Re: Gender in language (was Re: way-OT: regularity of german v. english [was: <snip>])

[Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>]

On Thu, 2003-10-23 at 19:58, Cam Ellison wrote:
> * Erik Steffl (steffl@bigfoot.com) wrote:
> > Ron Johnson wrote:
> > ...
> 
> > 
> > > - Why English doesn't have gender, since it's predecessor, German,
> > >   does have gender?
> > 
> >    looks like a lot of unneccessary stuff was removed from english 
> > language (last century or two?), as far as I can tell it's because it's 
> > used as a non-native language for pragmatic purposes (i.e. as long as 
> > the message gets accross it's all good:-)
> > 
> Strictly speaking, English did not descend from German, but they have
> a common ancestry in a version that was spoken during the time the
> Romans were in power.  Angles, Jutes, and Saxons invaded England over
> a period of time and pushed the Celtic peoples into Wales and
> Scotland, and Anglo-Saxon (which was a synthetic language like Latin)
> became dominant.  Then William the Conqueror arrived in 1066 (and all

Here's another one:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030616/030616-15.html
'But the Y chromosomes of the regions tell a different story. "The
Celts weren't pushed to the fringes of Scotland and Wales; a lot of
them remained in England and central Ireland,"'

-- 
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Ron Johnson, Jr. ron.l.johnson@cox.net
Jefferson, LA USA

Causation does NOT equal correlation !!!!!!!!