Some Italian Nouns Switch Gender (And Why That's Interesting)

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  • Опубліковано 27 бер 2024
  • A discussion of grammatical gender in the context of the Romance (Latin-descended) languages, with a specific focus on Italian and Romanian. I also go into the origin of some unusual (within the European context) gender features in these languages.
    I'm sorry for my pronunciation, especially of Romanian. I tried with the exact amount of effort required to neither be considered lazy nor be scolded for trying too hard and still failing.
    Sources:
    Bateman, Nicoleta; Polinsky, Maria. "Romanian as a Two-Gender Language"
    Petrucci, Peter R. 1993. Slavic features in the history of Romanian. Doctoral dissertation, USC.
    Rosetti, Alexandru. 1965. Linguistica. The Hague: Mouton.
    The film is "Life of Brian" by Monty Python. And yes, I'm aware that the clip I showed is technically about conjugations and I was technically talking about declensions: don't bully me, it's a funny *reference*.
    Written and Created by Me
    Art by kvd102
    00:00 - L'italiano
    00:20 - Grammatical Gender
    03:00 - Romanian Grammatical Gender
    04:59 - Heterogeneity
    05:53 - Latin Grammar Time
    06:49 - Conclusion
    Translations:
    Icaro Vega - Spanish
    palpatinezw - Standard Mandarin
    Leeuwe van den Heuvel - Dutch

КОМЕНТАРІ • 858

  • @eris4734
    @eris4734 Рік тому +2645

    let's go transgender words

    • @saidultima
      @saidultima Рік тому +15

      xD

    • @georgios_5342
      @georgios_5342 Рік тому +89

      Same thing I thought when I started Romanian

    • @just_a_yokai1103
      @just_a_yokai1103 Рік тому +66

      they do be Neuterbossing

    • @MsZsc
      @MsZsc Рік тому

      you dont deserve the fumo

    • @MajaxPlop
      @MajaxPlop Рік тому +51

      There are people in France that claim that some French words behave like this and they call those words "transgender nouns"

  • @mechupaunhuevon7662
    @mechupaunhuevon7662 Рік тому +1659

    I swear every romance language swears it’s the closest to Latin while everyone is way waaaay closer to each other than to Latin. I can read the Sardinian wikipedia page with no problem as a Spanish speaker but show me Dē Bellō Gallicō and I’m crying by the second page.

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +437

      completely true. all modern Romance languages are closer to each other than to Latin, but some are still closer to Latin than others are

    • @mechupaunhuevon7662
      @mechupaunhuevon7662 Рік тому +169

      @@kklein yeah barely, it’s like trying to argue which human race is closest to our chimp human common ancestor. We’re all more similar than dissimilar. The only one that really “outevolved” is French, dunno what they put in the water over there.

    • @xXJ4FARGAMERXx
      @xXJ4FARGAMERXx Рік тому +100

      @@mechupaunhuevon7662 they talk like they're drunk all the time, I mean we were both evolving for 20 centuries, so why do I pronounce 98% of letters and you only pronounce 40%??

    • @hmvollbanane1259
      @hmvollbanane1259 Рік тому +41

      @Hernando Malinche
      Germanic speaking overlords from the tribes of the Franks that conquered their land and thus probably only learned the bare necessities to be able to give orders to their subjects and were content with using simplified forms of words as long as it got their point across, at least that is my assumption (similar to what happened with English after the Norman conquest and later influx of French speaking noblemen after they had lost their holdings in continental europe in the hundred years war.
      (English is in a similar way also the odd one out for Germanic languages))

    • @dershogun6396
      @dershogun6396 Рік тому +115

      @@kklein 'All romance languages are equal but some are more equal than others' - Georgius Orwellius

  • @bogdanjovanovic5067
    @bogdanjovanovic5067 Рік тому +839

    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😅

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +165

      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

    • @bogdanjovanovic5067
      @bogdanjovanovic5067 Рік тому +53

      @@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

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +27

      @@bogdanjovanovic5067 awww thank you that's so nice :)

    • @a.n.6374
      @a.n.6374 Рік тому +19

      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.

    • @OpeNinGCA
      @OpeNinGCA Рік тому +13

      @@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

  • @JoseRodriguez-lp7rs
    @JoseRodriguez-lp7rs Рік тому +331

    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"

    • @LucaBlaLP
      @LucaBlaLP Рік тому +26

      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.

    • @AFBLYS
      @AFBLYS Рік тому +11

      @@LucaBlaLP this is the case in French too. Un vieil ami - un ami vieux

    • @LucaBlaLP
      @LucaBlaLP Рік тому +6

      @@AFBLYS Yes, you're right!
      (Don't tell my French teacher that I forgot that)

    • @AFBLYS
      @AFBLYS Рік тому +5

      @@LucaBlaLP ok I won’t, this is a secret between you and me 🤭

    • @lellab.8179
      @lellab.8179 Рік тому +21

      @@LucaBlaLP In Italian it's the same: "un amico vecchio" and "un vecchio amico"

  • @caenieve
    @caenieve Рік тому +130

    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

  • @CrysolasChymera2117
    @CrysolasChymera2117 Рік тому +523

    I like how good you pronounce all the languages you talk about [here a romanian in love with conlanging ;) ]

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +130

      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.

    • @alamacabra774
      @alamacabra774 Рік тому +31

      @@kklein dwa bartbaaateee xD

    • @very025
      @very025 Рік тому +15

      As an Italian, he didn’t do that bad for a stranger

    • @nonametherabbit8593
      @nonametherabbit8593 Рік тому +1

      let's go conlangersss

    • @primavera902
      @primavera902 Рік тому +2

      @@kklein As an Italian I thought you were Italian when I start to see the video

  • @alonsog3565
    @alonsog3565 Рік тому +366

    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!

    • @christiancristini8636
      @christiancristini8636 Рік тому +21

      Exactly what I was going to comment

    • @blackatleftismyt5001
      @blackatleftismyt5001 Рік тому +1

      Are you sure? I was always told that Italian just took the old ablative for both masculine and feminine, it would make more sense

    • @msferruzza
      @msferruzza Рік тому +38

      @@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) ...

    • @MrBondit59
      @MrBondit59 Рік тому +10

      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.

    • @oscarls4063
      @oscarls4063 Рік тому +8

      @@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.

  • @ChristianJiang
    @ChristianJiang Рік тому +189

    By the way, “braccio” doesn’t come from the dative! Many argue it’s probably from the accusative, and then the nasal ending was dropped over time

    • @unioneitaliana7107
      @unioneitaliana7107 Рік тому +14

      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.

    • @ChristianJiang
      @ChristianJiang Рік тому +6

      @@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

    • @oscarls4063
      @oscarls4063 Рік тому

      @@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

    • @paolobollo4450
      @paolobollo4450 Рік тому

      @@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

    • @ChristianJiang
      @ChristianJiang Рік тому +3

      @@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.

  • @aggressive_pizza1279
    @aggressive_pizza1279 Рік тому +59

    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!

    • @Giovis968
      @Giovis968 Рік тому +2

      Italia ama Romania .

    • @TibiHIPHOP
      @TibiHIPHOP Рік тому +1

      @@Giovis968 E noi amiamo L'Italia

    • @Giovis968
      @Giovis968 Рік тому

      @@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.

  • @CasualConlanger
    @CasualConlanger Рік тому +126

    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!

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +35

      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".

    • @CasualConlanger
      @CasualConlanger Рік тому +28

      @@kklein Yes, polygamy isn't widespread in France X)

    • @unfixgaming1006
      @unfixgaming1006 Рік тому +14

      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."

    • @sofiadri2638
      @sofiadri2638 Рік тому +1

      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

    • @reda84.
      @reda84. Рік тому +10

      @@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

  • @mrcydonia
    @mrcydonia Рік тому +72

    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.

    • @xXJ4FARGAMERXx
      @xXJ4FARGAMERXx Рік тому +8

      Why don't they just make three words like dog (neuter) doggo (male) and dogga (female)?

    • @gery8218
      @gery8218 Рік тому +13

      @@xXJ4FARGAMERXx We (kinda) have that. The cat = Die Katze (f.)
      The (male) cat = Der Kater (m.)

    • @DonnieX6
      @DonnieX6 Рік тому +16

      @@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).

    • @gery8218
      @gery8218 Рік тому +2

      @@DonnieX6 Yeah, that's why I said kinda

    • @hmvollbanane1259
      @hmvollbanane1259 Рік тому +18

      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.

  • @dancoroian1
    @dancoroian1 Рік тому +18

    Really appreciate the drawings of traditional costumes to distinguish nationalities!

  • @samuelhammons2528
    @samuelhammons2528 Рік тому +76

    6:06 Actually the “o” and “a” come from the Accusative (and later oblique) case as do the modern noun endings of regular feminine and masculine nouns.

    • @malarobo
      @malarobo Рік тому +7

      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
      @FSantoro91 Рік тому +6

      @@malarobo if that were the case, we would have had "fiumine" (from ablative flūmine) instead of "fiume" (from accusative flūmen).

    • @malarobo
      @malarobo Рік тому +11

      @@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.

    • @ludovicotriscari4536
      @ludovicotriscari4536 Рік тому +1

      @@malarobo mamma mia, sei bravissimo a spiegare e hai una grande cultura. Complimenti veramente 👏

    • @malarobo
      @malarobo Рік тому +1

      @@ludovicotriscari4536 grazie, troppo buono

  • @shaheenbekk
    @shaheenbekk Рік тому +15

    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)

  • @freakystyle1996
    @freakystyle1996 Рік тому +50

    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

    • @arielticona3269
      @arielticona3269 Рік тому +1

      That’s understandable but that last example you gave is confusing because in Latin it’s masculine "digitus, digiti"
      Also nice name

    • @lunadeargint540
      @lunadeargint540 Рік тому

      Good point, in Romanian "deget" is neuter (pl. "degete") that probably means that in Vulgar Latin this noun got the neuter gender .

  • @Cerith99
    @Cerith99 Рік тому +44

    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).

  • @hmvollbanane1259
    @hmvollbanane1259 Рік тому +70

    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

    • @dershogun6396
      @dershogun6396 Рік тому

      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

    • @hmvollbanane1259
      @hmvollbanane1259 Рік тому +1

      @@dershogun6396 Rheinisch/ Eifler Platt
      E.g. "D'r Pitter un et Marie"

    • @user-df8hl4zx2l
      @user-df8hl4zx2l Рік тому +1

      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).

    • @dershogun6396
      @dershogun6396 Рік тому

      @@hmvollbanane1259 Don't know that one because of missing proximity

    • @Luksoropoulos
      @Luksoropoulos Рік тому

      What is your dialect?

  • @yamataichul
    @yamataichul Рік тому +3

    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

  • @aminabirdi2269
    @aminabirdi2269 Рік тому +8

    this channel deserves to be massive, best linguistics channel i’ve watched

  • @FSantoro91
    @FSantoro91 Рік тому +37

    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.

    • @felicepompa1702
      @felicepompa1702 Рік тому +2

      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"

    • @mmmmmmmmmmmmm
      @mmmmmmmmmmmmm Рік тому

      This

    • @FSantoro91
      @FSantoro91 Рік тому +1

      @@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.

  • @diegomartinfernandez7730
    @diegomartinfernandez7730 Рік тому +31

    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).

  • @le_sebasti4723
    @le_sebasti4723 Рік тому +4

    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 ^^

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому

      that's so nice! thank you :)

  • @TheAimlessarrow
    @TheAimlessarrow Рік тому +3

    Thanks for mentioning Sardinian. I'm a speaker, I studied Latin in school, and I've always been impressed by the enormous similarities between the two

  • @giacomoarceri
    @giacomoarceri Рік тому +7

    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.

    • @giacomoarceri
      @giacomoarceri Рік тому +3

      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.

  • @patrickcataldo2121
    @patrickcataldo2121 Рік тому +3

    "I'll site myself as a source right there, should be enough." Absolute Mad Lad

  • @Banana_BOI1
    @Banana_BOI1 Рік тому +5

    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 👌

  • @joemiller947
    @joemiller947 Рік тому +2

    Its always nice seeing a new up and coming UA-cam 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

  • @gerbiljohnson8190
    @gerbiljohnson8190 Рік тому +2

    Here before you blow up.
    The algorithm is pushing your content to the niche linguistic community

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +1

      where it belongs lol

  • @tiny5741
    @tiny5741 Рік тому +17

    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!

  • @swaree
    @swaree Рік тому +19

    "spoken in western Istria and San Marino" lol

  • @scaevolaludens679
    @scaevolaludens679 Рік тому +5

    as a sardinian who studied latin and is learning romanian i passed the whole video repeating "oh god he's gonna go there isn't he"

  • @lbgstzockt8493
    @lbgstzockt8493 Рік тому +3

    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

  • @tomaso0
    @tomaso0 Рік тому +2

    I just know your channel is going to grow so much if you keep this content up

  • @Kaneko69.
    @Kaneko69. Рік тому +1

    This channel is extremely underrated,like the content is some well made shit,you just gained a sub.

  • @Zestieee
    @Zestieee Рік тому +1

    This is one of the most interesting videos I've ever had the pleasure to watch.
    Even though I already knew everything that was explained, I loved both the graphics (especially the colour-coding) and the narration.
    It's very uncommon to hear pronounciations this accurate in videos like these.
    I'm very much subscribing.
    Just one small note: I really don't think the Italian ambigeneric nouns' singular forms come from the Latin dative case. I believe they come from the accusative, just like all the other nouns. The fact that the desinence is the same in the dative case is most likely a coincidence.

  • @darkalligraph
    @darkalligraph Рік тому +16

    For four months on UA-cam, 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.

  • @dachimshvidobadze2286
    @dachimshvidobadze2286 Рік тому

    There's a UA-camr 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 UA-cam in 7ish years, if not more.

  • @matheusalves5160
    @matheusalves5160 Рік тому +14

    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

    • @tuluppampam
      @tuluppampam Рік тому +2

      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

  • @wildmanthegamer4259
    @wildmanthegamer4259 Рік тому +2

    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 😉

  • @alessandrodragoti
    @alessandrodragoti Рік тому

    Exceptional pronunciation of the Italian language! Keep going, love the channel!

  • @mattepac
    @mattepac Рік тому +5

    Impressed by how well you pronounce "ʎ" in "coniglio". Even some Italians struggle with pronouncing that correctly.

    • @mattepac
      @mattepac Рік тому

      It's quite uncommon, but yeah some end up saying "li" instead. Don't think it's anything a logopedist couldn't fix 😅

  • @dhue7463
    @dhue7463 Рік тому

    I instantly loved your content dude, I'm sure your channel will explode eventually

  • @jontedeakin1986
    @jontedeakin1986 Рік тому +2

    Best linguistic nerd channel

  • @The_Japanese_Fox
    @The_Japanese_Fox Рік тому

    this channel will blow up to 10k subs in the next few months because its just too good

  • @alessandro_natali
    @alessandro_natali Рік тому +8

    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 :)

  • @jakobklein8658
    @jakobklein8658 Рік тому +3

    Excellent illustrations, too!

  • @GeniialesCoOko
    @GeniialesCoOko Рік тому +1

    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

  • @watchyourlanguage3870
    @watchyourlanguage3870 Рік тому

    I sense an excellent channel… Love your work, keep at it!

  • @SubAnima
    @SubAnima Рік тому +1

    Great channel, keep it coming !!

  • @Jan-su5vm
    @Jan-su5vm Рік тому

    Woah your videos are crazy good. Glad I've found this before you got famous.

  • @kensho6263
    @kensho6263 Рік тому

    I fell in love with your channel

  • @TalysAlankil
    @TalysAlankil Рік тому +1

    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!

  • @alessandro_natali
    @alessandro_natali Рік тому +1

    You mentioned Sardinian, and gained a new subscriber 😎
    Edit: your videos are very much interested even without mentioning Sardinian 🤣

  • @netrick02
    @netrick02 Рік тому

    How does this channel not have way more subs?

  • @LinguaPhiliax
    @LinguaPhiliax Рік тому

    Only a true legend sources his own video while he's making it (either that, or an egoist)

  • @horiapetrescu7957
    @horiapetrescu7957 9 місяців тому

    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".

  • @koalbehy9760
    @koalbehy9760 Рік тому

    just found your channel. binged everything and subbed. keep up the amazing content !!!

  • @vanessarana6876
    @vanessarana6876 Рік тому

    I'm Italian and I found this video pretty interesting. Good job! 👏

  • @notskunk
    @notskunk Рік тому

    you deserve wayyy more subscribers dude

  • @johanneskiefer6912
    @johanneskiefer6912 Рік тому +1

    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.]

  • @paulmiron9583
    @paulmiron9583 Рік тому +5

    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”]”.

  • @lorenzovalsesia3721
    @lorenzovalsesia3721 Рік тому +4

    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

  • @alsy6813
    @alsy6813 Рік тому +1

    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 :)

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому

      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)

    • @alsy6813
      @alsy6813 Рік тому +2

      @@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.

    • @arsenixkikokoro
      @arsenixkikokoro Рік тому

      @@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

    • @alsy6813
      @alsy6813 Рік тому

      @@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.

    • @arsenixkikokoro
      @arsenixkikokoro Рік тому +1

      @@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

  • @Matdrox
    @Matdrox Рік тому +1

    That Romanian pronunciation is so good dude!!

  • @christiancristini8636
    @christiancristini8636 Рік тому +3

    Man I'm Italian and I have never realized in my life that some words switch gender with plural. It's just automatic

  • @antaridae
    @antaridae Рік тому

    This is high quality content, I thought it would have a million views but it just has a couple thousands

  • @christopherantonio3612
    @christopherantonio3612 Рік тому +5

    In Catalan there is a word "llum." "La llum" means light, while "el llum" means lamp. Also, in spanish radio can be "la radio" or "el radio."

  • @burningg9544
    @burningg9544 Рік тому +1

    As an italian, I am impressed by your pronunciation

  • @iain3713
    @iain3713 Рік тому

    The algorithm has blessed this channel

  • @VRavTech
    @VRavTech Рік тому +13

    fun fact, you can actually say "I bracci" so, "braccio", plural, and still masculine, is often used for arm-like inanimate stuff, such as a crane arm
    yes, isn't gendered language wonderful?

    • @vytah
      @vytah 3 місяці тому

      Similar how in Polish, the plural of "oko" (eye) is "oczy" (a former dual form) when it refers to the actual biological organ and "oka" (regular plural) when it refers to droplets of fat on the surface of a soup or holes in a net.

  • @ldvgvnbtvn
    @ldvgvnbtvn Рік тому +4

    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.

  • @ubuntuposix
    @ubuntuposix Рік тому +3

    You probably didn't want to confuse people, but in Romanian the equivalent (of arm with definite article) is
    -"brațul" for singular, and
    -"brațele" for plural.

  • @gauthierruberti8065
    @gauthierruberti8065 Рік тому +1

    You've got great accent when speaking italian!

  • @paolob.5667
    @paolob.5667 Рік тому +1

    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.)

  • @dhue7463
    @dhue7463 Рік тому

    Your accent in all these different languages is absolutely impressive

  • @xXJ4FARGAMERXx
    @xXJ4FARGAMERXx Рік тому +2

    There's a phenomenon in modern dialects of Arabic.
    A: زلمة (f), زلمتين (f), زلم (m)
    B: ورقة (f), ورقتين (f), أوراق (m)
    C: تلفزيون (m), تلفزيونين (m), تلفزيونات (f)
    D: تاج (m), تاجين (m), تاجات (f)
    The f-f-m pattern exists in old Arabic as well and the final (m) plural is called a "broken plural" where it breakes the pattern.
    The m-m-f pattern exists mostly in loanwords where you can't apply the normal Arabic patterns. So you just apply the ــات pattern to the word even though it's not feminine. More recently, native words are receiving this feminine. Why? Simply because you couldn't remember the broken plural, so you treat it like a foreign word and apply the ـات pattern even though it's not feminine. Though you shouldn't do this too much because you'll sound like a child
    A: يوم (m), يومين (m), يومات (f)
    B: قمر (m), قمرين (m), قمرات (f)
    C: باب (m), بابين (m), بابات (f)

  • @BIazy
    @BIazy Рік тому

    I'm glad to be here before you get inevitably famous

  • @zoroasper9759
    @zoroasper9759 Рік тому +2

    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"

    • @idek7438
      @idek7438 Рік тому +1

      I feel like it's more natural to say "ha perso i mignoli". Diti is hardly ever used.

  • @pluto2544
    @pluto2544 Рік тому

    Yep. This is the closest we‘ve got to Sam O‘Nella.
    Love your Videos, keep it up :D

  • @txikitofandango
    @txikitofandango Рік тому +4

    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.

  • @Lus0rius
    @Lus0rius Рік тому +1

    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.

  • @sebbo_h7121
    @sebbo_h7121 Рік тому

    Very cool pronunciation.
    Like

  • @Wasawiki
    @Wasawiki Рік тому

    Your videos are great!

  • @HalalHarun
    @HalalHarun Рік тому +1

    Hey, it'd be interesting if you'd do a fun fact about the Finnish language type of video. You'll be surprised after doing a little research on this language. Btw I'm a new subscriber and I watched all your vids, keep it up!!!

  • @diegofiorenzani9546
    @diegofiorenzani9546 Рік тому +4

    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"

  • @seamasmacliam1898
    @seamasmacliam1898 Рік тому +2

    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.

  • @clocker9321
    @clocker9321 Рік тому +2

    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

  • @hectorquinones5579
    @hectorquinones5579 Рік тому

    Love the Life of Brian reference.

  • @achim6011
    @achim6011 Рік тому +1

    I love your videos

  • @volpedo2000
    @volpedo2000 Рік тому +1

    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.

  • @FedericoChief
    @FedericoChief Рік тому +2

    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”.

  • @kramos966
    @kramos966 Рік тому +1

    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.

  • @thomasit9077
    @thomasit9077 Рік тому +2

    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.

  • @spaghettiking653
    @spaghettiking653 Рік тому

    There looks to be a good deal of truth in your analysis of where Italian gets its heterogenous words, at least according to Wiktionary lol. The usage notes on "braccio" read: "In senses 1 through 4, the plural form used is braccia, derived from Latin bracchia, the ancient neuter plural of bracchium..." (there is also a form "bracci" for other senses of the word, which is derived naturally from the normal Italian plural). Also, the notes for "dito" say that "dita" is used to refer to fingers collectively, whereas "diti" for fingers individually (but still in the plural), e.g. 'diti medi' (“middle fingers”), but 'cinque dita'.
    Btw, where did you source your Bulgarian words? I'm bulgarian, but I'd never encountered the word чедо before. Thanks for teaching me something in my own language! It was pleasant seeing my native tongue on here :P
    And I absolutely love this channel. I feel like a part of my soul died when Xidnaf stopped posting, and now I'm binging all of your videos, relieving that thousand-year itch!

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +2

      Unfortunately I know no Bulgarian, so I had to use Wiktionary for that one and then cross-check it with some other online sources to make sure it checked out; I think it's an older/less common word perhaps.
      And thank you for the support :)

  • @carmelodattola9110
    @carmelodattola9110 Рік тому +1

    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.

  • @origobaldo7090
    @origobaldo7090 Рік тому +2

    While what you said aboit italian is mostly true, some words, even some that you used as examples, are merely collective forms or collective purals. at 2:48, the plural of "l'osso" still is "gli ossi", but you can also say "le ossa". Just like one sheep, two sheep, the sheep. Italian just makes a distincion between these last two cases, also in the word for wall: "le mura della città" (city walls), because there is a certain, uncountable amount of "wall", "I muri della casa" (house/home walls), because there is a determinable amount of "walls". Then yes, some have fallen heavily out of use, but it isn't very fair to see those as the only plural forms of words. "Gli ossi", especially, still gets used.

    • @kklein
      @kklein  Рік тому +1

      Yes absolutely, I am aware of these, and there are other pairs of plurals as well, like the difference between "i corni" and "le corna" - but I felt like the video was getting complicated enough for non-italian speakers lol

    • @lunadeargint540
      @lunadeargint540 3 місяці тому

      @@kklein the mentioned nouns are neuter in Romanian sg. os, pl. oase; sg. corn, pl. coarne.

  • @eboloid3192
    @eboloid3192 Рік тому +1

    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"

  • @grumpycato8314
    @grumpycato8314 Рік тому

    Interesting topic; thanks for the information

  • @ansonkhyip
    @ansonkhyip Рік тому +2

    i was told at school that “il problema” is an example in italian where the root of the word is greek so they treat it like a loan word and slam the masc def article on it. same in french le problème. spanish and french have that gender switching plural thing going on too 🤪

  • @Thesngian
    @Thesngian Рік тому

    you should definitely have more subs.