On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 11:56:09AM -0700, Erik Steffl wrote: > Nori Heikkinen wrote: > >on Fri, 24 Oct 2003 12:52:10AM +0100, Pigeon insinuated: > ... > >>Argh, this does my head in too. Especially when you come across > >>things like all the words for female genitals in lots of languages > >>having the masculine gender. Work that one out. > > > > > >yeah, or a fork being feminine, spoon being masculine, and knife being > >neuter in german. lots of weird ones like that. > > why do you find it weird? genders are pretty much random
But in German they can be plain perverse: weiblich=feminine because something feminine is like a woman (=Weib) maennlich=masculine because something masculine is like a man (=Mann) saechlich=neuter because something neuter is like a thing (=Sache) The only problem is that Weib is a neuter word and Sache feminine. David -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
