"gender neutral pronouns"

[Francoise Rosset]

On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 14:36:17 -0700
> Did Germans ever use she/her for the Vaterland?

In German it depends on the primary noun, das Land. So it's DAS liebe 
Vaterland, DAS Mutterland, and they would have to both take the 
pronoun "es." Deutschland as well, and if you wanted to go feminine 
you could always use Die Heimat (but then there are those songs about 
the Heimatland: "Lieb' Heimatland, ade")

But I'd love to see an actual expert tells us whether they ever used a 
feminine pronoun, which is what Jules really asked. The combination of 
a neuter -Land with the masculine Vater- and a feminine pronoun 
boggles the grammatical mind.
-FR
  

Francoise Rosset, Associate Professor
Chair, Russian and Russian Studies
Coordinator, German and Russian
Wheaton College
Norton, Massachusetts 02766
Office: (508) 285-3696
FAX:   (508) 286-3640

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