The Calvin and Hobbes strip from 2/26:
Calvin shows the common confusion between sex and grammatical gender, compounded by the apparent assumption (incorrect) that the assignment of nouns to grammatical genders is the same in all languages with grammatical gender. I sympathize with the teacher’s frustration.
January 20, 2019 at 7:02 pm |
Additionally, by Calvin’s logic, Canada (minus Quebec, obviously), Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand would also be unable to compete in the foreign market, to say nothing of Finland, China, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. The lack of grammatical gender in their respective languages doesn’t seem to prevent them proper from competing as well.
Then again, this is Calvin we’re talking about. For a smart-alec, he can be pretty dumb sometimes.