Re: Gender of rivers - and other waters.

It's important to realise that what we call "gender" in linguistics doesn't
of necessity relate to "sexual gender", although that doesn't mean this
isn't done. "Gender" is just a sort of cover-all term used to describe
grammars in which there are noun classes, which is probably a better term.
But since traditional linguistics began with the study of well-known IE
languages, especially the classical tongues, the term "gender" was used and
has sort of stuck ever since.
Mike



> 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?
>

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