Re: gender in indo-european languages

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 09/27/04 

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:13:28 GMT

Harvey Van Sickle wrote:
>
> On 27 Sep 2004, Skitt wrote
>
> > howard richler wrote:
> >
> >> Unlike in English, most Indo-European languages have gendered
> >> nouns. I'm wondering, does there tend to be consistency in
> >> nouns being nouns being masculine or feminine (or neuter where
> >> applicable) in the various IE languages, or at least consistency
> >> of gender in nouns in the various Romance languages?
> >
> > What sort of consistency do you expect? I don't think there is
> > any.
>
> I don't think he's "expecting" anything at all: it's a straight query
> as to whether words of a given gender in one language tend to have the
> same gender in another, or whether it's random.
>
> For what it's worth, I think's a brilliant question; there's probably
> a thesis on it somewhere...

You hardly need a thesis to think of le soleil/la lune vs. die Sonne/der
Mond; le chat vs. die Katze; etc. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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