Evening star., 1899-03-18
THE MATTER OF GENDER
Its Humors as Exemplifed in Various
Curious Languages.
One That Actually Puts 1t Into Verbs
some Remarkable Rules
of Grammar.
From the Pail Mall Gazette.

From the Pail Mall Gazette.
There is fun which the vulgar do not sus-
pect in the study of languages. European
tongues, springing from the same root, ex-
cept Basque and Magyar and Turkish. have
been drilled into uniformity of structure.
They give no notion of the tricks and COM
plications which savage men devise to ex-
press their simple thoughts. But the reader
must not suppose / am more learned than
himself in this science; it is only in miscel-
laneous skimming of books that few odd
little examples have impressed themselves
upon my memory.
Observe the detail of gender. 1t seems to
US that nature itself has regulated that
matter once for all. In most languages,
of course, iranimate things are treated as
masculine or feminine; everybody knows
that our own forefathers did the same long
ago. But. in any case, male, female and
neuter genders exhaust the possibilities.
You cannot have more than three genders,
or less than two for the sexes must be
distinguished. So it appears to the civil
ized mortal. But an Australian of DAILY
river coptrives to recognize four, while an
Algonquin of North America and Draw
dian of India have two, indeed, but they
are not male and female For the DAILY
river person insists that plants shall have
gender of their own; the Algonquin and the
Dravidian agree that 1t is the distinction OF
living and dead not that of sex, which
should be maintained. The great Fulah ma
tfon also ignores male and female. making
one comprehensive gender for human DenS5
and everything that relates thereto, ana
another for all creatures and things out
side. Thus, tame cattle are distinguished
from wild and a tree planted with inten-
ton from one that springs naturally. Upon
the other hand, those poor Armenlans have
not even one gender to bless themselves
with.
But the Australians Of the Daily river
actually put gender into their verbs HUI
name persons would not credit such an
outrage upon lower authority than that Of
the Rev. D. MckiHop, in charge of a Roman
Catholic mission there Only to think of
learning such a language gives one shiVer.
We do not hear how many moods go to
verb. but the lenses are vaguely and awful
ly described as endless perhaps the rev.
erend gentleman had not yet succeeded In
counting them. Thirty-fve are reckoned
in the speech OF the Basuto Kaffirs-no less
do those interesting barbarians require for
conversation. But they do not call upon
them to agree with the noun in gender as
well as in number and person. That Is the
exclusive demand of the Mullok-Mulloks,
Cherries and Ponga-Pongas, among whom
Mr.. McKillop and his brethren spend their
days. desperately wrestling with the parts
of speech. Another contrivance, not eX-
elusive, but more highly developed on the
DAILY river, apparently, than in any other
land or age, is the infection of the ad-
jective. Besides singular and plural they
have as We should expect, the dual, land
they are very strict about the use of IT.
One would say that the resources of human
speech do not allow the plural number to
be formed unless by change in the first or
the last syllable of the noun or the inter-
position of one midway, in Turkish.
But Antipodean ingenuity is equal to the
task. These black fellows express the
plural by a change, not in the noun, but in
the verb. Upon the whole, there is no such
lively example of the perplexing rule that
language is more complicated and more
scrupulous to interpret the speakers mean
ing in proportion to the barbarism of those
who use it. There are exceptions enough,
of course.