Re: Grammatical Gender

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 66400
Date: 2010-08-08

I'd like to see some (civilized) discussion. In grad school, I was told that IE originally had  binary gender --either animate vs. inanimate or "normal" vs. diminutive but it's obviously much more complicated.
I am amused how gender changes across linguistic or even regional lines: e.g. Spanish el sol vs. German die Sonne; standard Spanish el sartén vs. regional la sartén "skillet, frying pan"; etc. and how the same object has different genders depending on which name you use for it. 
It's also interesting how words bifurcate into new words: e.g. el frente "the front" vs. la frente "the forehead", and many, many more.
Lookalikes are often amusing - I tell my students not to order "papas fritos" at the McDonald's in the Vatican but to stick to "papas fritas"