human female / animal female

[rusita preciosa]

In AE it is normal to use the same word female for animals and humans:
female police officer
female giraffe

In Russian we have two separate words:
женщина /jenshina/ - woman
самка /samka/ - female animal
To call a woman "samka" is extremely derogatory.

As I remember correctly, French in this aspect is similar to Russian.

How about your language?
- do you have sepapate words for female animal and woman?
- if so, is it insulting/derogatory to call a woman the same word as "female animal"?

 

[Calambur]

En español:
una mujer policía
una jirafa hembra
una jirafa macho

Referido al sexo de los animales no humanos: hembra / macho.
Sexos de los humanos: femenimo / masculino. (También se puede decir hembra / macho, pero resulta poco "elegante").

 

[rusita preciosa]

Es un insulto de llamar una mujer "hembra"? (lo se que no es un insulto de llamar un hombre "macho" )

 

[phosphore]

Serbian:

žena=woman
ženka=female animal

Using "ženka" for a woman would be somewhere between funny and derogatory in the sexual way.

 

[jazyk]

In Portuguese we normally use fêmea (Br.)/fémea (Port.) (female) only for animals. For women, we say mulher or we put the noun or adjective in the feminine form.

 

[enoo]

As I remember correctly, French in this aspect is similar to Russian.

Yes, indeed, calling a woman "femelle"/female in French would be extremely derogatory.
female animal : "femelle" (e.g "giraffe femelle")
female/woman : "femme" (e.g "femme officier de police")

(On the other hand, calling a man "mâle"/male could almost be a compliment to his manhood... Well, almost. I could also be a way to say he's the dumb macho kind, depending on the context.)

 

[Orlin]

Serbian:

žena=woman
ženka=female animal

Using "ženka" for a woman would be somewhere between funny and derogatory in the sexual way.

Bulgarian is very similar: жена is woman and женска (and rarely самка - mainly scientific) is a female animal. Женска/самка for a woman have quite the same meaning.
The adjective женски is normally used to denote female animals unless we have separate words for the male and the female of the particular species; we don't normally use any words to determine femininity before nouns showing occupation and not gender specific (e. g. министър, професор, съдия etc. - usually "prestigious" occupations are gender neutral and gramatically masculine and the "female" equivalents are substandard - *професорка, *министърка, *съдийка etc.).

 

[Encolpius]

Hungarian:

female police officer = rendőrnő [police officer + female put at the end]
female giraffe = nőstény zsiráf

So, we have two words and we never use nőstény even as a derogative expression for women, we have other words.

 

[apmoy70]

In Greek we too use two separate words:
«γυναίκα» (ʝi'neka, f.)-->woman (noun)
«θηλυκός, θηλυκή (-κιά), θηλυκό» (θili'kos, m., θili'ci or θili'ca [very colloquial], f., θili'ko, n.)-->female (adj.). E.g: «θηλυκός γορίλλας» (θili'kos ɣo'rilas, m.)-->female gorilla; «θηλυκό κουνούπι» (θili'ko ku'nupi, n.)-->female mosquito.
Using «θηλυκή (-κιά)» or even the neuter «θηλυκό», would be derogatory in the sexual way (especially the neuter one).
A female Police Officer is «γυναίκα (woman) αστυνομικός» ((ʝi'neka astinomi'kos)

[ʝ] is a voiced palatal fricative
[θ] is a voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative
[c] is a voiceless palatal plosive

 

[DanyD]

ITALIAN

femmina = preferably for animal females
donna = human female

There are contexts where "femmina" would be sexist to use and others where it would not. For example:

"I maschi hanno maggior forza, le femmine maggiore elasticità" =
"Males are stronger but females are lither"

"Femmina, vieni qui!" "Female, come here!" (this sentence doesn't make much sense in English, but it's a litteral translation)

There are very many Italian "variants", though, so maybe another Italian forero from a different Italian region may think differently.

Hope that helps!

 

[Encolpius]

Ciao DanyD e benvenuta al foro, grazie per il commento. Speriamo di trovarti al foro frequentement, perché abbiamo bisogno anche di commenti italiani.

 

[merquiades]

En español:
una mujer policía
una jirafa hembra
una jirafa macho

Referido al sexo de los animales no humanos: hembra / macho.
Sexos de los humanos: femenimo / masculino. (También se puede decir hembra / macho, pero resulta poco "elegante").

Calambur. ¿No dirías varón y mujer para los seres humanos? Saludos

 

[Rallino]

In Turkish there is not much distinction either. Rarely in some profession names, women tend to differ themselves, for example:

adam: man
kadın: woman

iş adamı = business man

If a woman is a business man, then she'd probably introduce herself as: iş kadını.

 

[Elvus]

In Polish we say kobieta to name a female human and samica while speaking of a female animal. I wouldn't dare to say so about any woman. But it might be suitable for some erotic stories perhaps (e.g. "She was acting like a mature samica following her wildest instincts, she was like an animal") .

 

[OneStroke]

Chinese:


For humans: Male is 男 nán, female is 女 nǚ


For animals: Female is 雌 cí, male is 雄 xióng

For whatever reason, in its usual order, male precedes female for humans, and female precedes male for animals.

 

[rusita preciosa]

So my question was, is it acceptable to call a woman (human) 雌 cī or it would be an insult?

 

[Gavril]

In English, another option for female animals is to use she- as a prefix: she-goat, she-wolf, she-donkey, etc.

A woman is not normally called a "she-person", but I don't think it sounds offensive to call someone that, just strange.

 

[AutumnOwl]

Swedish:
Human: kvinna - woman, kvinnlig - female, feminine; man - man, manlig - male
Animal: hona - female; hane - male

En kvinnlig polis - a female police officer
En kvinnlig klänning - a feminine dress
Hon är mycket kvinnlig - she is very feminine

I would say that it would be insulting to call a woman for hona (although the word for she is hon and the word for he is han)

 

[marrish]

For animals and also for plants in Urdu مادہ maadah is used; I have never heard or read it with respect to any woman nor I can imagine it would ever be possible to be used. For e.g. names of professions, I believe it is the same as in Russian: خاتون ڈاکٹر xaatuun DaakTar = a lady doctor = female doctor (not a gynaecologist!), خاتون پولیس اہلکار xaatuun poliis ahl~kaar etc.

Of course many a times there are separate nouns to call male animals and female ones. Most of the time they are differentiated by their grammatical gender which is inherent to the noun: a horse: گھوڑا ghoRaa, a mare: گھوڑی ghoRii. A cat: بلی billii, a he-cat: بلا billaa. Not always they need to be differentiated but mostly they have different names. In the scientific language, maadah is and should be used but I have also noticed that sometimes words which belong traditionally to the grammar lingo tend to be used: مذکر مؤنث muzakkar (m.)/mu'annas (f.) but I consider it wrong. You can use it only when talking about nouns, not about the animals they are called by those nouns. Of course, female police officers are not called by "feminine".

 

[OneStroke]

So my question was, is it acceptable to call a woman (human) 雌 cī or it would be an insult?

It's acceptable, but very weird. There are a handful of words in which 雌 cí (I made a mistake typing the tones last night, sorry) indicates a feminine quality rather than a female animal, such as 雌弱, although they are not common words. In the yuefu about Hua Mulan (the story of whom was popularised by Disney), Hua was compared to a rabbit at the end and the author, whoever he or she may have been, used 雌雄 when he/she said Mulan's gender could not be easily identified.

PS I know this is not part of your question, but 雄 can describe males - in fact, it has very positive connotations.

 

[Radioh]

In English, another option for female animals is to use she- as a prefix: she-goat, she-wolf, she-donkey, etc.

A woman is not normally called a "she-person", but I don't think it sounds offensive to call someone that, just strange.

There's a song "she-wolf", now I understand what it means.
Back to the original question, we do have two seperate words used for female animal and woman. "Nữ" for woman and "cái" for animal.
Nữ cảnh sát/ cảnh sát nữ = female police.
Hưu cái = female giraffe.
And it is very very offensive to use "cái" for a woman.

 

[nimak]

Macedonian:

жена (žéna) = woman
женка (žénka) = female animal

маж (máž) = man
мажјак (mážjak) = male animal

- if so, is it insulting/derogatory to call a woman the same word as "female animal"?

Yes.

 

[Frieder]

German:

Frau = woman
Mann = man

Weibchen = female animal (lit. a little woman)
Männchen = Male animal (lit. a little man)

But of course German, like most other languages, has special words for many sorts of animals pairs like Stute/Hengst (mare/stallion), Henne/Hahn (hen/cock) etc.

 

[Armas]

Finnish:
Human: nainen
Animal: naaras

Naispoliisi "female police officer"
Naaraskarhu "female bear"

And yes, it is insulting.