Re: [OT] Grammatic gender

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Simon,

> On Nov 14, 2017, at 5:47 PM, Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>> Again, here English is very unusual because words do not have a gender
>> (the objects they refer to may, but that's different ... :-)
> 
> How would that be true?

See, e.g., <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender>:
Although Old English had grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter; 
as in Modern German), modern English is not considered to have them and aside 
from a handful of nouns such as "god" and "goddess", "duke" and "duchess", 
"tiger" and "tigress", and "waiter" and "waitress", gender is found almost 
exclusively in pronouns and titles.

> It may seem so, because the articles for all three genders are the same, but 
> words are referred to by ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’. In English the sun is male, 
> the moon female

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.

=)

Cheers,
Kieren.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden