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I was speaking with a Spanish friend of mine today, and he refers to his yacht by the masculine pronoun. When I asked why, he explained that boat in Spanish is masculine.
Does anyone know if this was the case historically, and Spanish sailors called their boats "he"?
Sounds like one for Redcoat Dobbs.
Rob.
IIRC both Spanish and Russian languages do that; if I'm remembering my high school languages classes correctly the Romance languages (French/Spanish/Italian/?Portuguese) lack a gender-neutral "it" pronoun like English "he/she/it" or German "der/die/das." Not sure if the Slavic tongues are the same way, or just cultural association.
Yes Dobbs, the Spanish and Portuguese Navios were all "He", even the ships with feminine names. I know, weird huh! A great source of information is https://www.todoababor.es/historia/h...-naval/buques/
I confirm being French that we always use the masculine gender when we name a ship because our word "bateau" is masculine. However, when the name of a ship is clearly feminine like "Ville de Paris" (city of Paris), we can for the sake of our ears say "La Ville de Paris" ("la" for the feminine way) but the ship is always masculine in French. On the other hand, if you want to speak about a specific kind of ship like "barque", "galère" (galley) or "pinasse" (pinnace), you keep the correct grammatical gender (here, feminine forms).
(I take advantage of the opportunity to let you know that I'm still around, long time I hadn't written anything but I'm still around, guys, with the same pleasure :happy:)
Good to have you in port again sir.
My word, your very good explaination has made me realize just how complex your gender linguistics can be.
Rob.