Why the "h"

Lughaidh · **Joined:** Thu 15 Sep 2011 12:06 pm **Posts:** 2436

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_la ... al_genders

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

Surprised to see that Afrikaans has no grammatical gender as it is derived from Dutch, must have been an English influence or a product of standardisation.

Saoirse · **Posted:** Thu 20 Sep 2012 3:58 pm

Lughaidh wrote:

you English speakers aren't used to that since there's no gender anymore in English, except for pronouns

We English speakers know the most important thing about gender - which is that women are superior to men. Anything else is surplus to requirement. :twisted:

Lughaidh · **Joined:** Thu 15 Sep 2011 12:06 pm **Posts:** 2436

Quote:

Surprised to see that Afrikaans has no grammatical gender as it is derived from Dutch, must have been an English influence or a product of standardisation.

Afrikaans is a kind of simplified Dutch, and btw, even in Dutch the difference between masculine and feminine isn't huge anymore (unlike German, which is much more archaic).

an_t-uaithneach · **Posted:** Thu 20 Sep 2012 5:37 pm

Lughaidh wrote:

Quote:

Surprised to see that Afrikaans has no grammatical gender as it is derived from Dutch, must have been an English influence or a product of standardisation.

Afrikaans is a kind of simplified Dutch, and btw, even in Dutch the difference between masculine and feminine isn't huge anymore (unlike German, which is much more archaic).

It's no more surprising that Afrikaans lost grammatical gender than it is that English did.

Breandán · **Posted:** Thu 20 Sep 2012 10:27 pm

Lughaidh wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_grammatical_genders

Yes, thank you, I saw that list. I still consider it dubious to group the animate/inanimate distinction together with the masculine/feminine(/neuter) distinction. They are completely unrelated phenomena.

If you take the Indo-European languages out of the list you'll see that very few languages outside the Indo-European family make a masculine/feminine(/neuter) distinction.

an_t-uaithneach · **Posted:** Thu 20 Sep 2012 11:00 pm

Breandán wrote:

Lughaidh wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_grammatical_genders

Yes, thank you, I saw that list. I still consider it dubious to group the animate/inanimate distinction together with the masculine/feminine(/neuter) distinction. They are completely unrelated phenomena.

They're not completely unrelated phenomena. The Indo-European masculine/feminine/neuter distinction started out as an animate/inanimate distinction, which is what it still is in Hittite. It was only after Anatolian broke off from the rest of Indo-European that masculine and feminine began to be distinguished from each other.

Lughaidh · **Joined:** Thu 15 Sep 2011 12:06 pm **Posts:** 2436

Quote:

If you take the Indo-European languages out of the list you'll see that very few languages outside the Indo-European family make a masculine/feminine(/neuter) distinction.

Yes, but they are there...

Quote:

They're not completely unrelated phenomena. The Indo-European masculine/feminine/neuter distinction started out as an animate/inanimate distinction, which is what it still is in Hittite. It was only after Anatolian broke off from the rest of Indo-European that masculine and feminine began to be distinguished from each other.

We don't know. It might be a Hittite feature, influenced by some other (non-IE) language. Having an animate/inanimate distinction in Hittite doesn't mean it did exist in all other old IE languages. As far as I know, Sanskrit is very old too and it has 3 genders.

An Cionnfhaolach · **Joined:** Fri 09 Mar 2012 6:16 pm **Posts:** 1527

an_t-uaithneach wrote:

Lughaidh wrote:

Quote:

Surprised to see that Afrikaans has no grammatical gender as it is derived from Dutch, must have been an English influence or a product of standardisation.

Afrikaans is a kind of simplified Dutch, and btw, even in Dutch the difference between masculine and feminine isn't huge anymore (unlike German, which is much more archaic).

It's no more surprising that Afrikaans lost grammatical gender than it is that English did.

The fact that English lost its genders is surprising and interesting! Just one of those linguistic phenomena when languages develop independently from their source. I wasn't aware that the genders in Dutch have merged into a common gender. I thought Dutch was similar to German's rigid rules in terms of gender.

franc 91 · **Posted:** Fri 21 Sep 2012 10:47 am

Just to go back to the original question - this is what you find on page 20 of 'Teach yourself Irish' (the 1960 edition)

The prefixed h:
One other initial change must be noted. The gen. sg. fem. and the nom.pl. of the article prefix h to a following initial vowel: na habhann "of the river"; na huain 'the lambs".
h is also prefixed as follows:
(a) to nouns after the fem. possessive a "her"; after the numerals trí, cheithre, sé and after tarna "second" and ordinals ending in ú; after the prepositions go and le (1), and after the negative copula ní: a hiníon 'her daughter", trí huaire "three times, an tarna huair "the second time", go hÉirinn "to Ireland", le hór "with gold", ní hea "it is not", ní hamhlaidh "it is not so";
(b) to adjectives after chomh "as, so" and go (forming adverbs): chomh hálainn"as beautiful", go holc "badly";
(c) to verbs in the passive-impersonal after all particles ending in vowels, and in the imperative after the negative ná: ní hitear " is not eaten"; ná hól! "do not drink", do hólaidh "was drunk".

(1) le prefixes n to the verbal nouns ithe "to eat" and ól "to drink".

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