[MR] Personum

[David Chessler]

At 10:21 PM 5/1/2008, Gina Shelley wrote:

>Well, you know, that's what's awesome about English. It doesn't 
>bother with the non-existant gender of furniture. ;-)
>
>Dulcy
>

It's worse in German: wives and young girls are neuter. There is no 
logic (well, there's grammatical logic for the young girls): you have 
a choice between memorization or ignoring the issue. Native speakers 
don't want you to ignore the issue.

In French you can count sixty-ten, four-twenties, four-twenties-ten 
if you want to. I emulate the Swiss and say septant, huitant, nonant. 
And if anyone comments, I say that as a foreigner I can choose my 
dialect, and I chose the Swiss.

> > >Actually, it's feminine noun, so you'd have one persona, two 
> personae.> >> >-Charles> > Oops. Of course, speaking two languages 
> in which > biological sex and grammatical gender don't > always 
> correspond has left me terribly confused.
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