expresso and other Itaglish

[A. Vine]

"Alexey I. Fuchs" wrote:
>
> When I was younger, I was furious about "kofe" (russian "coffee")
> being colloquially used in neutrum. It has to be masculine, I knew it, I
> heard it in my family, I read it in books. A couple of years ago a
> freaking "language academy" introduced a new "law," allowing (sic!) people
> to regard "kofe" as neutrum. Those for whom language was merely means of
> communication were celebrating - they did not have to fight themselves
> anymore. What academy can introduce laws for language which is a form of
> existence and a living body (at least, for me)?

Well, the ending is neuter, so the mistake is normal.  Formal institutions need
to sanction common usage before it can be taught in schools and so on.  It's not
so much a law as a guideline that everyone can refer to, in the event of
confusion.

When I was in Russian class ages ago, the instructor was trying to get us to
remember the gender of nouns ending in the soft sign (for those of you who don't
know, these nouns are ambiguous).  We were working with the word for "death"
(smert or smiert or smyert or however you want to transliterate it).  Our
professor repeated the word a few times and said, "Doesn't it have a feminine
feel to it?" which of course, to a native English speaker, is utter nonsense.
Another student then pointed out to him that "death" was masculine in German.

So I forgive Russians for applying a regular rule to a noun, because genders are
often arbitrary.  I suspect "kofe" is masculine because the word was borrowed.

Andrea
--
Andrea Vine
Sun-Netscape Alliance messaging i18n architect
avine at eng.sun.com
I always wanted to be an architect. }sigh{  Of course, I _am_ an architect.