indoeuropean/hand

petegray petegray at btinternet.com
Wed Jun 23 19:00:09 UTC 1999


Rick asked> any ideas why manus is feminine?

"Hand" is feminine (so I have heard) in a overwhelming number of languages
that have grammatical gender, just as "foot" is masculine in a very large
number.   There might be a deep psychological thing here, about receiving
and giving, which betrays an even deeper psychological thing connecting
grammatical gender with biological gender.

Peter



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