LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.12 (04) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  - 12 July 2008 - Volume 04
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From: jonny <jonny.meibohm at arcor.de>
Subject: LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.09 (03) [E]

 Beste Mark (D.), Lowlanners,

thanks, Mark, for your suggestion:

> "I saw *someone* tall with a black hat & a grey coat run down the street
to the left side."
But in this sentence it doesn't matter whether you use 'someone' or 'a
person', does it?

Inspired by your example about how it would be used in Afrikaans,
> "Toe sien ek *iemand* lank met 'n swarte hoed en gryse jas straat-af aan
die linker kant
> weghardloop."
I came to the comparable German version, which should be:

"Ich sah *jemanden*, groß, mit schwarzem Hut und grauem Mantel, *der* nach
links die Straße hinab rannte."
You see? 'jemand' in Standard German is of male gender, though it
could denote a woman as well. Native German speakers don't feel comfortable
when using this construction, so they would prefer to add "der *oder
die *rannte...",
as well as in English instead of "They ran..." to use "*He or she* ran...".

I'm wondering how other languages with clearly definite genders deal with
this problem. As far as I remember Old Latin determines it by the pronoun
itself : 'aliquus; aliqua; aliquum' for 'someone' resp. 'something'. But how
does it work with the opposite 'nemo' for 'nobody'? According to
wikibooks
http://de.wikibooks.org/wiki/Latein/_Grammatik/_Substantiv/_Konsonantische_Deklination


*quote:*
*von nemo („niemand, keiner") gibt es nur den Dat. nemini und den Akk.
neminem, die anderen Formen werden mit nullus, -a, -um („keiner, keine,
keines") gebildet (durch die Logik des Wortes („keiner") gibt es auch keinen
Plural!)*
*unquote*

it should be of male gender.
(BTW: My son just tells me, he has learned 'nemo, neminis, nemini, neminem',
and this still I mean to remind!)

Once more back again to the unloved English construction:

> "I saw a tall *person* with a black hat and a grey coat. They ran down the
street to the left
> side."
How would you get out of this tight spot if switching to the present tense:
" Look- just over there they is (are?) running down the street to the
left side!
And now they enter(s?) their car!"

I'm pretty sure that my son's English teacher wouldn't allow him to speak or
write this way, because she probably never has heard about it ;-)!

Die Uwe; have a nice weekend, all together!

Jonny Meibohm
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