Sunday, July 29, 2007

The noun gender thing again

No sooner had I done a posting on the gender of nouns in Spanish and French (This and that on 7/20/07) than I received an e-mail from Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate in the French presidential elections earlier this year (when she was trounced by Nicolas Sarkozy in the run-off). This e-mail was one of many that I have received from her in her series entitled La lettre de Désirs d'avenir ("The letter of Hope for the future") since I got on her e-mail list prior to the elections (the first on April 22nd and the run-off on May 6th).

This most recent e-mail from Mme. Royal was an invitation to un grand pique-nique (no translation needed) to be held on August 25th by and for the party faithful and to attract sympathizers of all sorts. She signed off Amitiés à toutes et à tous ("Friendly greetings to all (females) and to all (males).") This is just another example of how noun genders in other languages can complicate things--in English she would only have to had said "Friendly greetings to all."

This sign-off is another of the many used in written communication which I wrote about in my posting Parting is such sweet sorrow on 7/11/07.

In my May 1st posting The French presidential election (redux), just prior to the May 6th run-off, I told of the inundation of e-mails I was receiving from Mme. Royal after I had signed up on her website. In that posting I posed the question "...whoever wins, will I ever hear from Ségolène again? I don't have high expectations." Was I ever wrong--I still get her e-mails. They are no longer numbered, as they were before the run-off (the last of the numbered ones was 95).

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Mycroft Watson is the nom de plume of a man who has seen many winters. He is moderate to an extreme. When he comes to a fork in the road, he always takes it. His favorite philosopher is Yogi Berra. He has come out of the closet and identified himself. Anyone interested can get his real name, biography, and e-mail address by going to "Google Search" and keying in "User:Marshall H. Pinnix" (case sensitive).

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