Re: [ot] Linux gender in French
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On Saturday 01 November 2003 9:54 am, Tom wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 09:48:25AM -0700, Wesley J Landaker wrote:
> > "Le Linux" is typically used as masculine, but I've seen it, less
> > often, used as feminine, "la Linux". I'm not aware that it is
> > "officially" anything, but to me as a French-speaker, it "feels"
> > more like a masculine noun.
>
> Do some free-association and tell me what makes a word "feel'
> masculine or feminine.
>
> (I have a theory, but I don't want to influence what you say).
Now that you ask, the first thing that jumps into my head is that Linux
is named after Linus Torvalds. =) But that's not why I said it "feels"
like a masculine noun. It's more like the way it sounds. "Le Linux"
sounds right, "la Linux" sounds... odd. Then again, as I said, I'm not
a native French speaker, and although I've got *fairly* good inuition
into a word's gender, I still make mistakes! ;)
Anyway, sounds like a couple native speakers have already responded as
well, and it sounds like the word really is masculine.
But, now I'm curious... what is your theory?
- --
Wesley J. Landaker - wjl@icecavern.net
OpenPGP FP: 4135 2A3B 4726 ACC5 9094 0097 F0A9 8A4C 4CD6 E3D2
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