Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Newsweek -- "A one point race" ?

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Newsweek -- "A one point race" ?
  • Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:15:35 EDT



> >> 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




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page