Experts Doubt the Sun Is Burning Coal (1863)

Post by Gibbon1 » Wed, May 06, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

cosmodisk wrote: post #241

oska wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this in classes for English as a second language? Because, as a native English speaker, this seems like misinformation to me, perhaps partly influenced by your teacher having a first language where nouns do still have gender.

This a weird memory to be honest. Yes,you are right, English is a second language and normally sun and moon would be 'it' and not 'she' or 'he'.The teacher was too good to get mixed up when it comes to genders but because it was more than 20 years ago,I've got a feeling that there was more into it.Maybe it is how it used to be in onld English or something.

Post by dividedbyzero » Wed, May 06, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

User23 wrote: post #199

dividedbyzero wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with German, which has a neutrum genus but sometimes even uses it for people (the child, das Kind, the girl, das Mädchen, the victim, das Opfer, ...) The number of inanimate objects that are not gendered must be pretty small. The sun is female (die Sonne), a street is female (die Straße), cars and houses are neutrum (das Haus, das Auto)

Butter is a fun one. You get different answers depending on who you ask.