THE CONTRAST AND THE FUNCTION OF THE GENDER ALBANIAN TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE

In Albanian and English language we have three kinds of gender: masculine, feminine and neuter.  In Albanian language the concept for gender, is: “Gjinia është një nga kategoritë gramatikore më karakteristikë për emrat në gjuhën shqipe. Nga natyra e saj, ajo dallohet nga kategoritë e tjera të emrit, nga numri, rasa dhe nga kategoritë e shquarsisë dhe të pashquarsisë, sepse i kundërvihet mashkullore-femërore dhe asnjanëse...”^[1]. This Albanian citation is possible to be the similary and within English language e.g: “a grouping of nouns and pronouns into classes’ masculine, feminine and neuter”^[2] or “gender differs from the grammatical categories, case, and definiteness, in being a lexical as well as inflection category of the noun. The gender to which a give word belongs is a property of that particular word independent of context”^[3]. The contrast of gender between two languages are e.g: the cases (five in Albanian with different endings and two in English), definite and indefinite nouns (the masculine nouns for Albanian language has some engings: -i, -it, -in, -it, -u, -un, -ut, for feminine -e,-a, -ja, -je, -s, -së, -në, or for neuter nouns with –i, -it and for indefinite nouns is: /një/. The definite nouns of English language has the article /the/ and for indefinite /a, an/ than in Albanina some endinigs. The definite nouns e.g: (masculine noun ) mali – the mountain, libër-i – the book, kompjuter -i – the computer; mësues -i – the teacher; motër – sister, motra – the sister (...).

[1] Fatmir Agallari, Gramatika e gjuhës shqipe, Tiranë, 2002, p.88.                                                       

[2] A S Hornby, Christina Ruse, Oxford student’s dictionary of current English, New York, 2001, p. 263.

[3] Leonard Newmark, Standard Albanian grammar for students, California, 1982, p.131.