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.
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.
Yeah, it's all very non-intuitive for those of us who are not used to (shriek) gendered languages.
If you want more horror-stories, you could check out the declension of words like 'turris'. Or even 'virus'.