Why is the power station a girl?
Driving past the Labour Party’s power station billboard the other day, the only thing that struck me is that Labour thinks the power station is a girl.
Ma tahdimx, il-power station, God bless her. Toqghod id-dar, tghix minn fuq il-living wage tar-ragel.
Can somebody explain to me why the Labour Party and probably lots of other politicians of all stripes, for all I know, have decided that ‘power station’ is feminine?
Maybe there’s some arcane ruling by the Akkademja tal-Malti that I know nothing about, and which I shall choose to ignore.
A power station is one of the few things of which you can say that it’s not exactly feminine, that it has quite a masculine feel about it.
So given that we have the luxury of choosing whether it’s masculine or feminine, given that ‘power station’ in its original language is gender neutral, why have we gone for feminine?
At any rate, it’s long been ‘dak il-power station’ to me, and that comes automatically. I can’t see myself saying ‘dik il-power station’. There’s really nothing pink about it.
I truste that the Most Feminist Government in Maltese History (and others) haven’t decided it’s a woman because they’ve also decided that it’s dysfunctional.
Dik ma tahdimx sew. Allura bilfors mara.
79 Comments Comment
Reply to Qeghdin Sew Click here to cancel reply
What do you expect from a feminist movement?
Our energy supply is unreliable, sultry, temperamental and prone to mood swings. Next question
Jack, you are a male chauvinist pig.
Sultry? Pray, please explain how an energy supply can be sultry. Do you find it sexually exciting?
Not that I agree with the rest of your description either – I know it was an attempt at humour, but your comment comes out as pretty misogynist.
if it were not for the sultry, Franco, Jeffrey and Mugliette come to mind, all male (specita)
Don’t quite agree here with you Daphne. I think it’s the way one is brought up. I remember my grandparents and parents referring to it in the feminine form: Il-powerstation inbniet, Waqfet il-powerstation etc.
To me it doesn’t sound right in male form. To you, it’s otherwise.
[Daphne – Quite frankly, I think it’s a mental extension of ‘magna’ being feminine. Therefore all ‘machines’ must be feminine too.]
Yes, that’s quite a valid explanation.
Le Daphne. Ma hix semplici daqshekk. BMW u Escorts huma irgiel, imma Mazda u Fiats huma nisa.
Daphne, it is not a ‘mental’ extension but the words ‘magna’ (macchina), ‘stazjon’ (stazzione), “energia”, ‘luce elettrica” are all borrowed from Italian and are all feminine.
If we must be faithful when borrowing from English, we must also be faithful when borrowing from Italian.
You cannot rely on English in this particular case unless you argue that “power station” is a phrase borrowed from English.
Even then you would not be completely correct because you would be factoring out considerable Italian influence on the language.
It’s always been feminine to me too for some reason. Most everybody I know refers to it in the feminine form, at least, that’s my impression.
I have heard it being referred to as “dak” on occasion, though. I guess it’s a matter of habit.
[Daphne – Well, obviously it’s referred to as ‘dak’. Imagine calling a ruddy great power station, of all things, ‘dik’. That’s exactly what I’m saying here: the use of the feminine gender is absolutely ludicrous. The test of whether a loan-noun should be masculine or feminine is in whether you can get away with calling it ‘dik’. If you can’t, then just forget the ‘power station ma tahdimx’.]
Where I come from, ‘dik’ with a slight spelling modification, definitely has a masculine connotation.
L-Escort is masculine. Exquisite irony.
Of course, I am sure, you mean the car.
When in Thailand, one never knows. But yes, the car, THE car that is. Pimped up and revved up set screaming down Birkirkara Bypass.
It doesn’t sound right because the word station is feminine. L-istazzjon hija while il-poter huwa.
[Daphne – The word ‘station’ is not feminine. English nouns are gender neutral.]
But in Italian it is feminine. la stazione è chiusa (not è chiuso) so maybe it comes from the Italian influence.
There’s magna and there’s mutur.
The former, if considered a machine, extends, womb, around the occupant, the other, motor, is pure extension of the phallus.
Just compare the body language, at 0:40
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63tjVT__2lI
With this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwnS06Z3oyY&playnext=1&list=PLDE6F082FDB92EAFA&feature=results_main
The car is female menace, everyone keeping a respectable distance, the bike, male revisited.
Power station becomes the house of power.
And finally, at 0.50.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRXwWbo_mX0
Exactly. I was going to tell you same thing.
Magna is femminil as is karozza and both are not really feminine that is the problem with importing words from other languages.
Personally I feel that we are being lazy and give up too easily on finding proper Maltese words.
Even if we take the Italian Centrale Elettrica we could get ideas. Example Centru ghall-generazzjoni ta’ l-Elettriku or simply generatur ta’ l-elettriku. Another case in point is runway when we could use mitjar.
Of course it takes some getting used to and i’m sure someone more intelligent could come up with something better but if we are going to take short cuts and use English then Maltese will continue to suffer.
We refer to ‘karozza’ in the feminine: “dik il-karozza”, unless of course you want to make a statement or look macho and refer to a car in the masculine: “Armajtlu bicca ta’ silencer!” (peress li issa ghandu extension warrab minn hawn allura saret ragel).
Same thing with the power station. We refer to it in the feminine, even though it has a long chimney. Some things do not add up but that’s how it has always been.
One of the dilemmas faced by any stylist is what you mention.
Alfa Romeo insist on both values, using concepts at both ends to lay out the semiotics, thus one gets the SZ, short square brute, late 80’s, followed by the Nivola, mid 90’s, lightweight grace. Mixing elements of the two produces some very unexpected, crisp effects.
Touring’s recent Disco Volante successfully merges the two. Basically truncating the teardrop to produce a sharp Kamm tail, then there’s the squared, albeit soft lines.
http://images.thecarconnection.com/med/touring-superleggera-disco-volante-2012-concept_100383907_m.jpg
Impjant tad-dawl….dak.
Here’s another ubiquitous one which annoys me:
Tazza inbid bajda/ahmar.
Surely it’s abjad/ahmar? It’s the colour of the wine (male) in question, not the glass (female).
[Daphne – Yes, exactly.]
Whoever says tazza imbid bajda does not know Maltese.
[Daphne – GRAMMAR not Maltese. It’s the same in all languages known to me (albeit not many): the adjective qualifies the wine, not the glass, i.e. it’s the wine, and not the glass, that’s white or red, whether in French, Italian, Maltese or gender-neutral English. And it’s inbid, not imbid.]
Daphne – my hero! You could start a completely new notebook JUST on this general subject.
Heroine, not hero … it’s feminine!
@ Min Weber
Well, yes of course but…… oh never mind.
Being gender neutral in English, we might have opted for the Italian way of classifying a power station in feminine form.
This has been the Maltese way of referring to a power station ever since, recalling political debates where both parties argued about the “power station ġdida” in Delimara way back in the 90s.
We do, however, switch to masculine when referring to “impjant li jiġġenera l-enerġija/l-elettriku”.
Very interesting. I like your reasoning that because it does not work it must be a woman.
Many women don’t work so the similarity. But I bet that women work very hard, are reliable, though a bit temperamental.
il-power station antikau mahmuga,
mhux
il-powestation antik u mahmug
[Daphne – Where I come from, it’s actually the latter. But then we don’t say irkotta, either.]
Perhaps these are some of the reasons.
Much more smoke than is necessary.
They are temperamental and stop giving service when they decide.
They have to be taken to England to be refitted (Harrods, Selfridges, etc.).
They cost too much to acquire and much, much more to maintain.
They are full of hidden defects.
After some years in service they have more added parts than originally.
You have to pay for their services.
But most importantly, we can’t live without them.
I must say, Silvio, you are most unfortunate in the women you have encountered.
Quite the contrary, I was very fortunate with women.
Maybe you have different TASTES when it comes to choosing your partners.
Perhaps what you don’t agree with is when I said “We can’t live without them”.
Are you by any chance ONE WHO CAN.
It’s a lady.
In the Maltese language, as in Italian, French and other languages there exist only the masculine and feminine forms, unlike in English and German, for instance.
Now in Italian, French and Spanish stazione, estacion and station are all feminine. That is probably why they use the feminine form in Maltese.
I don’t think one should either be surprised or read anything else into it.
I agree with you that it should be a male because in Maltese it’s “post (jew bini) fejn jigi generat l-elettriku”.
A bit off point, however, hopefully, when Marsa’s shut down, both ‘A’ and ‘B’ stations are converted into spaces open to the public.
‘A’ Station is a piece of industrial archeology, with its brick kilns and a control room straight out of the Nautilus, accessible through a low wide tunnel, ‘B’ turbine hall can be a beautiful space.
The power station is female as it does not work and is useless. This is PL thinking. I do NOT agree.
I thought exactly the same thing when I first saw the billboard.
Station = Stazzjon = Masculine
Judging by the current trend in the ‘Akkademja’ inspired Maltese school books our kids are using, they should probably have written: PAWER STEJXIN – nowadays anything goes when writing Maltese and all we learnt at school has gone out of the window!
Stazzjon in Maltese will be the train station, which I think, would be the earliest form of power plant. The architecture happens to coincide.
London had its metro before any electrical lighting, as did Paris.
Thats because we refer to it in English. If we refer to it as l-istazzjon ta’ l-energija it would then be referred to as masculine I guess. Waqaf l-istazzjon we’d say.
In Italian it is also feminine – ‘la centrale elettrica’. Maybe they sought advice from Luciano for that billboard.
Without claiming to be an expert, I think this post is rather pointless.
Many languages refer to object in a masculine or feminine manner. it happens when the “it” form is missing. in English there is HE, SHE and IT. In Maltese there is only HU and HI.
Jiena (I)
Int (You)
Hu (He)
Hi (She)
??? (It)
Ahna (We)
Intom (You pl.)
Huma (Them)
Not too complicated. In English, verbs are in simple form most of the time – you use the same word, except when it follows he, she or it one has to add an “s”. It’s different in Maltese. Tikkonguga il-verbi…
In contrast, the Marsa-based Boiler No. 7, which some time ago threw a lot of tantrums and REFUSED to work, was regarded as a macho.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100326/local/have-you-heard-the-one-on-boiler-no-7.299962
Il-boiler, il-heater, il-forn… something with heat-generation devices being masculine, for some odd linguistic reason.
The greatest heat generator of all breaks that rule.
Unless I’m missing all sarcasm tonight.
I can think of a few that aren’t
spiritiera
huggiega
sulfarina
kittla (tal-elettriku)
hadida tal-moghdija
xemgha
forga
There’s no such thing as gender neutrality for Maltese nouns.
I think this follows from Italian, where foreign words are by definition considered to be feminine.
La radio, la televisione, etc.
It’s the same in Maltese, generally, although there are notable exceptions which you can only learn if you grow up speaking Maltese. ‘Il-hair dryer waqfet taħdem’ (fem.), but ‘il-laptop mhux jixgħel’ (masc), despite it being a ‘magna’ too.
[Daphne – Those notable exceptions are not learned when you grow up speaking Maltese. They are random, ad hoc, the language of the group, and not the language itself. Obviously, because they are very new to the language. Most people who are over the age of 50 today and grew up speaking Maltese would never even have seen a hairdryer while growing up, still less owned one. As for laptops… And yes, because I grew up in a bilingual household, I had noticed that all domestic machines are feminine, but the reason for this is, again, obvious: they are patently ‘magni’ and ‘magni’ are feminine. A laptop, however, is not a ‘magna’ in the way it would normally be understood. Nor is a power station, which was my point.]
It could also be naval lingo, ‘she went down’ soon became ‘nizlet’ even though vapur is masculine.
I think gender could well derive from male fascination with the sublime.
Love it.
The “language of the group” has the power to eventually become “the language itself”, whether we like it or not.
[Daphne – Perhaps, but lots of us are still holding out against irkotta, and that’s the way it’s going to stay for the foreseeable future.]
This is a phenomenon common to all languages. And as long as this doesn’t break already established rules, I don’t see how this can be objectionable.
[Daphne – Call a power station ‘dik’ if you want to, and see what kind of reaction you get.]
If it’s good enough for Michelle, why should a power station object?
La donna e’ mobile…….qual pium’al vento.
Ticcajta hix masculine! A phallic symbol of that proportion emanating from it and dominating the skyline…
And why is magna feminine and mutur masculine?
[Daphne – Because magna ends in ‘a’ and mutur does not.]
So it’s not because magna is pink or because there’s anything pink about it.
It is correct to say that words ending in ‘a’ are always feminine, but the inverse is certainly not implied, and definitely not always the case.
It has nothing to do with the Italian equivalent either. The Maltese equivalent, stazzjon, is masculine and has always been as far as I can tell.
We have many Maltese equivalents which take the opposite gender of the Italian ones. Il sole, la luna, as examples.
I’m not aware of any rules in Maltese which dictate the gender of assimilated words. I don’t think there can be any hard and fast rules, other than perhaps arbitrary ones. The problem is compounded when the original word is gender neurtal.
In many instances like these, I think that whatever becomes popular eventually becomes official.
Saying that it’s said to be female because it’s dysfunctional is silly. It’s still female to many (even though not to you) when it’s in full working order.
Labour thinks that the power station is a girl? Really? Are we THAT short of issues to discuss?
She’s a lady, wow,wow,wow, she’s a lady.
She works hard for her money and you’d better treat her right.
In Italian ‘station’ is: la stazione.
I suspect that is why it is feminine in Maltese.
Imma “l-istazzjon kien bla dawl”.
Ezatt. Stazzjon is masculine.
Unlike nazzjon, which is feminine.
I would be inclined to say: ‘Il-power station qadima hafna’ rather than ‘Il-power station qadim hafna’.
When it refers to a TV station we tend to use it in the masculine form. Odd!
Why is ‘ghoxx’ male?
[Daphne – Probably for the same reason that the version of the male organ that begins with ‘p’, as distinct from the one that begins with ‘z’, is female.]
You’re contradicting yourself.
Earlier you stated correctly that words ending in ‘a’ are female. So the reason for pexixa being female has nothing to do with the reason for ghoxx being male.
[Daphne – Stop right there while I groan out loud. I forget that I have to label sarcasm, irony, dry humour, black humour, whatever, in pink neon because it gets taken literally otherwise.]
That’s always a handy escape clause. And that’s a fact that no one can deny.
If you were truly being sarcastic, then I apologise for missing that and for making you groan out so loudly.
Hara? Male. Nice!
Or is it oxx?
Or ox?
Not so fast Daphne.
I think that the bright lights at the PL were actually referring to “il-mara tad-dar” because she is ‘full of energy’ (power station tad-dar) stays home, doesn’t work (outside the home)and lives on her husband’s wages. Right?
I don’t think Labour supporters feel married to the power station in any way.
Their current contributions to keep it going is due to a forced marriage imposed on them by Gonzi, which will be annulled the moment Joseph takes office.
Muscat will then proceed to fix a more comfortable marriage for them with some phantom coal-munching machine which can live off lower wages, and they’ll live happily ever after.
I have always heard it referred to as feminine.
I think it’s the link to “stazzjon” which makes it feminine in Maltese.”L-istazzjon tal-ferrovija ma ghadix tahdem Malta”, and not “m’ghadux jahdem”. probably because in Italian “stazione” is feminine. But then again,” l-istazjon tat-television” is masculine.
[Daphne – In my family, it’s always been masculine, perhaps because we sometimes say ‘l-impjant tad-dawl’ and not ‘il-power station’.]
In any case, I do not think that the gender assigned to foreign words depends on how “feminine” or “masculine” the object in question is. By that reasoning, “il-make up” would be feminine.
As for cars, I have always referred to them as feminine, whether I’m talking about a Fiat, Bmw or Mazda.
You’re wrong.
Il-ferrovija m’għadhiex taħdem.
L-istazzjon mimli nies.
You’re confusing the two.
What you are saying is extraordinarily interesting.
Because:
1. stazzjon is MASCULINE (unlike what some people here are saying).
2. BUT nazzjon is FEMININE, jekk sodisfazzjon.
3. dishwasher is masculine, but washing machine is feminine. Speedboat is feminine but yacht is masculine.
So there seems to be no rule. It’s quite whimsical.
Indeed, however, playstation is feminine, so it follows that power station should be feminine too.
But what really intrigues me is that pjaneta and problema have become feminine. Indeed, in the 1930s Guze’ Bonnici used problema in the masculine form. Then, somehow it became feminine.
Similarly, we are witnessing the phenomenon whereby sema and xaghar are becoming feminine, and biza’ is becoming bizgha (ie. from masculine to feminine).
I wonder whether Olvin Vella might enlighten us as to why this phenomenon is taking place.
And whereas power station is feminine, television (ending with “-xin”) is masculine.
But vizjoni is feminine.
There must be some psycholinguistic argument for all this. The professionals do read this blog. Would they mind enlightening us?
You can call it “dik” or “dak”. For me, “power station” will always be DAWK.
DAWK.
Il-Kraftwerk.
Ja! Genau!
Leider ist Kraftwerk – das Kraftwerk, nicht der Kraftwerk!
So Kraftwerk is neuter.
Er, do you even know who Kraftwerk are?
H.P. Baxxter, I did not know who Kraftwerk were until I Googled it.
I like their music though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQIYEPe6DWY
She’s a model and she’s loooking good
Station in English tends to be masculine when used in Maltese. Yet its Maltese equivalent ‘stazzjon’ is masculine.
We say, ‘din il-powerstation (or pawerstajxin) thammeg’ not ‘ihammeg’.