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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >> Her 
> > favorite example of dumb language rules is that in German nouns have 
> gender 
> > applied -- masculine, feminine and neuter (go figure) AND girl (madchen, 
> > can't do an umlaut on this computer) is neuter.
> 

Mustn't get me started.

Gender isn't the same thing as 'sex'.  Grammatical gender means the kind or 
type of word, and any reference to make and female is incidental.

In all Indo-European languages (English too at one time), the words referring 
to a young lady who had not yet born a child (or could be demonstrated to be 
involved in sex) were neuter.  Applying the feminine to a word for an animate 
object was to set it apart.

So like Madchen in German, the Greek word for 'maiden' is 'parthenon' which 
is also neuter.  In Greek, a child who did not yet show outward sexual 
characteristics is a 'paidion' and is neuter.

In German a chidken is 'das Huhn' but if it performs a male role it is 'der 
Hahn' and if it performs a feminine role it is 'die Henne'.  

Grammatical gender might sound like an annoysome silliness to the learner of 
a language that employs it.  But we have just as many unnecessary bits of 
baggage in our own language.

We are forced by our grammer to state whether there is one of something or 
more than one, even if it makes no difference at all.   In response to the 
question of whether you are hungry, you can reply:

"No, I just ate A sandwich."
     or
"No, I just ate sandwichES."

You are forced to state whether you ate one or more than one, although it 
makes no difference.  You cannot grammatically say "No, I ate sandwich."

Likewise in English you are forced to state whether something is definate or 
indefinate although it makes no difference.  You can say:

"I rode A horse to town."
      or
"I rode THE horse to town."

but you cannot grammatically say:

"I rode horse to town."

Other languages can (and do), Russian for example and Latin do not routinely 
specify whether something is definate or indefinate.


Also in English we are forced by our grammer to state the time something 
happend, although it might not be important at all.  All our verbal 
statements are 
past, present, or future (or one of our many variations of it),

So while to the learner of German the three grammatical genders might seem a 
distractive annoyance, we do the same thing in our own language and think 
nothing of it.


James