Re: Gender of rivers - and other waters.

My bad. The word for water "el agua" is feminie but uses the masculine
article. (My Spanish is really rusty...)
--------
James W.

On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 10:05:53 -0500, "James W." <emindahken@...>
said:
> 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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