Re: McMillan and Partner

Roland Hutchinson wrote:
On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 22:35 +0100, Mike Lyle wrote:
Ray O'Hara wrote:

> Imagine how nutty these pewople would be if English had gender like > French
or German..
> There would be no end to their outrage

(Something funny about your attribs, Ray. I did a rough fix.)

Actually, I think the problem arises _because_ English doesn't have much gender. Apart from the obvious man/woman etc, it isn't usually nonsense to use an unmarked "masculine" form for a female.

But even in French there are masculines which can be applied to women for particular purposes: "maître" in a couple of special senses comes to mind.

French of course also has feminine nouns that can be applied to male persons: "la personne" is one that is frequently encountered.

The example that I remember encountering early on in my acquaintance with the French language is the dedication of "Le Petit Prince", where the male dedicatee (Léon Werth) is refered to as "une grande personne" at the beginning of the first paragraph, and thereafter as "elle" until he is referred to by name again, at which point he becomes "il".


To the best of my knowledge, this sort of thing occurs in all languages that have grammatical gender, including Latin.

--

Rob Bannister
.

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