Does the Fork Have a Woman's or a Man's Voice? And the Bed's Voice?

The fork, a feminine la fourchette in French, a masculine el tenedor in Spanish; the bed, masculine le lit in French, feminine la cama in Spanish... In their study, Sera et al. asked French and Spanish speakers to help prepare a film in which everyday objects come to life, hence need voices.



Participants were shown pictures of different objects and asked to choose a man's or a woman's voice for each. French speakers chose a woman's voice (la fourchette) for the fork, Spanish speakers a man's voice (el tenedor). In the case of the bed, it was exactly the other way round(le lit vs la cama). A series of studies shows the tendency to consider the grammatical gender of inanimate objects when associating characteristics (Deutscher, 2010).

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- Deutscher, G. (2010). Through the Language Glass. Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. London: arrow books.
- image of the amazing Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren via