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Um... From TFA: When the Romans started to get interested in grammar, genus came to mean “kind” of noun or “gender”, but because genus could also refer to biol
by brazzy 5y ago
Um... From TFA:
When the Romans started to get interested in grammar, genus came to mean “kind” of noun or “gender”, but because genus could also refer to biological sex, male and female, these concepts were occasionally conflated.
- telotortium 5y agoThanks for that - I didn't see that.
- FreakLegion 5y agoThis is overstated. They used genus contextually, in an abstract sense, for biological sex, in the same way we might use kind for a brand of soda ("what kind of soda do you want?"), but genus didn't have the concrete meaning of biological sex for them any more than kind has the concrete meaning of soda brand for us. It's the same for Greek γένος, e.g. in Plato's Symposium: > πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ τρία ἦν τὰ γένη τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, οὐχ ὥσπερ νῦν δύο, ἄρρεν καὶ θῆλυ --189d It's fair to translate that into modern English as "Originally there were three genders [or sexes] of human being, not two like now, male and female", but the specific meaning of sex or gender isn't there, just kind. It's a general word being used in a general way (literally, in fact: genus -> general).
- peoplefromibiza 5y agothat's a bit of a stretch. Genere in Italian comes from the Latin word genus and means biological sex for people and animals but also kind. Translate genere to English noun 1. gender 2. kind They ate not conflated, they depend on the context What kind of beast is that? -> Che genere di bestia è? What's that book genre? -> Di che genere è quel libro? How to write gender questions -> come scrivere domande sul genere