"but I used to think on this and wonder why all the strong, positive, and creative words seemed to be assigned the grammatical masculine gender"

Words that are grammical feminine in French : strength (la force), creativity (la créativité), freedom/liberty (la liberté), equality (l'égalité), life (la vie), death (la mort), knowledge (la mort), improvement (l'amélioration)... I don't know where your affirmation comes from. 


Caroline


2011/12/30 Johannes Rohr <johannes.rohr@wikimedia.de>


Am 30.12.2011 03:13 schrieb "Sarah Stierch" <sarah.stierch@gmail.com>:


>
> Hi folks,
>
> While a discussion was taking place on this list about gender neutrality and language, Victor (User:victorgrigas) and I were having a conversation about it via email. Victor decided to create a page about "what language is Wikipedia?"
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/What_Gender_Is_Wikipedia
>
> Hopefully you will contribute to your own and other languages.
>
> Interesting mention about Russian Wikipedia, it states that they refer to Wikipedia as a female,

Sure. Same in German. In Slavic languages, most nouns ending in -a or -ya are female, in German, it is somewhat similar. There is absolutely nothing special about this. In Ukrainian, even the word for 'human' is female: liudyna. But I doubt that this says much about culture or society..

Johannes

similar to how in English we refer to ships as women.
>
> Aweee...even Klingon is featured }:)   (How sentimental!)
>
> -Sarah
>
>
> --
> Sarah Stierch
> Wikimedia Foundation Community Fellow
> >>Support the sharing of free knowledge around the world: donate today<<
>
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