She/Her. It is bad luck to do otherwise. Don't want to incur Neptune's wrath do we? Using It to refer to a ship is just not worth it in regards to risk analysis.
In French and other languages with grammatical gender, the pronoun does match the noun's gender. There is no word for "it" in French, only words for "that" that can be translated as it. Elle and il can also be translated as it, since in English we don't call a table she
Among linguists, this is known as the ‘feminine of reference”. In the language, which has no neuter gender, the feminine pronoun (sí) is generally used for modes of transport (boats, shops, cars, trains, etc.) regardless of the gender of the noun. Just as in English, the ‘feminine of reference’ is also used for countries and rivers (which, in Irish, are often feminine). There is also a ‘masculine of reference’. For example, the weather (which is a feminine noun in Irish ) is referred to by the masculine pronoun (sé). Tá sé go breá. = It is fine.
Future video idea: I have always been interested in the gender of countries. Which countries are motherland and which countries are fatherland? Or are countries more flexible than that?
As a sailor myself, I will always use she when refering to ships. Hearing ships referred to as it doesn't sound right to my ears. Working on a ship there is a specifc life and culture which doesnt exist on shore. To me calling a ship she is just a way of personifying that in a way that seems natural, like how emotional attachment was mentioned in the video. And refering to a ship as it, while intended for a good cause of gender equality, almost seems to take away that life and personification away from the ship; making her seem cold and lifeless onboard a place which needs more warmth and life. Bear in mind you can spend months at sea, sometimes with very little contact with loved ones, and to this day the vast majority of sailors are male (definitely an issue there as to why less women see it as choice, and something which needs to be addressed), and as the majority of people are heterosexual, the person they miss most will likely be a female partner which helps reinforce calling a ship she, as many will be missing the most important woman in their life. Tho obviously this isnt the be all and end all, I'm gay myself and as mentioned for myself a ship will always be she, and I'm sure most sailors regardless of sexuality don't want to date a ship. However combined with the previous point is my theory of why the naming trend arose and is still the norm within the English speaking world, especially within the maritime industry, where English is standard for communication. While I don't see any contradiction between gender equality and refering to ships as she, others will see differently and thats perfectly fine as we all have our own beliefs, interpretations and priorities, and respect for you for standing up for a good cause regardless. On a more practical note, I also see it as causing a little bit of confusion for non-native English speakers. Tho in my experience (albeit in the maritime industry) it ends up just being for just a moment followed something like "Huh, you call ships she? You Brits are funny" if they didn't know already.
I don't see why we can't refer to ships as she and be gender neutral tbh, it's language. (Just please don't reveal how internalized misogyny still is by making dumb jokes about women)
@@rheiagreenland4714 Tbh, it is that way; no one thinks of a ship or boat as actually being female or male regardless of pronouns or even their name (HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS George VI come to mind). Tho I very much agree, jokes along the lines of "well just like women, ships required alot of maintenance" are just lazy and in bad taste.
In portuguese we use both, I think. "he" for Navio (Ship) and Barco (Boat) and "she" for Embarcação (Vessel). We also have Nave and Nau, just like Latin and Greek, although Nave usualy refers to a Spaceship (Espaçonave [she]) or an Airship (Aeronave[she]/avião (Airplane) [he]) and Nau [she] is a specific type of ship.
@@mikitz Well, it means the Indoeuropeans were seafarers (or at least lake- or riverfarers). Otherwise they would not have needed a word for the concept. Linguistic analysis is how we (think we) know that the horse was important in Indoeuropean culture.
Interesting! In Portuguese we used nau (obsolete, at least in Brazil), but we call a ship as "o navio", the male noun. Meanwhile, a flying ship is called by its female noun "a nave", "a nave espacial", "a espaçonave", but never the male noun. Exception, airship, that we call "o dirigível", something roughly translatable as "driveable".
I'm not a native English speaker so I was surprised when I learned that English speakers regularly use ''she/her'' for ships, I thought it was something only pirates and sailors did and that most people just called them an ''it'' as in all other inanimate objects.
The four main Romance languages don't have any word for "it". We use "he" and "she" according to the same gender we use for the article of the given innanimate object. "Le tableu est bleu" ➡️ "Il est bleu" (literaly _"he_ is blue")
I would argue that using masculine and feminine pronouns ("il" and "elle" in French, for example) to refer to inanimate objects of that particular gender isn't really saying "he/she" so much as it's saying "it [masculine]" and "it [feminine]"
@@KingsleyIIIYou could argue that, but your argument makes no sense because the concept does not exist in these languages. You might as well argue that a shazbit and a gorff are really both just blerghs anyway.
My parents have this poster at home called "why is a ship called she" and it's basically just a list of women stereotypes, a lot of them were on the Navy article actually
Consider that the ship has long been an all-male milieu, with sailors going for long periods without seeing women. It shows in sightings of mermaids, and arguably in giving ships the female gender. Here's a question to start a debate: what's the EXACT difference between a "boat" and a "ship"? (As the size of boats increase, at what point do they become ships?)
When a boat is big enough you think of it as a ship, then you call it a ship. That is, unless you're not the captain, and the captain disagrees. Also, there's the exception of unless you're being affectionate, and refer to your 100,000 ton Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier as a boat the same way as your beloved bull mastiff is a pupper in your eyes.
Um, actually, the gender of a noun DOES usually dictate the pronoun in gendered languages, including French. You *can* refer to them as "it" if they're objects, but grammatically, you *should* refer to them by their gender.
In Portuguese and Spanish, you pretty only use a gender-neutral donstrative pronoun when you really don't know the gender of the thing your talking about, or when you are refering to substantive phrase.
There is a trend in English of associating inanimate objects people are emotionally attached to, and ascribe power to, with female pronouns. Countries, for example, tend to be considered "female". The song "God Bless America", for example, uses the line "Stand beside her, and guide her". While "Fatherland" is used in other languages, like German, in English, "motherland" tends to be more common. Other locations, like cities, are also referred to as "she". At least in the US, guns are more likely to be called "she" or given female names (referenced in Full Metal Jacket). I've also heard places like mountain ranges referred to as "she", but this could be an extension of "Mother Earth". This could be due to the majority of namers in history being straight males, who would naturally form close emotional connections with a female partner, so extended this to objects to which they were emotionally connected. Though, I don't want to read too much into it without evidence, and it's only a theory now. It also doesn't explain "Fatherland" in German.
It's interesting, cos in my native arabic, a naval vessel is always a she but a civilian vessel is always a he. Makes it easy for you to tell if someone's in the navy or is a fisherman, cos a fisherman might call a naval destroyer a he by accident and vice versa.
The steam locomotive Sir Nigel Gresley is usually referred to as she. My motorbike is called Rufus because he's red. I gave him a male name because I don't ride females
I would name my boat Ea-Nasir. It means "protected by Ea", a Mesopotamian sea god...and also the name of that shady copper merchant during the Bronze Age. It would be funny because people know him because of memes, but it is actually an appropriate name for a boat.
In Portuguese, the more common words for "ship" are masculine: 'o navio', 'o barco'. We can refer to them with a feminine word, such as 'a embarcação'. But most of the boat types (that I can remind of right now) are feminine: 'a canoa' (the canoe), 'a fragata' (the frigate), 'a caravela' (the sailboat), 'a jangada' (the raft), 'a balsa' (the ferryboat).
There's also 'a nau', which brings a lot of chills down my Brazilian spine - because of the Portuguese invasion, not because of any other meaning, seus pervertidos.
I don't know if it's mild anaesthesia or something similar to other languages that have gendered objects. But my brain usually associates gender, personality, and pronouns to inanimate objects. Like the numbers 2, 5, 6, and 9 are all female. But 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 0 are all male. All ships are female, all lifeboats are male, and cars are male or female depending on the colour. Though even that last one is weird, because red is male but a red car is female. I have...no idea how my brain has linked these things but alas.
We also do this with nations. Some may be masculine or neuter in their own language, e.g. Brasil (m) or Deutschland (n), but in English they tend to be "she". "Germany was strong, but she lost her youth in the world wars," or "Brazil was named for her iconic wood." The author of "The Russian Question" told me he used "she" and "her" for Russia throughout the manuscript, but some sub-sub-editor took it upon herself to change them to "it" and "its". He demanded and got his language restored.
It's from the proto-indo-European *néh₂us which evolved to navis and navigo (Latin) to English navigation, navy, etc and naus (Greek) to English nautical, etc
For me it's neither a linguistical, nor a political question. The history of navigation is the same age as the history of human civilisation. Ships and sailors played (and still play) a big role in the developement of our society. For thousends of years, sailors made lots of interesting and wonderful traditions, to fill their hard and dangerous work with more hope, to make the boring days more colorful and to bring some order into their spontaneous life. Keeping these traditions is a joyful duty of modern day sailors. These things form our identity as sailors and remind us to the efforts and sacrifices of the sailors serving before us. Therefore not using the feminine pronouns to a ship is disrespectful torwards the ship, torwards her crew and torwards the sailor culture in general.
I always assumed cars and ships both get dubbed "she" for the same two reasons: 1. As you mentioned, they can carry emotional attachment, and it's often men who talk this way. It's more typical for men to have emotional attachment and care for women, so they extend the logic to inanimate objects. 2. Ships and cars both carry people inside them, as do women. Thus, human-bearing vessels receive the somewhat metaphorical feminine pronoun.
In the movie Alien, they call the ship's computer (and I think by inference the ship itself) 'Mother'. It makes sense. They depend on it for survival and it looks after them. I guess it's that way with sea ships.
In portuguese we have many words for "water based vehicles". Most of then, including the most common (like Navio or Barco) are male gendered words. But we have also Embarcação, for example, wich is feminine. And a very, very old and not that used anymore "Nau", also feminine
I think I’d name my boat(s) after historical battleships since I’m a history nerd and also it gives the boat a sense of power imo. If not, I’m also trying to be a writer so I’d probably name them after fictional characters as well.
The origins of why ships/boats began to be referred to as female is one thing, why the tradition continues is another. As pointed out, mariners, people whose lives are essentially at the mercy of the waters they sail, continue their tradition of referencing ships/boats as female for "luck" or more logically, their own peace of mind. It is essentially a part of what could be considered a religious practice, similar to how many other religions have their own unique and/or common practices for "peace of mind" protection. To chastise people, especially mariners, for continuing this tradition is akin to criticizing an aspect of anyone's religion. An obsession with political correctness can be destructive. A better alternative would be to practice "political courtesy." One of the most significant failings of political correctness is that all too often what may or may not be considered "politically correct" comes down to a matter of opinion.
This is my theory: "Well, a man may take a wife, boy And a man may take a mistress But a sailor has his ship, boys And his mistress, it is the sea" - from One More Pull
It could be also for the sake of causing less confusion, personification of the ship could simply be a way to 'mark' it as something important in the sentence.
In The Original Star Trek TV series there's an episode called The Naked Time in which all the characters behave like crazy - long story. Anyway, the starship's captain has a rambling monologue in which he discusses the responsibilities of his post - and relates them to the starship being called a "she."
I think this might be a holdover from that time when English was still a lot more like German. In German, we sometimes refer to an object as it, and sometimes we refer to it by its gender. I'm not clear on what the rules around it are. It's hard to call to mind, you know?
Probably got confused with the fact that table (as in a chart) translates as tableau. But yeh, table (the furniture, as shown in the video) is just table.
@@sneedfeed3179 My point is that the "-a" ending in the Latin "tabula" is female, and Latin-based French words often take "-e" as their equivalent ending. And "beau" is male while "belle" is female.
Its not just related to ships, either. I know trains are sometimes given names, especially in europe. And ive even seen it with some severe duty trucks, a good example is a truck that can be found outside of the squamish railway museum, "The Real McCoy."
Where did you here the thing about the Bismarck beeing called "he"? It's always been "die Bismarck" (feminine article) when someone was referencing it in German. Because in German all ship names are referenced as "her" even if the name itself is male. But if the ship doesn't have a name or you don't know it, it is referenced as "das" (neutral article). And to make it even more confusing: If you are refering to a specific type of ship (and the type can not be a compound word with "-ship" at the end!) then it would be masculine in nearly all cases. Like a tanker, an aircraft carrier, a cruiser.
Hey, btw we do in fact refer to tables as "she" in french. There is no standard gender neutral pronoun for objects. For example, we can say about a table "look at this table, she is very big": "regarde cette table, elle est très grande"
6:35 but... French doesn't really have a gender neutral pronoun like 'it' does it? If I remember correctly 'il' is used for masculine and elle for feminine gender words. ca is more for abstractions. This is certainly true for the Iberian languages that I am more familiar with, and also for Latin when they actually did use pronouns (Latin has a neuter gender too, but that is not the same as gender neutral).
My dad had an explanation: "Ships are beautiful and graceful, but can be a major pain in the a$$ to operate." I don't know if that was his exact joke, but something like it.
In the Netherlands, ships are officially male and addressed as "he", with the exception of ships that have female names, those are officially female and addressed as "she". But as in many cases, Dutch language gets more and more inflenced by English ( American English). So a lot of Dutch people call all ships "she" which is thus linguisticly incorrect.
The gender in languages does dictate the pronouns used. In hebrew and spanish there is no "it" only "he" and "she" so i would call an object either of those depending on the context. In russian and german there is a third neutral pronoun but its used for objects of the neutral grammatical gender. So the sky is masculine in german we would say "Guck den Himmel an. Ist er nicht schön?" With "er" (he) referring to "der Himmel". However with ships its odd, similar to people because despite boat and ship both being neutral in german we still refer to them as "she" rather than "it" and the article used for the boats names would be "die" the feminine one rather than "das".
As a wind sailor, so much of what I do and love is wrapped up in tradition. Because of this, in my community, it just “feels” wrong not to refer to sailboats as “she”. But this inertia of tradition means that I use a lot of anachronisms, like measuring things in fathoms, leagues, and feet, not just pronouns. I will say that when you’re on passage in a small boat, you tend to develop an affinity for your vessel, and do a lot of anthropomorphizing. maybe that’s just the madness of sailors, because you do have to be a little crazy to head off into the big blue and dance with a wind to get you home.
I have another hypothesis, why ships are female: Ships can carry goods within, as much as a woman can carry a child. So, the unloading of goods off a ship can be seen as a kind of birth.
What if your vessel decides to rebel against its builder and do away with its cargo hold, perversely graft on a giant mast, and demand to be referred to as He?
Sea pig, that's an interesting name, and did you know that sea pigs are real animals? Sadly, they aren't pigs. What they actually are are sea cucumbers, with a sea cucumber being closely related to starfish. Sea pigs don't look like other sea cucumbers, and look more like, well... pigs! Though even pigs don't have much of a resemblance to sea pigs.
It's probably time we have a think about our use of pronouns generally. I miss the German and Spanish genderless formal… As English is a Germanic language, and in (some/many) Germanic languages the gender of the object DOES impact the pronoun it takes (and there's like 9), it is reasonable that proto-English speaking adopters of these words applied Germanic structure and conjugation to them in a time when English also used these structures. But I do love the idea of the female protector theory.
in German: der Mann, der Tisch, der Mond, der Anker, der Mast, er, male die Frau, die Kanne, die Sonne, die Sterne, die Takelage, sie, female das Wasser, das Schiff, das Mädchen, das Ruder, das Steuerrad, es, neuter In German, the gender of things always has to be learned. “das Mädchen” oder "das Mädel" is biologically female, but neuter in language. Diminutive "die Maid" is female, but rarely used
No, there area a few exceptions. Proper names of ships are such an exception. They are always female. For what it's worth: In German car brands are always male. Motor cycle brands are always female.
It is easier to be away from your wife or love when you are with your other love. Take care of her and she will take care of you. Boats and ships certainly character.
The captain insisted that everybody must call her "der Bismarck". But that was only followed by the sailors under his command, everybody else calls her "die Bismarck" like every other ship.
In French, the word for “table” is “table” (not ‘tableau’). It is a feminine noun, and always requires a feminine pronoun (e.g. “Elle”.). Having no neuter gender, all nouns are either masculine or feminine and require there appropriately gendered pronoun. There is no specific word for “it” - as it is derived from the Old English neuter pronoun. However, in translating into English, of course, we would translate both masculine and feminine pronouns (“il” and “elle”) as “it” where appropriate. La table est grande. Elle est grande. (The table is large. It is large.) Le lit est grand. Il est grand. (The bed is large. It is large.)
I have always wondered why (in english?) Boats and almost all named by men are women so yay for this episode. Speaking of pronouns always reminds me of how casual way of speaking about people in finnish is calling them "it", it's not rude, in fact "she/he/they" (finnish has gender neutral pronouns) could sound too rigid. :D
A ship is called "she" because there is usually a great deal of bustle around her, there is usually a gang of men around her, she has a waist and stays, the older she gets the more paint she needs to look good, it's not the initial expense that breaks you - it's the upkeep, she can be all decked out, it takes an experienced man to handle her and without a man at the helm, she is absolutely uncontrollable. She shows her topsides, hides her bottom and, when coming into port, always heads for the buoys.
Both foreign language factoids were way off. French does not even have a neuter pronoun. The pronoun for 'la table' is definitely 'elle', she; there is no 'it' in French. And the Bismarck in German is a she. A short trip to the German Wikipedia could have told you that. If you precede Bismarck in German with "der" you better put a "Hering" after. (Because persons, as in English, don't take an article. At least not in formal language.)
What pronouns do you use for ships and boats in general?
"It" I guess, anthropomorphizing a ship feels weird.
She/Her. It is bad luck to do otherwise. Don't want to incur Neptune's wrath do we?
Using It to refer to a ship is just not worth it in regards to risk analysis.
If most people on a boat/ship were male by using the pronoun she then it is apparent to all that it is the vessel they are referring to.
@@electroninja8768lol
... As someone who likes to personify vehicles in fiction? Either she/her or he/him, depending on the vibes I get from the boat's name.
Old timey sailors: "Women do not belong at sea!"
Also old timey sailors: "Her name is The King John, ain't she beautiful?"
ahh... The classic case of misogynistic white men accidentally being feminist trans allies
In Russian we use all three of our genders - masculine for ship (korabl'), feminine for boat (lodka) and neutral for vessel (sudno)
In French and other languages with grammatical gender, the pronoun does match the noun's gender. There is no word for "it" in French, only words for "that" that can be translated as it. Elle and il can also be translated as it, since in English we don't call a table she
"Tableau" actually means "whiteboard" or "painting" in french, the correct word for "table" is "table" in french
Pronouced as: /tah/+/bl/
@@luizfellipe3291 this is not how pronounciation is written. It's either tah-bl or /tabl/
And it's masculine.
@@paulabraham2550 une table
How dare french steal our words!!!!
Among linguists, this is known as the ‘feminine of reference”. In the language, which has no neuter gender, the feminine pronoun (sí) is generally used for modes of transport (boats, shops, cars, trains, etc.) regardless of the gender of the noun. Just as in English, the ‘feminine of reference’ is also used for countries and rivers (which, in Irish, are often feminine). There is also a ‘masculine of reference’. For example, the weather (which is a feminine noun in Irish ) is referred to by the masculine pronoun (sé). Tá sé go breá. = It is fine.
In Dutch trains and buses are refererend to as he. A boat is also he, and a ship is it.
@@jannetteberends8730I was wondering how other languages referred to ships. Thanks.
Then why is the ocean a cruel MISTRESS too?
The explanation I was always told to why ships are called she is “as a mother carried you in the womb, a ship carries you across the sea.”
Future video idea: I have always been interested in the gender of countries. Which countries are motherland and which countries are fatherland? Or are countries more flexible than that?
As a sailor myself, I will always use she when refering to ships. Hearing ships referred to as it doesn't sound right to my ears. Working on a ship there is a specifc life and culture which doesnt exist on shore. To me calling a ship she is just a way of personifying that in a way that seems natural, like how emotional attachment was mentioned in the video. And refering to a ship as it, while intended for a good cause of gender equality, almost seems to take away that life and personification away from the ship; making her seem cold and lifeless onboard a place which needs more warmth and life.
Bear in mind you can spend months at sea, sometimes with very little contact with loved ones, and to this day the vast majority of sailors are male (definitely an issue there as to why less women see it as choice, and something which needs to be addressed), and as the majority of people are heterosexual, the person they miss most will likely be a female partner which helps reinforce calling a ship she, as many will be missing the most important woman in their life. Tho obviously this isnt the be all and end all, I'm gay myself and as mentioned for myself a ship will always be she, and I'm sure most sailors regardless of sexuality don't want to date a ship. However combined with the previous point is my theory of why the naming trend arose and is still the norm within the English speaking world, especially within the maritime industry, where English is standard for communication.
While I don't see any contradiction between gender equality and refering to ships as she, others will see differently and thats perfectly fine as we all have our own beliefs, interpretations and priorities, and respect for you for standing up for a good cause regardless.
On a more practical note, I also see it as causing a little bit of confusion for non-native English speakers. Tho in my experience (albeit in the maritime industry) it ends up just being for just a moment followed something like "Huh, you call ships she? You Brits are funny" if they didn't know already.
Every ship except for the Bismarck...
I don't see why we can't refer to ships as she and be gender neutral tbh, it's language.
(Just please don't reveal how internalized misogyny still is by making dumb jokes about women)
@@rheiagreenland4714 It’s actually quite the opposite. Sailors use feminine pronouns for luck and out of admiration b
@@rheiagreenland4714 Tbh, it is that way; no one thinks of a ship or boat as actually being female or male regardless of pronouns or even their name (HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS George VI come to mind).
Tho I very much agree, jokes along the lines of "well just like women, ships required alot of maintenance" are just lazy and in bad taste.
In portuguese we use both, I think. "he" for Navio (Ship) and Barco (Boat) and "she" for Embarcação (Vessel). We also have Nave and Nau, just like Latin and Greek, although Nave usualy refers to a Spaceship (Espaçonave [she]) or an Airship (Aeronave[she]/avião (Airplane) [he]) and Nau [she] is a specific type of ship.
I found it really interesting that the hindi word for boat is also “naav” नाव !!
Yup, that's a legit cognate through Indo-European!
Nau
Since it's a very old word, it actually makes sense that there's a connection.
@@mikitz Well, it means the Indoeuropeans were seafarers (or at least lake- or riverfarers). Otherwise they would not have needed a word for the concept. Linguistic analysis is how we (think we) know that the horse was important in Indoeuropean culture.
A lot of languages usually have similarly close words except English and especially German lol
Interesting! In Portuguese we used nau (obsolete, at least in Brazil), but we call a ship as "o navio", the male noun. Meanwhile, a flying ship is called by its female noun "a nave", "a nave espacial", "a espaçonave", but never the male noun. Exception, airship, that we call "o dirigível", something roughly translatable as "driveable".
"Nave" pretty much only means "spaceship" nowadays, despite the fact they pretty don't exist yet. 😂
But what do you call an individual, named ship? Say the battleship Bismarck?
English has the word dirigible. And a much better translation is steerable.
@@sohopedeco Enterprise NCC-1701 exists (in a certain way).
@@HotelPapa100 Navio, which is masculine.
I'm not a native English speaker so I was surprised when I learned that English speakers regularly use ''she/her'' for ships, I thought it was something only pirates and sailors did and that most people just called them an ''it'' as in all other inanimate objects.
Native speaker here, same.
The four main Romance languages don't have any word for "it". We use "he" and "she" according to the same gender we use for the article of the given innanimate object.
"Le tableu est bleu" ➡️ "Il est bleu" (literaly _"he_ is blue")
Poor Romanian
@@servantofaeie1569 Poor Dalmatian. At least Romanian is still spoken.
I would argue that using masculine and feminine pronouns ("il" and "elle" in French, for example) to refer to inanimate objects of that particular gender isn't really saying "he/she" so much as it's saying "it [masculine]" and "it [feminine]"
@@KingsleyIIIYou could argue that, but your argument makes no sense because the concept does not exist in these languages. You might as well argue that a shazbit and a gorff are really both just blerghs anyway.
At 3:12
The sea pig....
Hogging, is a nautical term for something your boat does....it is a special type of sagging.
I love animated videos teaching me about my little niche interests. Gosh im.glad youtube algo recommended your channel to me!
My parents have this poster at home called "why is a ship called she" and it's basically just a list of women stereotypes, a lot of them were on the Navy article actually
Your parents sound loooovely
@@rheiagreenland4714 they're alright.
Our Boat is named ISLAGI which translates to Ice Cream in Icelandic but also stands for I"t Seemed Like A Good Idea".
Consider that the ship has long been an all-male milieu, with sailors going for long periods without seeing women. It shows in sightings of mermaids, and arguably in giving ships the female gender.
Here's a question to start a debate: what's the EXACT difference between a "boat" and a "ship"? (As the size of boats increase, at what point do they become ships?)
I wonder how many sailors have fucked their ships over the millennia. I'm willing to bet the number is larger than zero.
When a boat is big enough you think of it as a ship, then you call it a ship. That is, unless you're not the captain, and the captain disagrees. Also, there's the exception of unless you're being affectionate, and refer to your 100,000 ton Nimitz class nuclear aircraft carrier as a boat the same way as your beloved bull mastiff is a pupper in your eyes.
@@Shrapnel82 A boat has a skipper while a ship has a captain, right?
Um, actually, the gender of a noun DOES usually dictate the pronoun in gendered languages, including French.
You *can* refer to them as "it" if they're objects, but grammatically, you *should* refer to them by their gender.
In Portuguese and Spanish, you pretty only use a gender-neutral donstrative pronoun when you really don't know the gender of the thing your talking about, or when you are refering to substantive phrase.
@@sohopedeco, exactly my point
There is a trend in English of associating inanimate objects people are emotionally attached to, and ascribe power to, with female pronouns. Countries, for example, tend to be considered "female". The song "God Bless America", for example, uses the line "Stand beside her, and guide her". While "Fatherland" is used in other languages, like German, in English, "motherland" tends to be more common. Other locations, like cities, are also referred to as "she". At least in the US, guns are more likely to be called "she" or given female names (referenced in Full Metal Jacket). I've also heard places like mountain ranges referred to as "she", but this could be an extension of "Mother Earth".
This could be due to the majority of namers in history being straight males, who would naturally form close emotional connections with a female partner, so extended this to objects to which they were emotionally connected. Though, I don't want to read too much into it without evidence, and it's only a theory now. It also doesn't explain "Fatherland" in German.
It's interesting, cos in my native arabic, a naval vessel is always a she but a civilian vessel is always a he. Makes it easy for you to tell if someone's in the navy or is a fisherman, cos a fisherman might call a naval destroyer a he by accident and vice versa.
Azur Lane / Kantai Collection players pointing at their favorite ship IRL: "She's my wife"
8:34 Bertie's cute! I like that he acquired eyes and you named him. I hope he's happy with is feeding schedule!
The steam locomotive Sir Nigel Gresley is usually referred to as she. My motorbike is called Rufus because he's red. I gave him a male name because I don't ride females
I would name my boat Ea-Nasir. It means "protected by Ea", a Mesopotamian sea god...and also the name of that shady copper merchant during the Bronze Age. It would be funny because people know him because of memes, but it is actually an appropriate name for a boat.
If I had a ship she would be called Thalassophobia.
I can't believe all these thalassophobes, they keep misgendering my ship
When he brought up an example of a british navy shipI fully expected him to mention the legendary boaty mcboatface
In Portuguese, the more common words for "ship" are masculine: 'o navio', 'o barco'. We can refer to them with a feminine word, such as 'a embarcação'. But most of the boat types (that I can remind of right now) are feminine: 'a canoa' (the canoe), 'a fragata' (the frigate), 'a caravela' (the sailboat), 'a jangada' (the raft), 'a balsa' (the ferryboat).
There's also 'a nau', which brings a lot of chills down my Brazilian spine - because of the Portuguese invasion, not because of any other meaning, seus pervertidos.
But do you use a pronoun to refer to the ship. Is it always a "he" if it's o barco or a "she" if it's a canoe?
My favorite boat name was from the movie Hot Shots; the S.S. Essess 🤣
I don't know if it's mild anaesthesia or something similar to other languages that have gendered objects.
But my brain usually associates gender, personality, and pronouns to inanimate objects.
Like the numbers 2, 5, 6, and 9 are all female. But 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 0 are all male.
All ships are female, all lifeboats are male, and cars are male or female depending on the colour.
Though even that last one is weird, because red is male but a red car is female.
I have...no idea how my brain has linked these things but alas.
gender is confusing
We also do this with nations. Some may be masculine or neuter in their own language, e.g. Brasil (m) or Deutschland (n), but in English they tend to be "she". "Germany was strong, but she lost her youth in the world wars," or "Brazil was named for her iconic wood." The author of "The Russian Question" told me he used "she" and "her" for Russia throughout the manuscript, but some sub-sub-editor took it upon herself to change them to "it" and "its". He demanded and got his language restored.
I had the same thought!
Good for him! I mean, if I understand correctly, Russians themselves refer to their country as if it (she!) were feminine, eg, 'Mother Russia'.
Could navis also be the origin for the word navy?
It's from the proto-indo-European *néh₂us which evolved to navis and navigo (Latin) to English navigation, navy, etc and naus (Greek) to English nautical, etc
For me it's neither a linguistical, nor a political question. The history of navigation is the same age as the history of human civilisation. Ships and sailors played (and still play) a big role in the developement of our society. For thousends of years, sailors made lots of interesting and wonderful traditions, to fill their hard and dangerous work with more hope, to make the boring days more colorful and to bring some order into their spontaneous life. Keeping these traditions is a joyful duty of modern day sailors. These things form our identity as sailors and remind us to the efforts and sacrifices of the sailors serving before us. Therefore not using the feminine pronouns to a ship is disrespectful torwards the ship, torwards her crew and torwards the sailor culture in general.
"Tableau" actually means painting.
Table is simply "Table"
I always assumed cars and ships both get dubbed "she" for the same two reasons:
1. As you mentioned, they can carry emotional attachment, and it's often men who talk this way. It's more typical for men to have emotional attachment and care for women, so they extend the logic to inanimate objects.
2. Ships and cars both carry people inside them, as do women. Thus, human-bearing vessels receive the somewhat metaphorical feminine pronoun.
Some women give their cars male names and use male pronouns for them.
In the movie Alien, they call the ship's computer (and I think by inference the ship itself) 'Mother'. It makes sense. They depend on it for survival and it looks after them. I guess it's that way with sea ships.
In portuguese we have many words for "water based vehicles". Most of then, including the most common (like Navio or Barco) are male gendered words. But we have also Embarcação, for example, wich is feminine. And a very, very old and not that used anymore "Nau", also feminine
3:38 nahh ain't no way is this blue shirt dude simping for pencil bfdi 💀💀💀
are you okay
I think I’d name my boat(s) after historical battleships since I’m a history nerd and also it gives the boat a sense of power imo. If not, I’m also trying to be a writer so I’d probably name them after fictional characters as well.
I kinda love the engagement bait of the thumbnail. But it's if course educational. Thanks Patrick!
The origins of why ships/boats began to be referred to as female is one thing, why the tradition continues is another. As pointed out, mariners, people whose lives are essentially at the mercy of the waters they sail, continue their tradition of referencing ships/boats as female for "luck" or more logically, their own peace of mind. It is essentially a part of what could be considered a religious practice, similar to how many other religions have their own unique and/or common practices for "peace of mind" protection. To chastise people, especially mariners, for continuing this tradition is akin to criticizing an aspect of anyone's religion. An obsession with political correctness can be destructive. A better alternative would be to practice "political courtesy." One of the most significant failings of political correctness is that all too often what may or may not be considered "politically correct" comes down to a matter of opinion.
Did Noah's ark have a name? God told him to build an ark, and people today call it "Noah's Ark," but I don't know if Noah actually gave it a name.
If he did it's lost to time
"Hold together, Bob, you hear me? All we gotta do is weather this storm. Hold together..."
-Noah
This is my theory: "Well, a man may take a wife, boy
And a man may take a mistress
But a sailor has his ship, boys
And his mistress, it is the sea" - from One More Pull
It could be also for the sake of causing less confusion, personification of the ship could simply be a way to 'mark' it as something important in the sentence.
"I don't care about masculinity." - oh, how very unbiased of you.
What?
"The Sea Pig" would be an interesting name for a ship, since it's considered bad luck to even say the word "pig" on a ship.
the beginning made me think about a ship with a pulse so someone make that
In The Original Star Trek TV series there's an episode called The Naked Time in which all the characters behave like crazy - long story. Anyway, the starship's captain has a rambling monologue in which he discusses the responsibilities of his post - and relates them to the starship being called a "she."
Actually, if the ship is carrying legumes, it may have a lot of pulses.
I think this might be a holdover from that time when English was still a lot more like German. In German, we sometimes refer to an object as it, and sometimes we refer to it by its gender. I'm not clear on what the rules around it are. It's hard to call to mind, you know?
The French word for table is table, not tableau 😂😂😂
Ok
Probably got confused with the fact that table (as in a chart) translates as tableau.
But yeh, table (the furniture, as shown in the video) is just table.
"Table" has a female ending (like the Latin "-a"), while "tableau" is male, like "beau."
@@Blaqjaqshellaq bro I speak French you’re not making any sense
@@sneedfeed3179 My point is that the "-a" ending in the Latin "tabula" is female, and Latin-based French words often take "-e" as their equivalent ending. And "beau" is male while "belle" is female.
Its not just related to ships, either. I know trains are sometimes given names, especially in europe. And ive even seen it with some severe duty trucks, a good example is a truck that can be found outside of the squamish railway museum, "The Real McCoy."
I'd name my boat "hole in the water to throw money into"
Reminds me of the well known racehorse, Jafeica - "Just Another 'Flaming' Expense I Can't Afford"(!)
Where did you here the thing about the Bismarck beeing called "he"? It's always been "die Bismarck" (feminine article) when someone was referencing it in German. Because in German all ship names are referenced as "her" even if the name itself is male. But if the ship doesn't have a name or you don't know it, it is referenced as "das" (neutral article). And to make it even more confusing: If you are refering to a specific type of ship (and the type can not be a compound word with "-ship" at the end!) then it would be masculine in nearly all cases. Like a tanker, an aircraft carrier, a cruiser.
Sometimes we use feminine pronouns for countries too. “Protecting America and her interests.”
If I had a boat, her name would be some sea pun, like "Thar she blows!"
I named my canoe Charline
Hey, btw we do in fact refer to tables as "she" in french. There is no standard gender neutral pronoun for objects. For example, we can say about a table "look at this table, she is very big": "regarde cette table, elle est très grande"
6:35 but... French doesn't really have a gender neutral pronoun like 'it' does it? If I remember correctly 'il' is used for masculine and elle for feminine gender words. ca is more for abstractions. This is certainly true for the Iberian languages that I am more familiar with, and also for Latin when they actually did use pronouns (Latin has a neuter gender too, but that is not the same as gender neutral).
Ships of a common design.
I don't know what I'd name my boat if I had one, but I know I would definitely row, row, row it gently down the stream. :)
I'd name my boat if I had one: Shub-Niggurath
Btw, any chance of a Lovecraft based video?
9:49 HE WAS MADE TO RULE THE WAVES ACROSS THE SEVEN SEAS!
Ship names reminds me a lot of Azur Lane and Kantai Collection.
My dad had an explanation: "Ships are beautiful and graceful, but can be a major pain in the a$$ to operate."
I don't know if that was his exact joke, but something like it.
Sounds like a veeery pleasant man
In the Netherlands, ships are officially male and addressed as "he", with the exception of ships that have female names, those are officially female and addressed as "she". But as in many cases, Dutch language gets more and more inflenced by English ( American English). So a lot of Dutch people call all ships "she" which is thus linguisticly incorrect.
I wouldn't give a boat a name & the tradition of boats being called she should be phased out.
I want to call my boat Victoria
The gender in languages does dictate the pronouns used. In hebrew and spanish there is no "it" only "he" and "she" so i would call an object either of those depending on the context. In russian and german there is a third neutral pronoun but its used for objects of the neutral grammatical gender. So the sky is masculine in german we would say "Guck den Himmel an. Ist er nicht schön?" With "er" (he) referring to "der Himmel". However with ships its odd, similar to people because despite boat and ship both being neutral in german we still refer to them as "she" rather than "it" and the article used for the boats names would be "die" the feminine one rather than "das".
How come the ocean is also a cruel MISTRESS too then?
As a wind sailor, so much of what I do and love is wrapped up in tradition. Because of this, in my community, it just “feels” wrong not to refer to sailboats as “she”. But this inertia of tradition means that I use a lot of anachronisms, like measuring things in fathoms, leagues, and feet, not just pronouns.
I will say that when you’re on passage in a small boat, you tend to develop an affinity for your vessel, and do a lot of anthropomorphizing. maybe that’s just the madness of sailors, because you do have to be a little crazy to head off into the big blue and dance with a wind to get you home.
if I had a ship (btw I wanted to be a pirate as a kid) I would name it Cecilia, after the song by the vamps
I have another hypothesis, why ships are female:
Ships can carry goods within, as much as a woman can carry a child. So, the unloading of goods off a ship can be seen as a kind of birth.
What if your vessel decides to rebel against its builder and do away with its cargo hold, perversely graft on a giant mast, and demand to be referred to as He?
If boats were sentient would you deny it free will?
Lmao
I certainly don't want to make a boat mad at me.
By this implication, all sailing vessels where trans women. 🏳️⚧️
*shrug*. As long as he still floats and can travel across water.
Sea pig, that's an interesting name, and did you know that sea pigs are real animals?
Sadly, they aren't pigs. What they actually are are sea cucumbers, with a sea cucumber being closely related to starfish. Sea pigs don't look like other sea cucumbers, and look more like, well... pigs! Though even pigs don't have much of a resemblance to sea pigs.
I don't know what is name a boat, though my car is definitely male and I've named her Frank.
I use "she" for all boats and ships except for the Bismarck. I would call my ship the John Paul Jones!
John Paul Jones is a Pirate (set feet, row!)
It's probably time we have a think about our use of pronouns generally. I miss the German and Spanish genderless formal…
As English is a Germanic language, and in (some/many) Germanic languages the gender of the object DOES impact the pronoun it takes (and there's like 9), it is reasonable that proto-English speaking adopters of these words applied Germanic structure and conjugation to them in a time when English also used these structures.
But I do love the idea of the female protector theory.
in German: der Mann, der Tisch, der Mond, der Anker, der Mast, er, male
die Frau, die Kanne, die Sonne, die Sterne, die Takelage, sie, female
das Wasser, das Schiff, das Mädchen, das Ruder, das Steuerrad, es, neuter
In German, the gender of things always has to be learned.
“das Mädchen” oder "das Mädel" is biologically female, but neuter in language. Diminutive
"die Maid" is female, but rarely used
No, there area a few exceptions. Proper names of ships are such an exception. They are always female. For what it's worth: In German car brands are always male. Motor cycle brands are always female.
I had guessed that the use of a figurehead at the very front of a ship (perhaps a female face) might have contributed to 'she'
It is easier to be away from your wife or love when you are with your other love. Take care of her and she will take care of you. Boats and ships certainly character.
I would name my step as Aanamika 🤣
Ships also carry people within them and deliver them to a new place. Who else does that? Women.
The Bismarck is a he? I don't think so. We say "die Bismarck" with "die" being the female article.
I think it comes from a joke someone made in a speech when christening her. Nobody actually took that serious, it was a chuckle getter.
The captain insisted that everybody must call her "der Bismarck". But that was only followed by the sailors under his command, everybody else calls her "die Bismarck" like every other ship.
Funny enough, the Allies also said "Die, Bismarck."
Does this mean that it was probably a feminine noun in proto-indo-european?
Don’t toss it in the bin, simply feed Bertie 😀
We foamers like to call locomotives "she" and give them names as well. Lol.
I seem to remember some German ships had male pronouns like The Imperator during the second Bills time.
Nope, it's called "die Kaiser". Female pronouns.
If ships have a social media profile would they have pronouns in bio?
In French, the word for “table” is “table” (not ‘tableau’). It is a feminine noun, and always requires a feminine pronoun (e.g. “Elle”.). Having no neuter gender, all nouns are either masculine or feminine and require there appropriately gendered pronoun. There is no specific word for “it” - as it is derived from the Old English neuter pronoun. However, in translating into English, of course, we would translate both masculine and feminine pronouns (“il” and “elle”) as “it” where appropriate.
La table est grande. Elle est grande. (The table is large. It is large.)
Le lit est grand. Il est grand. (The bed is large. It is large.)
Mass murder through naval warfare GONE WOKE????
I have always wondered why (in english?) Boats and almost all named by men are women so yay for this episode.
Speaking of pronouns always reminds me of how casual way of speaking about people in finnish is calling them "it", it's not rude, in fact "she/he/they" (finnish has gender neutral pronouns) could sound too rigid. :D
i respect that tbh
Rocket, Flying Scotsman, Lion (the oldest), and the fastest of them all, Mallard are not ships. I believe they also use the she/her pronouns.
I would like to congratulate my Yacht for coming out as a nonbinary femboy with she/they/he/xe pronouns, we're all very proud of them!
A ship is called "she" because there is usually a great deal of bustle around her, there is usually a gang of men around her, she has a waist and stays, the older she gets the more paint she needs to look good, it's not the initial expense that breaks you - it's the upkeep, she can be all decked out, it takes an experienced man to handle her and without a man at the helm, she is absolutely uncontrollable. She shows her topsides, hides her bottom and, when coming into port, always heads for the buoys.
😁 I expect that'll be going down like a cup of cold sick, in certain quarters!
Both foreign language factoids were way off.
French does not even have a neuter pronoun. The pronoun for 'la table' is definitely 'elle', she; there is no 'it' in French.
And the Bismarck in German is a she. A short trip to the German Wikipedia could have told you that.
If you precede Bismarck in German with "der" you better put a "Hering" after. (Because persons, as in English, don't take an article. At least not in formal language.)
I notice that you often replace the unvoiced and voiced th sound as f and v. It this a regional variant?
My ship would be The Touko and be called He.
You know society doesn’t have enough real problems when the pronouns you use for ships is a topic of debate