Re: re Gender in different IE families/languages

From: Rudy Vonk
Message: 25342
Date: 2003-08-26

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

> Latin
> _mare_ 'sea' is neuter, as is to be expected from its form, but
> although Italian _mare_ and Spanish _mar_ are masculine, French
> _mer_ is feminine.

Add to this the curious phenomenon, in Spanish, of having the same
noun, meaning the same thing, in both genders depending on "emotional"
context: _mar_ ("sea"), _calor_ ("heat"), etc., normally masculine but
sometimes feminine. One curious example:

"Unidos hemos de estar la gran familia que formamos todas las personas
que tenemos relación con la mar, especialmente vosotros los hombres
del mar," ... (snip)

(This is from a document titled, equally curiously:

"Festividad de la Virgen del Carmen Día de las Gentes del Mar
LA MAR, RETO A LA SOLIDARIDAD
Exhortación Pastoral del Obispo Promotor del Apostolado del Mar")

As for "heat", as a physical property it is always masculine, but when
in Córdoba the temperature gets above about 42 C, people start to
complain about "la caló"... :-)

Any similar phenomena in other languages? There are a bunch of nouns
in Italian that change gender from singular to plural; and there is
German _See_ (f) and _See_ (m), but they are different sets of water.

(I hope amateur linguists are tolerated here...)

Rudy