tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 10 07:38:42 1994
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Gramatical Gender: was Re: Qaghqoq
- From: "Kevin A. Geiselman, Knight Errant" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Gramatical Gender: was Re: Qaghqoq
- Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 20:27:06 -0500 (EST)
- In-Reply-To: <9403091412.AA02752@ bush.cs.tamu.edu>
On Wed, 9 Mar 1994, Erich Schneider wrote:
> ...... French more-or-less arbitrarily throws all nouns into one of
> two bins and treats them as grammatically distinct classes; they
> happen to be called "masculine" and "feminine". English tends to
> divide things up into "male living beings", "female living beings",
> and "everything else", with a few exceptions (ships, for example).
> Navajo classes nouns by the shape of the object being referred to;
> this include "long and rigid", "long and flexible",
> "shapeless/amorphous", and many others. (An unconscious drunk human is
> a "shapeless" object in this language!)
>From German class in college, I learned that the gramatical gender was
based upon where the root word came from. Words that came from Latin
roots were considered to have a masculine gender and those from the Greek
roots were given feminine gender.
And just for general information: the Russians refer to ships in the
masculine.
Kordite, Chief of Intelligence, IKV Dark Justice, Klingon Assault Group
aka Kevin A. Geiselman, Knight Errant, c/o [email protected]