Unused Registers Was Re: OT: City Names

From: Merle K. Peirce <at258_at_osfn.org>
Date: Sat Apr 17 08:19:17 1999

Well, the pronouns are the easiest example to hand: he she and it.
There you have gender. English uses logical rather than grammatical
gender usually, but ships addressed as she show this is not always true.
If you want to follow tradition, a VAX would be neuter, because plurals
in -n are old Anglo-Saxon neuter forms. Beyond pronouns, though, you
don't use gender very much because the forms are the same. good (f),
good (m), good (n) and good (c) all look the same in English. Look at
the forms in French, and you'll see quite a difference, as in Latin.
Middle English, I think, had some remnants of this, but they soon fell
out of use. Something like King Horn might show some inflection still,
or Northern dialect. Actually I think King Horn is Northumbrian. If you
go back to The Ruin, or Beowulf, you should see quite a bit of inflection.

> > > Well, no not really. Simply doesn't exist in English. Everything is
> um,
> > > neuter I guess, we don't have a term for it that we didn't pinch from
> > > another language actually.
> >
> > We certainly do have gender, but usually the forms are identical.
>
> Oh? Can you give me an example? If so, it demonstrates that gender is
> irrelevant in English I guess.
> Perhaps it had gender once? I think Latin had gender and we use a lot of
> Latin words.
>
> > Inflection in English is very restricted, compared say to German or the
> > classical languages.
>
> Make it "virtually nonexistent" and I'll go along with that.
>
> > Since our adjectives have the same form for each gender, it's not
> noticeable,
> > and hasn't been that way for say 800 years
> > or so.
>
> The existence of gender in English is not taught at school.. I'd remember
> that.
> I was exposed to French briefly in 1st Year High. It was the first time I
> heard of the concept.
> (Dropped it as irrelevant after a term and did Tech Drawing instead)
>
> Cheers
>
> Geoff Roberts
>
>
>
>

M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
215 Shady Lea Road,
North Kingstown, RI 02852

"Casta est qui nemo rogavit."
              
              - Ovid
Received on Sat Apr 17 1999 - 08:19:17 BST