Heard on the Olympics broadcast

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Sun Aug 10 15:47:36 UTC 2008


In the German example (and, guessing, in the Russian), since the noun
(Mensch) is masculine, I'm not surprised the adjective is declined as
masculine.  I look for examples of gender-equality, masculine pronoun
with feminine noun.  Google:  "Er ist eine interessante und gebildete
Person ...".

Joel

At 8/10/2008 11:31 AM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
>German does the same: "Sie ist ein guter Mensch" (= She is a good
>person).  "Ein guter" here are both masculine.
>
>Gerald Cohen
>
>________________________________
>
>From: Message from: American Dialect Society on behalf of Wilson
>Gray, Sat 8/9/2008 1:49 PM
>
>
>
><snip>
>
>Perhaps now is the time to project the campaign outward to such
>languages as Russian. I can recall how shocked and disgusted we were
>when, at the Army Language School, there were revealed to us such
>examples of genderism as the fact that one is not permitted by the
>grammar of Russian to say
>
>*Ona (= Feminine) khoroshaia (= Feminine) chelovek "She [is a] nice person"
>
>Rather, one *must* say:
>
>Ona khoroshii (= Masculine) chelovek (= Masculine)
>
>despite the fact that the subject is Feminine! What kind of shit is that?!
>
>-Wilson
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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