Gender
Dakelh does not have grammatical gender. That is, the grammar does not require that certain forms be used in reference to men or women, and nouns referring to sexless things are not assigned to male and female classes. This contrasts with languages like French in which a Canadian man is un homme canadien but a Canadian woman is une femme canadienne and in which sexless inanimate things are classified as “masculine” and “feminine”, so that a Canadian stream is un courant canadien while a Canadian river is une rivière canadienne, where “stream” and “river” are arbitrarily classified as masculine and feminine. Here un is the masculine form of “a”, une the feminine form; canadien is the masculine form of “Canadian", canadienne the feminine form.
The third person singular possessive forms of nouns may correspond to “his such-and-such”, “her such-and-such”, or “it's such-and-such”. ootl'ool, for example, may be “his rope”, “her rope”, or “it's rope”. Similarly, third person singular object marked postpositions are genderless. oozih may correspond to “next to him”, “next to her”, or “next to it”. Third person singular subject forms of verbs may have either gender as subject. 'ut'en may mean “he is working” or “she is working”. The use of this verb form tells us nothing about the sex of the person working and it may be used whether the person working is male or female. The same is true of object marked forms of verbs. yunilh'en may mean “he is looking at him”, “he is looking at her”, “he is looking at it”, “she is looking at him”, “she is looking at her”, “she is looking at it”, “it is looking at him”, “it is looking at her”, or “it is looking at it”,
The pronoun 'en may correspond to English “he”, ”him”, ”she”, or ”her”, depending on context. The same is true of the demonstratives. ndun “this near speaker (human singular)” may refer to either a man or a woman.
There are, however, words denoting people of a particular gender, e.g. chilh “young man” and t'et “young woman, -tsoo “grandmother” and -tsiyan “grandfather”, duneyaz “boy”, ts'ekeyaz “girl”. Similarly, there are words for a particular sex of animal, e.g. jeyo “bull moose”, khudats'e “cow moose”. There is usually a genderless cover term as well, e.g. khuda “moose”, but not always. There is, for example, no cover term for “young person”; you must specify “young man” or “young woman”. Similarly, if you are talking about your parents' brothers and sisters and their spouses, you must specify whether they are aunts or uncles; there is no cover term.
In some cases a form will have a gender naturally associated with it because of the way the world is. ulchan will for example normally be translated as “she is pregnant” since it is normally women who can be pregnant. Exceptions to his may arise in cases where the usual relationship between biological sex and gender does not hold, e.g. a trans man who is biologically female, or a male seahorse carrying its young. Similarly, certain body parts, such as the genitals, are associated with a particular sex.
There are a very few verbs that have a built-in gender. for a man to be handsome must have a male subject, for a woman to be beautiful a female subject.
Gender also plays a role with kinship terms. As mentioned above, some kinship terms are gender-specific, e.g. -ulhtus “sister”, -ulhutsin “brother”. There are also cases in which the appropriate term depends on the reference point. -t̲s̲e' is a man's son; oot̲s̲e' necessarily means “his daughter” and not “her daughter”. -yats'e is a woman's son; ooyats'e necessarily means “her daughter”, not “his daughter”.
The gender of connecting relatives may also be relevant. -ak'i is an aunt on the mother's side, -bizyan an aunt on the father's side.
In examples, the gender used in English translations is that appropriate for the original context of the sentence. In glosses, “he”, “she”, “it”, etc. are chosen more-or-less arbitrarily, with the various possibilities not spelled out simply to avoid tedious repetition. With rare exceptions such as those noted above, something glossed “he” or “him” could also be glossed “she” or “her”, and something glossed “she” or “her” could also be glossed “he” or “him”. In most cases the human forms, such as “he” and “she” and non-human forms, “it” and, in reference to several non-humans, “they” and “them”, are interchangeable. However, there are some contexts in which the language does make a distinction between humans and non-humans.
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