On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 20:47, Erik Steffl wrote: > Nori Heikkinen wrote: > > on Sun, 19 Oct 2003 12:38:45PM -0700, Erik Steffl insinuated: > ... > >> of course, you can create various complex and ambiguous sentences in > >>english, the point is that you can take few forms of sentences and > >>have a working language (that's pretty much what BASIC (talking > >>about programming language) is). > > > > you can do that in both languages. > > let's say you have a function called isRed(x) (returns true if x is > red). Now how would you call this function in german? it would never be > in agreement with all possible x (grammatically). not sure if this is > the best example - perhaps in this case it would be acceptable to use > istRot, regardless of gender of x. point is you would run into problems > like this trying to use german, you would very rarely come up with > problems of this nature in english...
Being a native speaker of American, I've always wondered - What is the purpose of "gender" in grammar/language? - Is it only the European/Latinate languages that have the gender concept? - Why English doesn't have gender, since it's predecessor, German, does have gender? -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Ron Johnson, Jr. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jefferson, LA USA Causation does NOT equal correlation !!!!!!!! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
