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Just by the way, here's another of those mysteries of grammatical gender. La Patrie, which means literally "the Fatherland" is feminine gender. Go figure.
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Just by the way, here's another of those mysteries of grammatical gender. La Patrie, which means literally "the Fatherland" is feminine gender. Go figure.
If think that's odd, how about...
Le féminisme
La masculinité
And one thing I have noticed is that some common idiomatic expressions pretty much the exact opposite in French.
ne réveillez pas le chat qui dort(don't wake a sleeping cat) = let sleeping dogs lie
avoir un chat dans la gorge (to have a cat in your throat) = to have a frog in one's throat
If the hat fits (French) = if the shoe fits
I didn't get the exact translation, but this French expression translation was used Toy Story 2.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"the Fatherland" is feminine gender
A mystery only to those who have commited the linguistic faux pas of conflating gender and sex.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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old hand
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old hand
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the linguistic faux pas of conflating gender and sex.
How could you not? When you're talking about a woman in Italian and French, you use the feminine endings of adjectives, making the past participle agree when required, etc., etc. When you're talking about a man you use the masculine ones. You can't separate gender and sex in that case!
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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You can't separate gender and sex in that case!
In Old English, wifman, (woman) was masculine and wif, (wife) was neuter. In Modern German Mädchen (young girl) is neuter.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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mysteries of grammatical gender. La Patrie, which means literally "the Fatherland" is feminine gender.
I think the feminineness of the word might come from its "ie" ending, not its "patr" beginning. If it had a gender in English, I'd guess the gender would probably come from the 'land' portion, not the 'father' (well, that's how it works in German, and it kinda makes sense).
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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If it had a gender in English, I'd guess the gender would probably come from the 'land' portion
This is why the gender of wifman was masculine in OE. The Germanic rule has been that compound words take the gender of the last element. Mädchen is neuter in Modern German because all words ending in -chen are neuter. It is my contention that the concept of grammatical gender is meaningless in Modern English. It has become completely confused with the concept of sex, even to the point that, when filling out forms, you are asked, not your sex, but your gender.
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