Dragaera

Speaking of Vlad and Kiera

David Silberstein davids at kithrup.com
Fri Feb 21 00:47:58 PST 2003

On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, Philip Hart wrote:

>On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, David Silberstein wrote:

>>    http://www.hungarotips.com/hungarian/b/elso.html
>>
>
>Just a comment that while Hungarian is grammatically genderless,
>having no gendered pronouns isn't sufficient.  Pronouns are
>relatively infrequent in Italian ("she has" => "has"), for example,
>but the articles have gender ("a" -> "a(female)"), and profession
>names too.

If you look at the page above, you'll see that articles aren't
gendered either.  Not sure about profession names, although a quick
check on the English-Hungarian website shows that "hero" -> 'hõs',
while "heroine" -> 'hõsnõ', so maybe that is a way to distinguish.

>  Language manage without the most basic stuff sometimes - I never
>learned how to say "yes" in Latin and believe the Romans made do with
>"It is so".

This page has various possibilities for "yes", but as you say, there's
no one word:

   http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/yes.htm

   Latin (ancient Rome, Vatican)              Ita
   Latin (ancient Rome, Vatican)              Ita vero
   Latin (ancient Rome, Vatican) [true]       Certe
   Latin (ancient Rome, Vatican) [right]      Recte

I've heard the same is true in Gaelic.

   http://www.geocities.com/dan_tender_blur/gaellesson1.html

   Unfortunately, there is no single word to mean 'yes' or 'no' in
   Gaelic. Instead, you repeat the main verb (positive form to mean
   'yes' and negative to mean 'no'): 

   Am bheil deoch aige? - Does he have a drink? 
   Tha. - Yes. 
   Chan eil. - No. 

   Nach eil thu toilichte? - Aren't you happy? 
   Tha. - Yes. 
   Chan eil. - No.