IIRC, Germans, Italians, &c. will describe the same objects differently based on the grammatical gender of the word describing it; i.e., speakers of a language in which “bridge” is masculine will emphasize a bridge’s strength and stability vs beauty and grace, and visa versa, &c. So gender in the wider sense interacts with it somewhat.
On a lighter note, Mark Twain had a typically great passage which he claimed to be a literal translation of a German story, the main humor being that various inanimate objects are referred to as hes and shes while the hapless fishwife has to get by on its.
The “bridge” study was by Lera Boroditsky, as discussed here. Her papers are available here—it looks like the most relevant is:
Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L., & Phillips, W. (2003). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. In Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (Eds.,) Language in Mind: Advances in the study of Language and Cognition.
IIRC, Germans, Italians, &c. will describe the same objects differently based on the grammatical gender of the word describing it; i.e., speakers of a language in which “bridge” is masculine will emphasize a bridge’s strength and stability vs beauty and grace, and visa versa, &c. So gender in the wider sense interacts with it somewhat.
On a lighter note, Mark Twain had a typically great passage which he claimed to be a literal translation of a German story, the main humor being that various inanimate objects are referred to as hes and shes while the hapless fishwife has to get by on its.
The “bridge” study was by Lera Boroditsky, as discussed here. Her papers are available here—it looks like the most relevant is:
Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L., & Phillips, W. (2003). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. In Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (Eds.,) Language in Mind: Advances in the study of Language and Cognition.