Re: Gender of rivers - and other waters.

> Michael Poxon <mike@...> wrote:
>
> Yes, German "Sun" is called feminine because it is "die Sonne" and
> grammarians long ago decided that nouns which take "die" in the
> Nom.Sing. would be called "feminine".
Yes, but why?  Why did they decide to call "die" words feminine instead
of solar or one of any number of categories that we humans use?  Is it
because a preponderance of female objects were in this class?  What was
the pull of the masculine-feminine-neuter classification that we're all
used to?  Why did the Latins, for example, with five declensions, put
all their nouns, regardless of declension, into three classes?

In Senjecas, the noun classes are named after the vowel of the stem: o-
class, e-class, etc., similar to the Swahili ki-class, u-class, etc.

Charlie

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