Re: gender in English

Robert Heilman wrote:

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:
>> Another point to think about: the gender we typically assign to
>> personifications and anthropomophisms often corresponds to the Old English
>> gender. For example, Death is a male; in children's stories dogs are
>> usually male, cats female. And the Moon has a man in it, not a woman.
>> Makes sense if English has gender for all its nouns, but is much more
>> lenient in enforcing them.
>>
>
>That's an interesting idea, Marcus. I'd never thought of that. My first
>inclination, though, is to attribute that to the Old English genders
>still embedded in our social subconscious, surfacing with
>personification & such, rathern than to the genders still being active
>in Modern English.
That's how I think of it too.  I just pointed out the alternative as a Conlang
idea.  Keep the juices flowing, and all that.

 For example, Death might typically be male in our
>literature, but that's more tradition than the language. If I were to
>write a story with Death as a female, it wouldn't be the traditional
>personification, but it is still perfectly acceptible in our language.
I did this for a Creative Writing course a few years back.  The prof. loved
it.  Lots of comments/praise for breaking with tradition and being, well,
creative.

Marcus





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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
  -- Kenneth Hale
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