Shmuel, I expect you have in mind "Mädchen" and "Fräulein". I put this down to following the rules wherever they take you - in a manner not dissimilar to the "must not" problem I covered yesterday in IBMTCP-L. The suffixes "-chen" and "-lein" - or simply "-l" as in "stübl" - require the neuter gender, "das", which overrides any mere biological assignment of gender. <g>
Chris Mason ----- Original Message ----- From: "Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, 23 June, 2006 3:33 PM Subject: Re: Mainframe Limericks... <snip> > > Most languages are strange to people who didn't grow up in them. > Personally, I find it strange that a word in German applying only to > females should have a neuter gender, but I'm sure that there are > things in English that look equally strange to Germans, or to you. > <snip> > > -- > Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT > ISO position; see <http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html> > We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. > (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
