<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>This reminds me about being at a concert recently where someone sang<br></div>Schubert's rendition of Goethe's poem "Der Erlkönig" except that it was listed in the program, for some reason, as "<b>Die</b> Erlkönig". I was going to point that out to the organizers of the concert, but decided they'd think I was being fussy or esoteric. Now I see that this was a pre-saging of what is going on already in Germany, according to this article!<br>
<br></div>I agree that gender of German nouns is a problem for non-native speakers, and I've been known to fudge around if I don't know the gender of a noun, and use a different noun that I <i>do</i> know the gender of. But with Erlkönig there's no problem--kings are masculine, or at least used to be.<br>
<br></div>Best,<br><br>Hal S. <br><div><div><h1 id="firstHeading" class="" lang="en"><span style="font-weight:normal"><span dir="auto"><br></span></span></h1></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Tue, Mar 25, 2014 at 10:05 AM, Dave Sayers <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dave.sayers@cantab.net" target="_blank">dave.sayers@cantab.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
"Der, die or das? For centuries, the seemingly arbitrary allocation of masculine, feminine and neutral gender articles in German has driven non-native speakers to despair. "In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has," the American writer Mark Twain once complained. "Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl."<br>
<br>
But hope may finally be in sight. Changing attitudes to gender are increasingly transforming the German language, and some theorists argue that scrapping the gendered articles altogether may be the most logical outcome."<br>
<br>
More here: <a href="http://goo.gl/h7pH0n" target="_blank">http://goo.gl/h7pH0n</a><br>
<br>
Dave<br>
<br>
--<br>
Dr. Dave Sayers<br>
Senior Lecturer, Dept Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University, UK<br>
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University, UK<br>
<a href="mailto:dave.sayers@cantab.net" target="_blank">dave.sayers@cantab.net</a> | <a href="http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers" target="_blank">http://swansea.academia.edu/<u></u>DaveSayers</a><br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>
University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------
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