--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Sergejus Tarasovas"
<S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:
> >As a half-way house, we have Russian
> > _vrac^_ 'physician', which is masculine although most physicians
are
> > women. I've seen a paper published (c. 1980) on the fact that
> > Russians tend to use a female pronoun to refer to a woman
physician!
>
> You must have meant "male", since there's nothing unusual in using
a female
> pronoun when referring a woman, isn't it (also in the verb: _vrac^
skazála_
> (of a woman))?
The first part is a very reasonable reaction. I too thought, "The
Russians use 'she' to refer to a woman. So what?". But I have a
nagging feeling that the French use 'elle' to refer to 'la
sentinelle' even though the person referred to clearly be a man.
In his essay "The Awful German Language," Mark Twain translates the
following literally from a conversation in a German Sunday school
book: "Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip? Wilhelm. She has gone
to the kitchen. Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful
English maiden? Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera."
It seems that what is natural to us (an Englishman and a Russian) is
by no means automatic. It seems that agreement in sense is not
universal. Livy may have written, 'pars militum capti, pars occisi
sunt' in which the subject of each clause is feminine singular but
the verb is plural (and the participle masculine plural), but I'm not
sure the French would find it acceptable. (If any one
cries 'Patavinity', I submit that the Latin of Padua should count as
a natural language.)
Richard.