On 5 May 2014 14:33, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, May 05, 2014 at 10:24:15AM +1200, LizR wrote: > > Yes, good point. It seems likely to me that people would notice that > there > > was a queen bee who laid all the eggs, and perhaps make some assumptions > > based on that. If they noticed that the queen started as a normal worker > > but was fed special stuff to make her into the queen... well, people > > weren't stupid in those days! (Just badly informed on many matters).. > > > > In the interests of full disclosure, I should also quote the Bible. > > > > Proverbs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Proverbs>, Chapter 6, > verse > > 6: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider *her *ways, and be wise". > > > > Worker ants are indeed female... and they too have queens... but as you > say > > Samiya needs to show that this couldn't be ascertained, or reasonably > > assumed, by ancient people before he makes any claims about it being > > provided by divine inspiration (which I assume is his aim). > > > > Plus to confound things, in many languages, nouns have a gender that > needn't imply anything about the gender of the referrant. For example, > ant in French is la fourmi, and is referred as "she/her", regardless > whether it is a male or female ant you are talking about. > > In extreme cases, the genders do not match at all - an example in > German is das Mädchen, meaning "girl", a neuter noun. > > Perhaps we need to ask what the state of mind was when the Bible was > translated into English - perhaps people knew by the 17th century when > the bible was first translated into English (probably from latin, > where ant is likely to be feminine) that ants were usually females. Or > perhaps the gender is simply a bit of a hangover from the translation > - just like we refer to ships in the feminine, even today. > > I have no knowledge of Arabic, but could it be that ants are feminine > in Arabic? >
Yes indeed, that question is apparently with an expert at the moment, who is supposed to be getting back to Samiya and me on that very question. (See my earlier posts on gendered nouns in Arabic.) Good point about when the text was translated. I don't know about the Quran but I think the first Bible that wasn't in Latin was the King James? No, Wikipedia has put me right! It was an earlier one in 1535. I doubt the gender of worker ants and bees was common knowledge then. Apparently Latin also has gendered nouns, however. formica, formicae<http://www.latin-dictionary.net/definition/20892/formica-formicae> noun - declension: 1st declension - gender: feminine *Definitions:* 1. ant Apis Translation *Bee* ------------------------------ *Main Forms*: Apis, Apis *Gender*: Feminine *Declension*: Third So Latin, at least, has female bees *and* ants! (So the feminisation of ant in Proverbs isn't so surprising if it went via Latin.) I suspect that people observed the queen bee / ant and thought "She's obviously the boss" (apparently modern genetic says otherwise) and made bees and ants female by association. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
