Re: Gender of rivers - and other waters.

In Spanish most water words (that I remember offhand) are masculine:
el agua
el mar
el rio

Rain is feminine, though:
la lluvia

My conlangs aren't that developed yet...
--------
James W.

On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 16:48:14 +0200, "Lars Finsen"
<lars.finsen@...> said:
> It struck me that the Suraetuan rivers all have masculine endings,
> and I guess the Suraetuans must think of their waters as a kind of
> semen that fertilises the Earth. Maybe you people who have such wide
> repertoires of languages can tell me how common this is? Of course,
> many languages don't have a gender system. Of the languages I know
> anything about, at least German has a masculine word for river, but
> the majority of the others seem to be feminine. How are you dealing
> with this in your conlangs?
>
> Urianians, too, seem to think of their rivers and lakes as masculine,
> while the Azurians have only feminine river names and some feminine
> and some neuter lake names. Surprisingly, the Urianians, unlike the
> Greeks, have a feminine rain goddess, who may even have given her
> name to the whole tribe, as her name is Uri. The word for rain in
> Suraetua is a masculine, ikuda.
>
> In the (weird) creation myth of the Urianians, Urt, the creator god,
> fertilises the primal lake Kinau by dropping the severed genitals of
> his brother Im (sometimes written Imm) into it. The lake then
> overflows and gives rise to the rivers of the world.
>
> Just thought you might like to know.
>
> LEF

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