Gender: gender
| Values: | Fem | Masc | Neut |
In Khoekhoe, Gender is a feature of nominals: nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. It is also an inflectional feature of other parts of speech (adjectives, determiners), and adverbs) that mark agreement with nominals when they follow them, and of numerals when they function as nominals (e.g., ǀguis ge ge kō “one looked”). There are three values of gender: masculine, feminine, and neuter/common. The gender is represented by a nominal suffix. One noun root can be used with suffixes of different genders.
Masc: masculine gender
Nouns denoting male persons are masculine. Nominals may be also grammatically masculine, without any relation to sex.
Examples
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khoeb “man”
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ôab “son”
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ǂoab “wind”
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ǁaub “fish”
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tsēb “day (between sunrise and sunset)”
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sikhom “we (dual excl.)”, sige “we (plur. excl.)”, sakhom “we two(dual incl.)”, sage “we (plur. incl.)” , sats “you (sing.)”, sakho “you (dual)”, sago “you (plur.)”, ǁîb “he”, ǁîkha “they” (dual), ǁîgu “they (plur.)”
Fem: feminine gender
Nouns denoting female persons are feminine. Nominals may be also grammatically feminine, without any relation to sex.
Examples
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khoes “woman”
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ôas “daughter”
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ǂharis “area”
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tsēs “day (24 hours)”
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sim “we (dual excl.)”, sise “we (plur. excl.)”, sam “we two(dual incl.)”, sase “we (plur. incl.)” , sas “you (sing.)”, saro “you (dual)”, saso “you (plur.)”, ǁîs “he”, ǁîra “they” (dual), ǁîdi “they (plur.)”
Neut: neuter gender
This third gender (called common) is for nouns that are neither masculine nor feminine (grammatically) or whose reference is semantically either generic or non-specific, or both masculine and feminine (e.g., you in reference for both men and women)
Examples
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khoe-i “a person”
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ôa-i “a child”
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āro-i “a drink”
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ǂnoaxū-i “a target”
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sim “we (dual excl.)”, sise “we (plur. excl.)”, sam “we two(dual incl.)”, sase “we (plur. incl.)” , saro “you (dual)”, sadu “you (plur.)”, ǁî-i “it”, ǁîra “they” (dual), ǁîn “they (plur.)”
Gender in other languages: [bej] [bg] [cs] [cy] [el] [en] [es] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hbo] [it] [myv] [ps] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sl] [sv] [u] [uk]