How can I understand if the lyrics of a song has refered to a boy or a girl?
Hi everybody,
I have a doubt. How can I understand if the lyrics of a song has refered to a boy or a girl?
In a lot of songs it is obvious but in others (at least for me) it is not clear!
In Italian language is easy because verbs referring to girls are spelled differently than the verbs referring to boys.
But in English? Is there a "grammatic" way to understand or I have to elaborate only on the context?EXAMPLE .
In one of my favorite song "Gives you hell"
Some Italian sites translate like if the subject is a girl (maybe an ex girlfriend) and others like if the subject is a man (or Generally an enemy) ...
What do you think?
In the music video seems to refered to a girl ...
I can not post the lyrics Because it is too long .

Question

How can I understand if the lyrics of a song has refered to a boy or a girl?
Hi everybody,
I have a doubt. How can I understand if the lyrics of a song has refered to a boy or a girl?
In a lot of songs it is obvious but in others (at least for me) it is not clear!
In Italian language is easy because verbs referring to girls are spelled differently than the verbs referring to boys.
But in English? Is there a "grammatic" way to understand or I have to elaborate only on the context?EXAMPLE .
In one of my favorite song "Gives you hell"
Some Italian sites translate like if the subject is a girl (maybe an ex girlfriend) and others like if the subject is a man (or Generally an enemy) ...
What do you think?
In the music video seems to refered to a girl ...
I can not post the lyrics Because it is too long .

Answer

I looked up the song, at this quote confirms the song is about anyone you hate, whether they be male or female:
"[The song] is about this asshole, it’s a dude who will never know it’s about him. It's kind of this tongue-in-cheek way of looking at someone you hate, whether it's your mom, for some reason, or it's your teacher at school, or it's your boss at work. It's just someone who makes you struggle, and it's giving them the finger."
-http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gives_You_Hell

Unfortunately assigning a gender to the person the song is about causes it to lose meaning in translation.

Answer

Unless there are very clear words like "she" or "her dress", then you would have to guess from the context.

Even then, it's not so clear. For example, it's easy to assume the Split Enz song "I Hope I Never" is about an ex-girlfriend or ex-wife, because the singer (Tim Finn) is male. However, Finn wrote the song about a male colleague who was a complete b*****d.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABXcIsmyLJk

Which songs are confusing you? :)

Answer

:D I remember that in Finnish they have only one word for "he/she". It is "hän". So English is not alone.

Answer

Peacy is correct.  Unless there are context clues to help you out, that's one of the fun parts of English -- words aren't gramatically gendered and it can result in a lot of ambiguity.

Another example of this is Lady Gaga's song "Poker Face" in which the listener is unclear whether she's singing about a man or a woman.

Answer

Can you give an example of when you think it's not clear? It's possible the writer was intentionally ambiguous or they didn't think gender was important.