AW: Nomenclature
Hi everybody,
seems that I like slightly offtopic linguistic threads ;-)
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
>
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2000 at 07:10:43PM +0000, David Coquil wrote:
>
> > > In french, I say "Le Hurd", as if Hurd was male.
> >
> > I thought about replying the same, but I think that apart from
> > "cross-language compatibility" ;-) French language is not
> really relevant
> > here : in French substantives have male or female gender
> whereas in German
> > they can be male, female or neutral (e.g.) one more to choose from!
> >
> > As for French I think 'le Hurd' makes sense since in English it's mostly
> > "the Hurd", and 'la Hurd' (female) just sounds too bad.
>
> I remember talking with a friend of mine and ranting how I could never
> really figure out whether something was male of female in French, and
> after 10 years in immersion I still got them wrong sometimes. She told
> me a rule that her mother had taught her (Native French Speaker), in
> general if it has legs or you can enter it, it's probably female...
>
What's about "le chien", doesn't a dog have legs ?-)
In German it seems that names of OS are treated like names of towns.
You never say "der, die oder das Berlin" that would sound silly. But
if you use demonstrative pronouns it's simply neutral
"dieses sch...s Windows" (ok, we'll not discuss wether Windows is an OS).
The same should apply for (the) Hurd. "Hurd ist toll" but:
"Dieses tolle Hurd macht Spaß."
Looking forward to comments from linguistic experts.
CU, Peter
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