-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday 01 November 2003 9:54 am, Tom wrote: > On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 09:48:25AM -0700, Wesley J Landaker wrote: > > "Le Linux" is typically used as masculine, but I've seen it, less > > often, used as feminine, "la Linux". I'm not aware that it is > > "officially" anything, but to me as a French-speaker, it "feels" > > more like a masculine noun. > > Do some free-association and tell me what makes a word "feel' > masculine or feminine. > > (I have a theory, but I don't want to influence what you say).
Now that you ask, the first thing that jumps into my head is that Linux is named after Linus Torvalds. =) But that's not why I said it "feels" like a masculine noun. It's more like the way it sounds. "Le Linux" sounds right, "la Linux" sounds... odd. Then again, as I said, I'm not a native French speaker, and although I've got *fairly* good inuition into a word's gender, I still make mistakes! ;) Anyway, sounds like a couple native speakers have already responded as well, and it sounds like the word really is masculine. But, now I'm curious... what is your theory? - -- Wesley J. Landaker - [EMAIL PROTECTED] OpenPGP FP: 4135 2A3B 4726 ACC5 9094 0097 F0A9 8A4C 4CD6 E3D2 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/pG7+8KmKTEzW49IRAuSkAJwM5Eq8ykiOwmF5SibsCRyQ6+Z8CwCeKDmj L68cn31oBjR2/hZcqfL+5+o= =EY75 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
