Re: Genders (was Re: Láadan and woman's speak

On Sun, Jun 04, 2000 at 01:27:06AM -0400, Nik Taylor wrote:
> Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote:
> >
> > As a datapoint I can point out a natlang with no trace of grammatical
> > gender whatsoever in its nouns or pronouns: Finnish.  There are *no*
> > articles and only two 3rd person singular pronouns: 'hän' (used for
> > males and females) and 'se' (animals and inanimates).
>
> Actually, that is a grammatical gender, between human and non human.
Okay, allow me to quibble a bit: "no grammatical gender correlating
with the physical gender".

> Chinese, on the other hand, has only _ta_, which can be used for any
> noun.
Well, funny that, in colloquial Finnish 'hän' seems to be disappearing
fast... instead of saying 'hän meni'(he went) in everyday speech
people say 'se meni' (it went).

--
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        # There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
        # It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen