German has 3 genders. Der, die, das. (Masculine, feminine, neuter) Plus, some nouns you’d expect to be neuter are not. Der Wagon (car) for instance.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone On Friday, June 10, 2022, 10:36 AM, zMan <[email protected]> wrote: Glad to see this has stayed on topic. /s On Fri, Jun 10, 2022 at 10:02 AM Mohammad Khan <[email protected]> wrote: > I guess the yearning is for something like Persian which mostly disregards > gender. Its third person singular pronoun "oo" ( pronounced like too > without t) covers he, she and it. It even uses borrowed Arabic words, > which are gender specific in the original, for all genders. > > MKK > > > On Thu, 9 Jun 2022 18:26:06 -0400, Bob Bridges <[email protected]> > wrote: > > >That's mostly true. But that's the neuter gender, which in English we > apply > >mostly to inanimate objects. > > > >Not exclusively, though. Pet owners usually say "he" or "she" of their > >mammals, but we usually say "it" of an animal whose sex we don't know or > >don't care about ("it bit me!"). Some inanimate objects take "he" or > "she". > >And until recently human children were properly "it", grammatically > >speaking, though nowadays that's become unpopular. > > > >--- > >Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 > > > >/* The cities are for money but the high-up hills are purely for the soul. > >-from _Galloway_ by Louis L'Amour */ > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf > Of > >Seymour J Metz > >Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 16:50 > > > >Neuter singular pronouns for living beings. "They" and "them" are > nominally > >plural in contemporary English, while "it" only applies to inanimate > >objects. > > > >________________________________________ > >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf > of > >Bob Bridges [[email protected]] > >Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 3:54 PM > > > >Wait a moment, Shmuel: English still has the neuter. In fact ~most~ of > our > >nouns are neuter, barring only a few exceptions, unlike the Romance > >languages which have only masculine and feminine. In English, almost > every > >non-human noun and a handful of human ones are "it". What did you mean to > >say? > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf > Of > >Seymour J Metz > >Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 11:44 > > > >Now, I could make a case that we would be better off had we retained the > >neuter gender. > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- zMan -- "I've got a mainframe and I'm not afraid to use it" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
