David:
Grammatical gender is not all that difficult, once you get used to it. As with case and a freer word order, gender helps to clarify rather than obscure meaning. With each noun having a distinct gender, whether it's masculine, neuter, or feminine, you only need to specify the noun once in a sentence or even paragraph, and then you can refer to it as he or him, it, or she or her, as the the case may be. You would only need to specify the noun again if another noun of the same gender is introduced, and only then if it's not clear by context which pronoun refers to which noun. English rather lacks in richness with the lack of gender, and it is kind of an exception among IE languages in not having grammatical gender except in the personal and posessive pronouns. Also, from what I understand, English is rated as one of the most difficult languages to learn properly, at least among major languages because of all the exceptions to grammar rules and the rather unphonetic pronunciation. For example, the cluster "ough" -- how many different sounds does it have? At least three: "aw", long "u", and "uff" (with a schwa).
Andy Howey
CeiSerith@... wrote:
//snip//
That does make it dicier doing it in writing, though, unless you get rather creative. (Italics can be distracting.) It would be so nice to be able to mess around with word order. But I'll take that limitation gratefully rather than having to deal with gender.
David Fickett-Wilbar
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