"The" Philippines

[Victoria Neufeldt]

Because, of course, 'Land' is neuter.

Victoria

Victoria Neufeldt
727 9th Street East
Saskatoon, Sask.
S7H 0M6
Canada
Tel: 306-955-8910

On Wednesday, March 30, 2005 5:14 PM, FRITZ JUENGLING wrote:
>
> In German, 'fatherland' i.e. _Vaterland_  is neuter.
> Fritz
> > "patria = fatherland"
>
> I don't think that this fact supports the claim that "countries are
> masculine." "Patria" does mean "fatherland," but its own grammatical
> gender is feminine. There's no necessary connection between the
> grammatical gender of a word and its so-called "natural" gender.
> Certainly, there's no necessary connection between
> grammatical gender
> and natural gender among the members of a semantic set such as the
> random, unpredictable names of countries.
>
> -Wilson Gray
>
<SNIP>
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