Arabic and Hebrew are Central Semitic languages with many similarities in vocabulary and structure. But how similar are the gender of their nouns? I know they both have masculine and feminine nouns, but what is the level of correspondence between genders in these two languages? Do the same words use the same genders? This would be useful to know for a learner of these languages.
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Do you mean only cognates, or also unrelated synonyms?– Anton SherwoodSep 7, 2021 at 2:05
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I mean the same words. Dog in Hebrew and Dog in Arabic. Potato in Hebrew and Potato in Arabic. And so on.– AMLSep 8, 2021 at 13:23
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They don't have the same words, because they are different languages. Likely two Semitic languages have cognate words for ‘dog’, but less sure for ‘potato’, since potatoes were unknown to the proto-Semites. So you're interested not only in cognates but in unrelated translations?– Anton SherwoodSep 9, 2021 at 1:19
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2 Answers
This is not an answer, But maybe this could spark activity.
As a native Arabic speaker who is studying Hebrew, I have noticed that the majority of nouns I have come across in Hebrew are, weirdly enough, of the opposite gender in Arabic.
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Welcome to Language Learning! As you mentioned, this doesn't seem to answer the question but is an interesting observation nonetheless. Once you have the necessary reputation, something like this is more suited for the comments.– fi12Sep 6, 2021 at 21:04
Yes, definitely a positive correlation there!
Names of body parts that come in pairs are usually feminine in both languages.
Names of cities and countries are usually feminine in both languages. Likewise the word for "land" — קרקע/أرض.
A small grab-bag of miscellaneous words are feminine in both languages: fire, cup, well, sun... There are some 25 such "cryptofeminine" nouns in Hebrew. If you're serious, you might as well just memorize them all.
Fortunately for you, gender is usually obvious from the final letter — ة, ה, ת as the case may be (though in Hebrew beware of roots that end in ה or ת).
