Swedish (if anyone’s interested) has two grammatical genders, but they are not connected to male/female. Third person singular ”den”/”det” would both just translate to ”it” in English, whereas ”han” and ”hon” (”he” and ”she”) are separate pronouns only used for people (plus animals and things to which you have a personal relation).
(So I don’t know if you could say that we technically have four grammatical genders, I have a vague memory from my school time about it) Erik > 15 nov. 2017 kl. 23:32 skrev Wol's lists <antli...@youngman.org.uk>: > > On 15/11/17 20:32, David Kastrup wrote: >> David Wright <lily...@lionunicorn.co.uk> writes: >>> On Wed 15 Nov 2017 at 11:56:07 (-0500), Kieren MacMillan wrote: >>>> Hi Simon, >>>> > >>> >>> A duchess has gender, but I don't see that the word "duchess" has >>> grammatical gender. How is that expressed? >> "The duchess ate her lunch" as opposed to "The duchess ate its lunch"? >> German: "Das Mädchen aß seine Mahlzeit.". > > Except that "her" refers to the person, not the noun ... > > Mind you, I would feel happy with the following: > The cat ate its lunch (indeterminate gender) > The tom ate its lunch (we know it's male because it's a tom) > The queen ate its lunch (we know it's female because it's a queen) > > But I suspect that's because we rarely use "tom" or "queen", and your mind > substitutes the indeterminate "cat". >>>>> It may seem so, because the articles for all three genders are the >>>>> same, but words are referred to by ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’. In >>>>> English the sun is male, the moon female >>>> >>>> I've spoken English my entire life, and I have literally never heard >>>> an exchange like: >>>> >>>> Q: Is the sun up yet? >>>> A: Yes — he rose an hour ago. >>> >>> Neither have I, though there is the song "The sun has got his hat on". >>> Again, personification, not grammar. >> "Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines >> And often is his gold complexion dimm'd" >> Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare. > But again, personification, not grammar. To me that feels slightly weird - as > far as I am concerned the sun is "it". > > Cheers, > Wol > > _______________________________________________ > lilypond-user mailing list > lilypond-user@gnu.org > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list lilypond-user@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
