I was wondering which languages (spoken or otherwise) have distinct separate pronouns (more specific than the words "this" and "that") for referring to concrete and abstract things, separately.
Thank you for your feedback.
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Related: Languages with a grammatical distinction between abstract and concrete nouns– curiousdannii ♦Commented Feb 21 at 3:42
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1 Answer
Swahili, sort of.
Like many Bantu languages, Swahili categorizes nouns into a large number of genders (or "classes"), and many (though not all) pronouns show agreement with these genders. Some of these genders are almost exclusively used for abstract nouns (class 14, concepts), and others almost exclusively for concrete nouns (class 1, people).
However, the choice of pronoun depends on the gender of the noun, not directly on its meaning. There are other genders (class 9, loanwords) which can have both concrete and abstract nouns in them, and they will both take the class-9 pronouns.
