Languages! Are! Weird!

@Xopher: it's not sexism, they just know the oven should stay in the kitchen.

edited 6th Feb '14 11:50:59 AM by lordGacek

Isn't oven masculine?

How translated and to which language?

English, before loss of gender. I'm pretty sure Ofen/Ofn were masculine.

Swish-PWND!

Not necessarily. It's more teeuse to me, for one.

About the word Two:

I pronounce it Tchoo.

Used to pronounce it as Too,but thanks to an accent slide,it's more like tioo now.

Just stumbled upon the word 'murther' 'parently it's how murder was originally pronounced by most and still is pronounced by some.

@Xopher: No.

Xopher; that's an incredibly broad and generalizing statement that....can really be taken the wrong way.

Also I've never heard the word oven ever referred to as having a gender. There's the gendered term "bun in the oven" but like, I've never heard ovens referred to as being female. It's just an object. Objects aren't referred to with genders unless you're getting metaphorical in the English language. That's one of the problems I had with learning Spanish, actually, in that a lot of objects are referred to with a gender with "la" or "el". Had a lot more trouble with the tenses though.

You know, there's no reason to be offended.

He was just asking a question.

I remember when I was first learning Spanish, when I was eleven. The teacher (who was Spanish) was trying to explain grammatical gender to us. 'That's ridiculous' I say. And she just sighs and goes 'Yeah...'

Spanish has nothing on German with that,where yes,the word for Oven is male (Der Ofen).

Also pretty much every pattern of weather is male too (Der Schnee),except for clouds (Die Wolken). Yet weather (Das Wetter) itself is neutral.

But there is some of that in English,no one calls boats or cars "it",always "she".

edited 7th Feb '14 11:32:29 AM by terlwyth

Yeah, maybe cars and boat lovers do, but I have literally never heard anyone I know refer to cars or boats as "she". Not even my dad, and he had a dinky little fishing boat his whole life. It was just a boat. In fact, referring to vehicles as "she" seems to also be an indicator of how strongly the owner of said vehicle feels about it. So it's hardly coded into the English language that cars and boats are female.

Seriously, Texas resident here, as native an English speaker as you can get. Never heard anyone I know use that sort of phrasing and have only read characters in books using that sort of gendered phrasing.

edited 7th Feb '14 11:41:39 AM by AceofSpades

Pretty much any inanimate object can be referred to as a 'She', not just cars and boats. Usually by men, I have to say. I've never heard a woman musician, for example, refer to her instrument as 'She'.

I've never heard a woman call something a "he" either.

edited 7th Feb '14 12:35:20 PM by BaconManiac5000

A handful of English words with their old genders:

Masculine: The woman. The oven. The shoe.

Feminine: Theo cow. Theo toe. Theo door.

Neuter: That child. That light. That limb.

There was also a / an / ane for awhile but by the time it showed up gender was on the decline. Ane was used for feminine words only.

In what English speaking country is "theo" used as anything but a shortened form of Theodore? This is the first time I've even heard of that.

In Old English, I believe.

...It's Old English. It like English grammatical gender died out like it's ancestor seo.

I'd also like to point out that I'm " as native an English speaker as you can get " aswell.

See, this is why you don't discuss Old English.

"Yee Oldie English"

Anglisc.

Something I remembered from a while back is that someone from another forum I go on said that he/she/something-something-Ye Old English doesn't believe that capitalization isn't important to him/her anymore after learning some Japanese. What do you think of this?