Re: OT: a dumb query? pls humor me
On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 08:27:30PM +0100, Joe Hart wrote:
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> Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 08:04:56PM +0100, Joe Hart wrote:
> >> Since this is already a off-topic thread...
> >>
> >> So does Dutch, German, French, Italian....Now that I stop and think
> >> about it, I can't think of any that don't.
> >>
> > Well, English has the concept of a neuter article (the).
> >
> > the dog --> el perro
> >
> > That is what I was referring to. I am not sure I got the point across
> > properly.
> >
>
> my dog, your dog, her dog, his dog, its dog, our dog, their dog. That is
> all of the personal pronouns referring to possession of a dog.
>
> In Spanish you have one more.
>
> It is extremely impolite to refer to people as an it, so his or her are
> the only ones left.
>
It french and spanish and arabic there are masculine and feminine ...
nouns.
So saying "The" has 2 ways "TheShe" and "TheHe"
Table is feminine in arabic for instance. So it is "TheShe Table"
English is gender neutral for the most part. The cat is "it". The woman
is "she"
French has 2 pairs of modifiers. One for male and one for female.
"le" and "la"
"un" and "une"
I think spanish has "el" and "la" also.
Arabic has the "el" also (sometimes written "al").
There is no "la". A trailing "a" at the end makes things feminine (kinda)
German is messed up. It has 3 pairs of modifiers. "Der" "Die" "Das" and
"Wer" "Wie" "Was". I have the capitalization wrong. German is one of
those languages where capitalization means stuff. Nouns are Capital in
german. Russian also has capitalization issues.
My point is: I don't think you got what Roberto was saying.
--
Tarek
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