Re:For Zelda-playing daughter, Dad gives Link a sex change
by diN0bot on Thursday November 08, 2012 @05:54PM
(#4760330)
This I wonder about: do feminine and masculine (and nueter) pronouns indicate gender when used for non-people beings, or must they match the word of those things?
The pronoun is feminine to match the word Hase, even though the hare is male as indicated by his name.
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Re:For Zelda-playing daughter, Dad gives Link a sex change
by wazoox on Thursday November 08, 2012 @06:12PM
(#4760398)
In french, the article or pronoun must match the word gender too, it's always "une tortue", even if it's "une tortue male". There are often two different words for male and female animals, though: "un lièvre" (male hare), "une hase" (female hare).
Re:For Zelda-playing daughter, Dad gives Link a sex change
by adrianN on Friday November 09, 2012 @04:32AM
(#4762038)
Hase, being masculine, is a bad example here.
But cat, Katze (feminine), and dog, Hund (masculine), work. There are versions of these words for the opposite sex, Kater and Hündin, but there are used rarely. So 'Ich habe eine Katze, Felix' and 'Ich habe einen Hund, Bella' would be perfectly acceptable even though the gender of the noun doesn't match the sex of the animal.
Re:For Zelda-playing daughter, Dad gives Link a sex change
by masklinn on Friday November 09, 2012 @07:15AM
(#4762438)
> This I wonder about: do feminine and masculine (and nueter) pronouns indicate gender when used for non-people beings, or must they match the word of those things?
In french at least, words themselves have gender irrespective of the subject's gender. And pronouns usually match the word's gender. So a tortoise is feminine even if it's a male, so's a sparrow, a mole, a goat or a stork. Then, there may be subsets of the original word for each of the genders (or further differentiations by age). "Goat" in general is feminine but buck ("bouc") is masculine for instance.