--- In cybalist@..., guto rhys <gutorhys@...> wrote:
>
>
> I am aware of the monolingual Englishman's problem with French. My
point was that 3 genders should not have posed great dificulty for a
Celtic Jutlander learning early German as his/her native language
(Celtic) possessed these features. Are there any other differences in
language?
>
> Hoping, that as a mere hobbyist, I have not misinterpreted to much,
your explanations.
>
> Guto
>
Ah, but my point was that a 3-gender German (or 2-gender Danish)
speaker would have exactly the same problems learning French as a
0/1 -gender English speaker would. We might know the category of
gender from our own language, but that doesn't help us when we try to
guess the gender of some particular noun in the foreign
language. "das Haus" is n., "la maison" is f.; there just isn't an
algorithm for getting from one to other. (on the other hand "hus" is
n. is Danish, so I might guess that German "Haus" is too. And so it
is. You'll find this heuristic rule in some textbooks on German for
Danish-speakers.) Therefore, a Celtic-speaker just wouldn't have a
clue (literally!) as to the gender of a noun from a Germanic language.
Torsten