On language and gender
Difficult languages: Tongue twisters
Dec 17th 2009 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
"... [Mark] Twain’s joke about German gender shows that in most languages it often has little to do with physical sex. “Gender” is related to “genre”, and means merely a group of nouns lumped together for grammatical purposes. Linguists talk instead of “noun classes”, which may have to do with shape or size, or whether the noun is animate, but often rules are hard to see. George Lakoff, a linguist, memorably described a noun class of Dyirbal (spoken in north-eastern Australia) as including “women, fire and dangerous things” ..."
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108609
Dec 17th 2009 | NEW YORK
From The Economist print edition
"... [Mark] Twain’s joke about German gender shows that in most languages it often has little to do with physical sex. “Gender” is related to “genre”, and means merely a group of nouns lumped together for grammatical purposes. Linguists talk instead of “noun classes”, which may have to do with shape or size, or whether the noun is animate, but often rules are hard to see. George Lakoff, a linguist, memorably described a noun class of Dyirbal (spoken in north-eastern Australia) as including “women, fire and dangerous things” ..."
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108609