Re:The word “lox” hasn't changed in sound or meaning in 8k y...
by danans on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @01:25PM
(#19921689)
> Are you perhaps german?
Nope, just a historical linguistics enthusiast, like a few others around here.
> I have no idea what other language would have "language" as feminine =).
Quite a few languages' words for language is grammatically "feminine", OTTOMH:
Arabic: "lugha(t)"
Sanskrit: "bhaashaa"
But grammatical gender of words without obvious gender associations shouldn't be interpreted in the biological sense of gender.
For example, there are languages whose "gender" system is actually more transparent, representing dichotomies like "animate" vs "inanimate", or "rational" (an entity capable of reason) vs "irrational".
Calling this phenomenon "gender" reflects a historical bias from the study of traditional Indo European and Semitic languages, which repurpose biological gender for grammatical gender, but it should really be called "noun classification" or something similar.
Nope, just a historical linguistics enthusiast, like a few others around here.
> I have no idea what other language would have "language" as feminine =).
Quite a few languages' words for language is grammatically "feminine", OTTOMH:
Arabic: "lugha(t)"
Sanskrit: "bhaashaa"
But grammatical gender of words without obvious gender associations shouldn't be interpreted in the biological sense of gender.
For example, there are languages whose "gender" system is actually more transparent, representing dichotomies like "animate" vs "inanimate", or "rational" (an entity capable of reason) vs "irrational".
Calling this phenomenon "gender" reflects a historical bias from the study of traditional Indo European and Semitic languages, which repurpose biological gender for grammatical gender, but it should really be called "noun classification" or something similar.