Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2007, Page 110

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GENDER IN LANGUAGE CONTACT: EVIDENCE
FROM FAROESE-DANISH AND CATALAN-SPANISH
ish gender even when they use the Catalan
word. In the groups under study, the one
which has not received education in Catalan
- at least not since the beginning of their
school years - is the third generation (G3).
We predict thus that this will be the group
which will use the Spanish gender the most.
4.2.3.1. sida - f, Spanish: sida -
m; ‘AIDS’
This acronym stands for síndrome d’im-
munodeficiencia adquirida. Thus, the gen-
der of the word is given by the substantive
síndrome. In Catalan it is feminine, whereas
it is masculine in Spanish. The Catalan
word preserves the original gender, since it
was feminine in Greek: t) ouv5popf|, which
means ‘meeting, different things gathering
together’. But in Catalan, as well as in
Spanish, there are other words with phono-
logically similar suffíxes: -asme, -isme,
-itme: sarcasme (‘sarcasm’), periodisme
(‘journalism’), algoritme (‘algorithm’).
These words are always and in both lan-
guages masculine. Therefore, it seems that
the case of the feminine gender for ‘syn-
drome’, and thus for ‘AIDS’, follows a non-
expected direction for the Catalan speaker,
leaving etymology aside. This may lead the
speaker to confusion, which will be more
apparent, the higher his/her usage of Span-
ish is.
Besides, the Catalan word for ‘AIDS’ is
widely used in mass media, which in Cata-
lonia are Spanish- or Catalan-speaking. In
fact, Catalan-speaking media are relatively
new, since Catalan was prohibited in public
domains until the mid 1970s. From then on,
Catalan normalization was led mainly
through media and education. And the ef-
fect of it falls for the most part on younger
speakers and on the traditionally Catalan
ones. Therefore, it is expectable that the
youngest groups and/or those with a higher
usage of Catalan in their district show the
highest number of productions with the
Catalan gender.
Group % of Catalan gender usagc
G2 Grácia 62.50
G2 Nou Barris 72.72
G3 Grácia 81.81
G3 Nou Barris 36.36
Table 10 .sida
The most noticeable result is the low usage
of the Catalan gender by G3 in Nou Barris,
which correlates well with the prediction
stated above. This is the group with less
influence from the Catalan normalization,
as they live in a mostly Spanish-speaking
area, where mass media in Catalan have
low audience indexes, and they have not
received education in Catalan.
As for the effect of the education only in
Spanish, which should influence the whole
of G3 as predicted at the beginning of this
section, here it seems that this effect is
overridden by the effect of mass media. G3
in Grácia is actually the group with the
highest percentage of usage of the Catalan
gender. They have not received formal
education in Catalan, but nowadays they
may be acquiring at least part of what they
did not have the chance to learn at school
through the Catalan-speaking mass media.