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Cp2gd Posted 15 years ago
Grammar
Masculin and feminin nouns in English
Hello,
I was listeaning to Sting's music "Fileds of Gold" and I came accross the following sentence:
"You can tell the sun in his jealous sky...". As far as I can understand, "his" refers to the sun. This means that the sun is considered as masculin. That would be no surprise for me as the word "sun" is masculin in my native language, where all words are either masculin or feminin. But I learnt that in English only human beings as either masculin or feminin. I guess there are some exceptions because I've heard several times ships being referred to as "she", for instance. But is the sun one of these exceptions, meaning that it has a gender in English? On the sentence above, would it be wrong to say "...in its jealous sky"?
I also read once that in modern English "their" or "them" may be used to refer to a singular noun when gender is not specified. For instance "If a person gets scared, they will scream". In this sentence, they is used because we do not know if the person is a man or a woman. Is this gramatically correct? If so, the sentence above could be rephrased as "...in their jealous sky"?
Many thanks for your comments.
Rui.
I was listeaning to Sting's music "Fileds of Gold" and I came accross the following sentence:
"You can tell the sun in his jealous sky...". As far as I can understand, "his" refers to the sun. This means that the sun is considered as masculin. That would be no surprise for me as the word "sun" is masculin in my native language, where all words are either masculin or feminin. But I learnt that in English only human beings as either masculin or feminin. I guess there are some exceptions because I've heard several times ships being referred to as "she", for instance. But is the sun one of these exceptions, meaning that it has a gender in English? On the sentence above, would it be wrong to say "...in its jealous sky"?
I also read once that in modern English "their" or "them" may be used to refer to a singular noun when gender is not specified. For instance "If a person gets scared, they will scream". In this sentence, they is used because we do not know if the person is a man or a woman. Is this gramatically correct? If so, the sentence above could be rephrased as "...in their jealous sky"?
Many thanks for your comments.
Rui.
Top answer
It makes more sense to me that "his" refers to *** as I think that "the jealous sky" is a reference to the Heavens. That said, there are situations when his or her might refer to inanimate objects such as ships, cars etc. She's a beauty.
- It makes more sense to me that "his" refers to *** as I think that "the jealous sky" is a reference to the Heavens.
- That said, there are situations when his or her might refer to inanimate objects such as ships, cars etc.
- She's a beauty.
- (it's qute common to say this of a car for example) If a person gets scared, they ( he or she ) will scream.
- (this is fine, "they" replaces either he or she) The same idea can be expressed as If you get scared, you will scream.
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1 Answers
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It makes more sense to me that "his" refers to *** as I think that "the jealous sky" is a reference to the Heavens.
That said, there are situations when his or her might refer to inanimate objects such as ships, cars etc.
She's a beauty. (it's qute common to say this of a car for example)
If a person gets scared, they (he or she) will scream. (this is fine, "they"
That said, there are situations when his or her might refer to inanimate objects such as ships, cars etc.
She's a beauty. (it's qute common to say this of a car for example)
If a person gets scared, they (he or she) will scream. (this is fine, "they"
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