From: davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il (David Ben_Ami)
Subject: Re: Ships and countries
Organization: Technion, Israel Inst. of Technology
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 14:44:36 GMT

In article <1992Aug30.185048.26292@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Charles H. Sampson (sampson@nosc.mil) writes:
>Roger Lustig (roger@crux.Princeton.EDU) writes:
>>>At any rate, we only gender-inflect to describe sexed things: humans,
>>>animals.
>>
>>     And ships?
>
>And countries? I tend to hang around in various soc.culture.*
>and talk.politics.* groups which covers Eastern Europe and
>Balkan, and several writers use "she" for almost any country.
>Now, many of the contibutors are non-native speakers of English,
>just like me, so I don't really know whether the sample is
>relevant. Personally, I use "it", or "they" if I am rather
>referring to the government or similar.

In Hebrew all countries are refered to as feminine. This is for several
reasons:

1. Everything must be "genderized" there's no neutral gender pronouns
   and gender-specific agrrements and suffixes must be dealt for every
   noun.

2. The word for country "Erez" and State "Medina" or any other term
   considering a political unit is feminine or femininized (for example
   the word "Duchy" is translated "Dukas-ut" where the -ut is common
   feminine marker).

This is also applicable to ships and boats etc.

However machines are not consistent in this respect especially the
renewed nouns. For instance computer ("Machshev") is refered as masculine
and you'll find many people cursing "him" in the night when the bug is
elegantly evading you. (BTW "bug" is also considered masculine).

The word for car ("Mechonit") is feminine but the popular borrowing
"auto" is masculine so you refer to the same object in 2 genders.

It is quite important note that these "quirks" are due the Radix-Pattern
system of forming new words from existing roots. One uses a Pattern or
mold and insert the proper radix to form a new word the pattern has
specific gender and the words created by it are assigned this gender.
For Example: Pattern Ma__e_ (masculine for generating machines)
             +Radic Ch/Sh/B (to think/to calculate)
             = Machshev (calculator/thinker --> Computer)

             Pattern Ma__r_a (feminin for tools)
             +Radix Ch/R/Sh (to plow)
             = Machresha (plower)



>It is not unusual that a country is personified by a woman,
>"Mother Russia" or "Moder Svea" (that's Sweden) for instance,
>so the use of "she" seems very plausible at least in more poetic
>contexts. But is the use of "she" as a pronoun for any country
>common among native speakers in every-day language?

In Jewish culture the Jewish people is refered too as "Yisrael Saba"
meaning "Granddaddy Israel" and indeed the word people is masculine.

>--
>Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
>F|rst till kvarn f}r f|rst vankiva

David.
--
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  David Ben-Ami (irc: bigdav)      |   "I can resist anything but Temptation"
  s2780369@Techst02.Technion.Ac.Il |       Oscar Wilde
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