Re: Gender

On Tue, 27 Oct 1998 15:25:30 -0500 Carlos Thompson
<cthompso@...> writes:
>-----Mensaje original-----
>De: Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
>Fecha: Domingo 25 de Octubre de 1998 22:17
>>Actually, in Hebrew the genders are the same as the sexes - _zakhar_
>is
>>used both as "male" and "masculine", and _neqeivah_ is both "female"
>and
>>"feminine".
>
>Are genders the same as sexes?  Or just the names?  In Spanish there
>is a
>clear disctintion between gender and sex but we use the names
>"masculino"
>and "femenino" for either grammatical gender and sexual
>classification.
>
>-- Carlos Th
They're not the same. For instance, the word for "bird", _tzipor_, is
considered female/feminine (and uses verbs conjugated femininely) even
though it might be a male bird we're talking about.  It's just that
Hebrew uses the same words to mean grammatical gender of words, and
physical gender/sex.
Just thought i'd mention, that the root of _neqeivah_, "female/feminine",
comes from the root NQB, which has to do with holes...for...uhm...obvious
biological reasons ;) .
The root of _zakhar_, ZKR, has to do with memory, but i don't know how
that has to do with the gender.

-Stephen (Steg)

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