Robert Grimshaw
Published: 2015-06-25
Total Pages: 41
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Excerpt from French Genders, Rules and Exceptions One of the principal difficulties in learning certain foreign languages is that caused by the "artificial" or "arbitrary" genders - that is, that which is assigned the nouns, sometimes for evident cause, sometimes without apparent reason, and again with no real reason, and indeed, absurdly. The child who acquires his mother tongue gradually, by imitation and absorption, as it were, has but little difficulty in remembering the gender of a given noun; to the adult, however, these artificial genders are a stumbling-block. In German, which has three genders, the matter at first seems much more difficult than in French; but when we come to consider that in French every object of neuter, or name of a living being of so-called "common" gender, must be used with either a masculine or a feminine article, the task of determining is really more difficult. Magyar or Hungarian - in other respects a most difficult language - is in this particular a fortunate exception, as there is but one gender - or none at all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.