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Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 09:07:07 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
Organization: No Conspiracy Here...
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Subject: Re: Swedish Translation Of Inform
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"Muffy St. Bernard" wrote:

> Sasha wrote:

[...]

> > I think the rationale for "child" being neuter is the same as in
> > German ("das Kind," "das Maedchen," and all the "-chen/-lein" nouns -
> > that is, small/young animates). If I got it right, they are neuter
> > because, being young, they have not yet attained their final form -
> > therefore, gender may be impossible to define/unimportant. As the
> > animate grows up, the gender becomes more important - hence the
> > distinction.
>   My goodness, did somebody actually plan this, or is it just an excuse
> made up after the case? :)  If this was the original plan...then
> wow...how interesting.

It has been my theory (not that I'm a professional linguist--more of an "armchair linguist," if you will,
except I don't sit in an armchair) that this is an artifact of word construction and cadence, not unlike the
English indefinite article "an" before a vowel, or not ending the sentence in a preposition in Latin.  You can
do it, kind of, but it's extremely awkward to talk about "a orange" or "pluribus unum e."

[Side note:  Ending an English sentence with a preposition isn't nearly as awkward, and is just an
"inheritance" from Latin, basically.  It appears to have been artificially inserted to "glorify" the
vernacular, from what I can tell.  Fortunately, that seems to be going the way of the (unfortunate) split
infinitive, as there is little in Latin we English-speakers should aspire to.]

Anyway, these constructs were, in all likelihood, "borrowed" for gendering, thereby retroactively making the
whole system gender-based, to our eyes.

That's my current theory, at least.  I don't see the ancient Gauls, Celts, Franks, or whoever else was
wandering the area just inherently knowing, at the core of their beings, that grass is male and should be
described that way.


