That is just using the first declension. The nouns themselves remain male. If you want to use an adjective for them, you would use the male form (if the individual male).
Nope. Adjectives agree in case, number, and gender. Parva nauta (the small sailor), not parvus nauta; or bona agricula (the good farmer), for instance.
What you ought to have said is that people come in sexes of which there are exactly two, and gender is just language (and in Latin there are three). Romans werent trying to imply every farmer is a girl :)
Nope. Adjectives agree in case, number, and gender. Parva nauta (the small sailor), not parvus nauta; or bona agricula (the good farmer), for instance.
Correct as to the first part. But since the gender of 'agricola' is male, it will be parvus agricola. Just checked Oxford's Latin Desk Dictionary for you, and the gender of 'nauta' is also male.
You are declension for the gender. Words of the first declension ending in -a are almost always female. These are some exceptions. Just like 'manus' is female and 'virus' is neuter.
What you ought to have said is that people come in sexes of which there are exactly two, and gender is just language (and in Latin there are three).
Yup. Grammatical gender is something completely different from actual gender. That is why 'moon' is female in Romance languages but male in German (I believe).
Romans werent trying to imply every farmer is a girl :)
Actually, none was. There are some words that may be female or male, like dies, but agricola is only male.
So ... dig out the Cassell's dictionary and would ya believe you have it -- AND the entry has a suitable masculine adjectival example. Somehow that got sideways in my memory and since all those were buried in boxes for a few decades, and hardly in daily use, I got it stuck in my head wrong.
"Woman" is a corruption of "wyfman," which means "person who weaves, " so the last post is half-correct. "Wer" and "guma" were the most common words for "man" back then.
In Latin, the nouns for certain professions are female. Poeta, nauta (poet, sailor), for instance.
That is just using the first declension. The nouns themselves remain male. If you want to use an adjective for them, you would use the male form (if the individual male).
Nope. Adjectives agree in case, number, and gender. Parva nauta (the small sailor), not parvus nauta; or bona agricula (the good farmer), for instance.
What you ought to have said is that people come in sexes of which there are exactly two, and gender is just language (and in Latin there are three). Romans werent trying to imply every farmer is a girl :)
Correct as to the first part. But since the gender of 'agricola' is male, it will be parvus agricola. Just checked Oxford's Latin Desk Dictionary for you, and the gender of 'nauta' is also male.
You are declension for the gender. Words of the first declension ending in -a are almost always female. These are some exceptions. Just like 'manus' is female and 'virus' is neuter.
Yup. Grammatical gender is something completely different from actual gender. That is why 'moon' is female in Romance languages but male in German (I believe).
Actually, none was. There are some words that may be female or male, like dies, but agricola is only male.
So ... dig out the Cassell's dictionary and would ya believe you have it -- AND the entry has a suitable masculine adjectival example. Somehow that got sideways in my memory and since all those were buried in boxes for a few decades, and hardly in daily use, I got it stuck in my head wrong.
The only instance of a profession being gendered is "woman" which is old english for "man who weaves".
Did you get this from the OED or from your ass? The Old English for 'woman' is wyf. "Woman" is not a word in Old English.
"Woman" is a corruption of "wyfman," which means "person who weaves, " so the last post is half-correct. "Wer" and "guma" were the most common words for "man" back then.
Hmm, maybe I was thinking of another language.