 |
 |
--- [log in to unmask] wrote: > just a reminder that grammatical gender and physical gender > dont necessarily coincide. as Mark Twain pointed out, in > German a girl (madchen) is "it" while a turnip (rube) is "she". Yes, and in Latin the word for a thing - res - is feminine, while in Old English the word for a wife, wif, is neuter, while the word for a woman, wifmon, is masculine. Actually the application of the term "gender" to people is quite modern. It was not done even in my younger days. Until about ten years or so ago, or twenty at the most, I had never heard the word "gender" applied to anything other than words. One talked about the sex of a person or an animal, but the gender of the word which denoted it. Oriens. ____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%