The determination of gender is highly subjective, in French at least, and if
there is any specific mechanism used to determine the gender, I am not aware
of it.  On the other hand, let me give would-be French speakers a hint;
whatever gender you think an object or thing has, use the reverse in French.
You will be far more accurate than you think.


Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 288-7438
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com

-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Jeff Kell
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 4:17 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: OT: English

Meant to send this to the list, but ended up sending it only to Greg
Stigers.  Let's try again...

Now for a complete 180 turn, let me ask a question that has bugged me
since high school and I've never had a good answer for...

In "gendered" languages (French and Spanish I know for sure, not so sure
how pervasive it is), nouns have a "gender" such that there is no "the"
as in "the bus", it has to be gendered as in "l'autobus" (not "la
autobus").  How is gender determined in a noun?  It is an extremely
foreign concept in English, with a few exceptions (boats are feminine
and often referred to that way directly with "she", "her" and so forth).

To heck with spelling and usage, if they bother to try and post in
English it is to their credit as the point is made 99.9% of the time.
It isn't an easy language (but at least we have no diacriticals :-) ).

Jeff

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *