Re: [OT] Grammatic gender

[Karlin High]

On 11/15/2017 10:56 AM, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> I've spoken English my entire life, and I have literally never heard an 
> exchange like:
>
>    Q: Is the sun up yet?
>    A: Yes — he rose an hour ago.

Same here. My small exposure to Spanish was a shock: Okay, English has 
'a, an, and the'. Spanish has 'el, la, los, las, un, una, unas, unos' 
and lemons are male and oranges are female. Whose idea was that? Oh, 
wait. English is plenty quirky too, better not complain.

And the German dialect I'm familiar with is so heavily influenced by 
English, I wasn't even aware it had grammatic gender until after 
exposure to Spanish. It's been said that speakers of the dialect "use 
German words to make English sentences." All those Die, Das, Der, Den, 
etc often get replaced with one universal: D'

And even people who speak the dialect much better than I do, are using 
the grammatic genders unconsciously and are a little stunned when the 
concept's existence is pointed out. "You know, now that you mention 
it... I guess there is something like that going on."
--
Karlin High
Missouri, USA