[Shaku] Sex and Gender in Japanese

From: John Baker (jinpa19822003@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue May 10 2005 - 12:22:26 PDT

Hi.

The "Drying Culms" thread stirred a question in me, or
a series of questions.

Does Japanese (the language) have grammatical gender?
In German, Latin, French, etc. each noun has a
grammatical gender (English does not use grammatical
gender). Moon is masculine in German and feminine in
French, Latin, etc. Sun is feminine in German but
masculine in Latin, etc. And lest you think these
grammatical gender assigments are reality based, woman
& maiden are both neuter in German. Flower is neuter
in Latin, masculine in Italian & feminine in French.

If Japanese language uses grammatical gender, what is
the gender of shakuhachi? Bamboo?

Thanks in advance.

John Baker
_____________________________________________

List un/subscription information is at:
 http://communication.ucsd.edu/shaku/listsub.html

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jan 06 2006 - 10:00:45 PST