Re: Gender of rivers - and other waters.

My conlang has four genders: natural, artificial, masculine and feminine.
The latter two are used only to describe things that are naturally male or
female (zifö'ï, "male stallion"; hü, "woman.") The artificial describes
constructed things (telchö, "wagon") or to make a distinction that the noun
is not natural (nasö, which would be light of a supernatural or magical
origin.) The natural (also called common) gender is everything else, such as
natural objects (düma, "river"; taïma, "tree") and things that have a
natural gender but where the gender is not being specified (zifö'a, "horse";
hal, "person".)

So in answer to your question, I avoid the issue altogether. Rivers and
lakes are neither masculine nor feminine; they are natural.

Ok, that sounds plain wrong, but you get what I'm saying.

Gregory Gadow
techbear@serv.net