
Department of Tourism
College of Administration and Economics
University of al-Mustansiria

2
 Abstract

Gender means 'kind' or 'class'. It is a grammatical category based on

forms of nouns, pronouns, and/or adjectives.

English language makes few gender distinctions between feminine and

masculine. The connection between the biological category 'sex' and the
grammatical category 'gender' is very close. For natural sex distinctions
determine English gender distinctions. Gender also makes distinctions
between animate and inanimate nouns. Moreover, there are common
gender and collective gender.

Gender ' ' in Arabic is of two kinds masculine and

feminine, and each of them could be real or tropical , i.e.
and , and and . Gender distinctions
in Arabic are clear, and there are three morphemes which marks feminine
gender in Arabic: and by its two kinds and
.

The research will deal, first, with gender and its kinds in English, and
then gender and its kinds in Arabic. Then applied discussion of gender
will be done in verses translated from Arabic into English. The last step,
as a conclusion, will be a comparison between English and Arabic
genders with references to their translation.

The most obvious points in the conclusion show, first, that English
gender is natural, whereas Arabic gender is grammatical. Second, gender
in English is more relevant to pronouns, whereas gender in Arabic is
relevant to nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives. Third, gender is
different from one language to another not only in English and Arabic,
and that is because of culture-bound.

3
1. Gender in English

1.1. Natural and Grammatical Gender

Gender in English grammar is traditionally used to

refer to a grammatical distinction that corresponds
roughly to the semantic distinction between males,
females, and sexless things (Sledd, 1959:213). This
kind of gender which Lyons (1968:283) calls “natural
gender”, where items refer to the sex of real world
entities, is a biological rather than a linguistic
classification of gender (Crystal, 1997:164), (Hartman
and Stork, 1972:93). Thus, in English, gender is
classified on some natural or semantic basis into
masculine, feminine, and neuter; so the words boy,
girl, and fan, for example, are respectively masculine,
feminine, and neuter, according to their meaning
(Fayadh,1999:54).

As for grammatical gender, there is no semantic

association between the gender of a noun and the
physical or other properties of the person or object
denoted by that noun (Lyons,1968:284). However,
grammatical gender does not play an important role in
English grammar (Hartman and Stork, 1972:93). For
example, prince: princess, or gander: goose have no
thing to do with grammar.

4
 Yet, the distinctions between male, female, and
sexless gender have some connexion with natural
distinctions, but in many cases it seams to be purely
arbitrary without any reference to natural conditions
(Jespersen,1976:188). For example, the sun takes
some times he pronoun, or certain ship takes she
pronoun.

Additionally, the gender of an English noun is

determined primarily by the personal pronoun, which
substitute for it (he for masculine, she for feminine, or
it for neuter) (Sledd,1959:213). So, with nouns for
which he or she is the usual substitute, who and that
are used as relatives; with nouns that it replaces, that
and which are usual.

To conclude, a grammatical gender is a system of

gender distinctions among masculine, feminine, and
neuter and does not roughly correspond to distinctions
among male, female, and inanimate (Sledd,1959:215),
on one hand. On the other hand, there is a
correspondence between gender distinctions and sex
distinctions in the natural system of gender (ibid.).
Thus, natural sex distinction determines English
gender distinction (Qurik and Greenbaum, 1973:89).
For example, the correlation between pronouns he/she
co-occur with who/whose, whereas it co-occur with
which.

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 1.2. Animate Gender
1.2.1. Animate single gender

Animate gender includes all the nouns for persons

and animals (Palmer,1971:87). Animate personal
gender includes masculine and feminine nouns.
Masculine nouns are replaced by ‘he’ and ‘who’;
feminine nouns are replaced by ‘she’ and ‘who’
(Aziz,1989:120).

Quirk and Greenbaum (1973:90-91) divide

personal gender into two types: “morphologically
unmarked(1) gender” such as brother: sister,
gentleman: lady, king: queen, uncle: aunt, and
“morphologically marked gender” such as, host:
hostess, duck: duchess, hero: heroine, widower:
widow, usher: usherette. Jespersen (1976:190-91)
states that there is gender for one sex that is derived
from words for the other such as, launderer:
laundress, traitor: traitress, and a more clear ending
is seen in prosecutor: prosecutrix, testator: testatrix.

As for animate (non-personal)gender, it is related to

animals, Quirk and Greenbaum (1973:92) call it
gender of higher animals such as, cock: hen, lion:
lioness, gander: goose, stallion: mare.

(1) Unmarked that is to be common and can be recognized. It versus marked

that is to have a distinctive feature to distinguish it from others (Hartman and
Stork, 1972:137).

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 Palmer (1971:189), however, argues against those
kinds of gender. In his appendix he says that these
pairs of words of the type uncle:aunt, brother:sister,
stallion:mare are a lexical feature of English not a
grammatical one, i.e. related to sex, not gender. He
adds that the words with the suffix (-ess) e.g.
princess, and duchess are also related to lexical
feature, since they are irregular, and there are no
words as doctoress or kingess (ibid.).

1.2.2. Animate dual gender

Many lexical items for animate beings do not
indicate sex such as, cousin, friend, enemy, fool, or for
animals, cat, rabbit, fish, frog, worm
(Jespersen,1976:191).

Quirk and Greenbaum (1973:91) say that this class

of gender has a number of nouns, cook, criminal,
person, professor, librarian, doctor, student ….etc.
For clarity, it is necessary to use a “gender marker” as
man student, girl friend or “sex marker” as a male
nurse, a female engineer.

Jespersen (1976:192) calls the sex marker 'an

adjective', so he sees that an adjective must be added
to lexical items, e.g. a male reader, a female cousin, a
female sparrow. He also adds that sometimes sex-
word can be combined with sex-word from another
species, e.g. peacock: peahen, cock-pheasant: hen-
pheasant, dog: otter, bitch: otter (ibid.). For human
beings he says that there are compound words, e.g.
lady friend: gentleman friend, man servant: woman
servant (ibid.).

7
1.2.3. Animate common gender

Quirk and Greenbaum (1973:91) define the

common gender nouns as intermediate nouns that
occur between personal and non-personal feature.
Nouns may be replaced by either 'he' or 'she' when
treated as personal, or by 'it', when they are treated
non-personal (Aziz,1989:120). For example, if the
mother refers to her baby, she will use he or she
according to the sex, but anyone who does not
concern emotionally with the baby will refer to the
baby by it (Quirk and Greenbaum, 1973:92).
Jespersen (1976:189) mentions a list of nouns, which
have one common word and a word for each sex:

parent father mother

monarch king queen
horse stallion mare
deer stag, hart hind

1.3. Inanimate Gender

Inanimate nouns or lower animals both are related

to the class of inanimate gender (Quirk and
Greenbaum, 1973:93); for example, both snake and
box have ‘which’ and ‘it’ as pronouns. However,
some nouns with gender markers, e.g. she-goat, he-
goat, male-frog, and hen-pheasant indicate sex.

8
 Aziz (1989:121) calls this kind of gender as lower
animals. He defines it as those nouns which are
replaced by ‘it’ and ‘which’ and are treated as
inanimate things, e.g. snake, fly ant (ibid.). Jespersen
(1976:188) refers, under the heading of gender, to
words denoting inanimate thing e.g. it, what,
something which are related to pronouns (ibid.).

1.4. Collective and Other Nouns Related to

Gender

Collective nouns are different from other nouns

in taking, as pronoun substitutes, either singular (it)
or plural (they) without changing number in the
noun e.g. army-it/they (Quirk and
Greenbaum,1973:92). Thus, they can be viewed as
personal or non-personal (Aziz,1989:120).

Quirk and Greenbaum (1973:93) mention what

they call “higher organism”. There are names of
countries which have different gender depending on
their use (ibid.). As geographical units they are
treated as inanimate, e.g. Looking at the map we see
France here, it is one of the largest countries of
Europe; or as political economic units they are
treated as feminine, e.g. France has been able to
increase her exports this year (ibid.). They add that
it is possible to place ship and other entities to this
characteristic of gender; towards these entities an
affectionate attitude is expressed, e.g. What a lovely
ship! What is she called? (ibid.)

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 2- Gender in Arabic

2.1. Grammatical and Natural Gender

Gender is known in Arabic as ' ' which

means "kind" or "sort", and this is different from '
' (2). [See al-Jerjani, 1986:48]

Arabic Gender ' ' is two kinds masculine

and feminine . The two kinds are either:
the real gender or the tropical gender
(al-Yaziji, 1985:52).
If they are classified according to nouns, they are
two:
(... -
( : Hasan) (... ) -

However, Wright (1955:23) classifies nouns

according to their gender into three classes:
masculine, feminine, and those that are both
masculine and feminine.

In Arabic masculine gender is considered the

unmarked form, and feminine gender is the marked
one; thus, what distinguishes masculine nouns or
adjectives from feminine ones is: e.g.
and :
e.g. (Hywood and Nahmad, 1965:27),
(Hasan, 1975:585).
______________________________________
(2) The proper noun is either 'personal' , i.e. a noun denoting a
person by himself/herself (or a thing by itself) e.g. Zaid, or 'generic' , i.e. a
noun denoting the kind (of an animate) e.g. is the generic name of or
is the generic name of [see Ibin Hisham,1961:96-97, and
Ibid.,1957:138].

10
 Hasan (1975:585-86) adds that there is a mark
implied, i.e. . First, it is in the three
letter words as, , (see also
Wright,1955:178) and it can be recognized when the
word is minimized as: (p.585).
Second, it can be recognized when the word
combined with a verb, an adjective, or an
administrative as (p.568):
- . - . -

2.2. Animate Gender

2.2.1. Animate single gender

Animate gender includes all the words for

persons and animals (Palmer,1971:87). This
universal sentence of Palmer can be applied to
Arabic. The Arabic masculine nouns:
... are called ‘a real masculine’, and
feminine nouns: ... are called
‘a real feminine’ (Hasan, 1975:588).

There are nouns that lacked feminine marker but

refer to female sex as, ... , Hasan (ibid.)
calls such nouns ‘semantic feminine’.
However, there are masculine nouns that have
feminine forms, as ‘successor’ and ‘very
learned’; Wright (1955:179) calls them
‘tropical feminine’. On the other side, Hasan
(1975:587) calls such nouns and others as
... ‘verbal feminine’.

11
 2.2.2. Animate dual gender
In Arabic there are certain measures that indicate
adjectives and nouns applied to male and female,
Hasan (1975: 591-93) states them:
.( ) : -
.( ) : -
.( ) : -
.( ) : -
(See also Wright, 1955:185-86) and (al-
Galayni,1:2000:78)
Moreover, we have proper nouns as .
Al-Galayni (p.77) adds nouns that have but
they are applied to masculine and feminine as:
and .

3.2.3. Animate common gender

As Arabic has only masculine and feminine
genders, so the roots above can be called common
genders, in addition to being dual ones. However, as-
Safi (1974:134) lists three columns of gender in
which he considers the first one as common gender in
Arabic and English:

Common Feminine Masculine

child girl boy

parent mother father
fowl hen cock
sheep ewe ram
(3) Here the Iraqi writer considers as a name of a female sheep, whereas the
Egyptian writer al-Galayni above considers it as a dual gender, for male and
female sheep. This proves to us that sometimes gender is related to convention
or culture-bound.

12
 Nevertheless, there are other minor kinds of
gender, which could be dual or common gender
despite of carrying ‘feminine name’, like:
‘semantic-verbal feminine’,
‘interpretive feminine’, and ‘expressive
(gnomic) feminine’ (see Hasan 1975:588-89).

2.3. Inanimate Gender

Inanimate nouns are all classified into masculine

and feminine. There are ‘tropical
masculine’ as, moon, night, door …etc.;
and ‘unreal feminine’ as, room,
desert, remembrance (Ibin Ya’ysh: 91as
cited in Fayadh, 1999:70).

Hasan (1975:587) calls

‘tropical feminine’. There are many nouns which
considered feminine “by agreement” (Fayadh,
1999:71) such as: i.e. agreement with
adjectives and sometimes verbs. The above kinds of
gender, which Hasan (1975: 588-89) mentions,
could be related to inanimate gender.

Many names of countries and towns are

considered feminine as: ; others
are originally masculine
(Wright,1955:178) [See also (Thatcher, 1958:26)].

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2.4. Collective and Other Nouns Related to
Gender
Wright (1955:160) says that collective nouns are
those denoting masculine and feminine, chiefly
animals and plants, e.g. pigeons, cattle,
locusts or grass hoppers, trees, clouds
…etc. He adds other nouns that denoting “a rational
being”, e.g. one’s people or tribe, or a
small number of men, a company of merchants
(ibid.:181), but he mentions two exceptions that are
originally masculine: men and one’s family.
Thatcher (1958:27) states that many words
which are singular in form have a collective
meaning, .e.g. rock, olives. He adds that to
indicate a single object the feminine end ( -) is
appended to such words e.g. apiece of rock or
stone, a single olive (ibid.).
Wright (1955:187) says that there are adjectives,
which are, by their signification, applicable to
females only, pregnant, barren,
suckling, having a child with her.
Hasan (1975:593) mentions the same adjectives
and says that they are peculiar to females, and they
are one of their characteristics. He adds that such
adjectives may take ‘ ’ but to drop it would
be better.

14
3. Translating Gender
Here translation of gender will be discussed from
Arabic into English. Four verses will be taken from
the Holy Quran translated by Yusuf Ali. They are the
verses (37-40) from S.XXXVI, pp. 1178-79:

( ) "
( )
( )
(

37. And a Sign for them is the Night:

We withdraw therefrom the Day, and
behold they are plunged in darkness;
38. And the Sun runs his course for a
period determined for him: that is the
decree of (Him), the Exalted in Might,
the All-Knowing. 39. And the Moon, -
We have measured for her Mansions
(to traverse) till she returns like the old
(and withered) lower part of a date-
stalk. 40. It is not permitted to the Sun
to catch up the Moon, nor can the Night
outstrip the Day: each (just) swims
along in (its own) orbit (according to
Law).
In the above verses, culture-boundness in
gender between English and Arabic is clear (v.
38-39). However, (v.37) is masculine in
Arabic as indicated by in the pronoun
whereas in English the same word is translated
genderless.

15
 Moreover, the opposite is clear in v.39 where
Arabic is genderless (see the verb ) and English
has the pronoun 'she' which indicate gender.
In v.38 one can easily recognize how the
feminine Sun in Arabic is translated into the
masculine Sun in English, and the masculine
Moon in Arabic is translated into the
feminine Moon in English (4). The pronouns that
indicated the masculine and feminine (printing in
bold above) are 'his' and 'him' in v.38, and 'her'
and 'she' in v.39 in English, and in
(v.38) and in (v.39). In V.40 there is no
reference to gender in Arabic, whereas in English
the pronoun 'it' (not like the above verses) refers
to the Sun and the Moon aside (as inanimate
things).
Finally, the translation is convinced in relation
to gender, except v.73 which can be translated as
such: 'And a Sign for them is the Night: We
withdraw the Day from it,'
____________________________________
(4) "In primitive hunting cultures the moon is frequently regarded as
male…", whereas "in agricultural traditions the moon is usually regarded as
female…" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1974, s.v. moon worship:300), so
English culture nowadays follows agriculture traditions.

On the other hand, "solar deities, gods personifying the sun, is

identified with the Supreme Deity."(Ibid., s.v. sun worship:389) The Sun is
almost always connected with power by all ancient civilization. Egyptians,
Sumerians, Akkadians, Iranians, Romans, Mexicans, and Peruvian, for
example, regarded the Sun as god, except Japanese who considered the
Sun goddess as the ruler of the world(ibid.).
Al-Tibrisi (1959:7:323) says in his interpretation of v. 78 "
" in
that the Sun is feminized since she is considered very great because of
her amount of light as the same of saying or . However, he says
that Abraham talked with the Sun in masculine gender because his
language is not Arabic (ibid.).

16
 Conclusion

(1) In English gender is natural. It means that

there is an identity between the three genders,
masculine, feminine, and neuter, and the
biological facts of the person or object, i.e.
male, female, and inanimate.
In Arabic, there are two genders, masculine and
feminine and only the animate gender is natural. It is
divided into natural (real) masculine ‘ ’ and
natural (real) feminine ‘ ’, whereas
inanimate nouns have grammatical gender and it is
divided into tropical masculine ‘ ’ and
tropical feminine ‘ ’.

(2) Very few nouns are marked for gender in

English, so gender is more relevant to pronouns. As
for Arabic, nouns are marked for gender, which are
relevant to pronouns, verbs, and adjectives. This
difference poses a problem in translation, e.g.
The tall teacher came; he/she was walking slowly.
It can be translated into either
or .

Only the pronoun in English can show whether

‘the teacher’ is masculine or feminine, and if the
second clause is omitted, the translator may not
know the teacher’s gender, apart from the text or
context.

(3) The gender of nouns in Arabic is obvious and

hardly changed, whereas in English gender cannot
be recognized without the pronouns [however that is
not always true (see the next point)], and it is easily

17
changed in accordance with emotion (as the example
of the ship in 2.4. and the baby in 2.2.3. above).

(4) English has a few nouns that take certain

morphemes to mark feminine forms, and the most
common one is (-ess) such as, hostess, poetess, and
lioness. In Arabic it has three morphemes to mark
feminine form, and
. The three morphemes are common.
sometimes could be the counterpart of the
English morpheme (-ess). The above English
feminine nouns can be rendered into: ‘ ’ and
‘ ’ but not ; it is ‘ ’. However, ‘tigress’ can
be rendered into ‘ ’(depending on culture-bound).

(5) English uses “a gender marker” more than

Arabic as a male nurse and a female nurse. They are
translated into one single word for each
. Arabic has a gender marker but only with
roots (see 3.2.2.), such as , which is used for
man and woman. As for the translator, he/she cannot
recognize whether is a man or a woman
without using the gender marker: or
, so they could be rendered respectively, a man
who uses so much perfume, or a woman who uses so
much perfume.
(6) Collective gender nouns in English usually
correspond to single gender nouns in Arabic as the
army- it/they is rendered into .

(7) If substituted by pronouns, certain nouns (as

the sun and the moon) related to convention in their
classification as masculine or feminine, e.g. the above
nouns would take 'he' and 'she' respectively, i.e. in
English. In Arabic is considered feminine and
is masculine. Thus, to translate these nouns in
18
certain text, the translator should be aware of the use
of pronouns.

19
 References

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20
 Sledd, James. (1959). A Short Introduction to
English Grammar. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and
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Thatcher, G.W. (1958). Arabic Grammar. n.p.
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).
" .( -
. "
: .
- ) ._________________________
" .(
. "
: .
.( ) .
. : .
: .( ).
. : .
( - )
. :
: .
- ) .
. . .([ ]
.
.( - ) .
: .
.( ) .
: .

21
22