MI 5 .... Only joking, lads!
Jack
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>>"Genuine reason for sale"
www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?v=i&t=88...5
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These are my own opinions, and not necessarily those of all Toads.
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'New car forces sale' in other words YOU bought a new car because you wanted to and have to now offload the old heap.
When I sold mine recently, I took HJ's advice and just described the car, leaving out all that sort of gubbins. I would rather know the engine size and mileage than that it's a good little runaround or a tidy motor.
Cars are 'she' due to a linguistic convention. In English, inanimate objects are neither masculine nor feminine, with the exception of cars and boats, but in other European languages things are given a gender, eg La chat, feminine, le chien, masculine. The question should be why don't we do it as a matter of course?
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Inanimate objects have no gender, so those that assign one to every object are batty.
In England we only do it informally as a sign of attachment.
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People that almost come to a full stop in front of me in order to make a simple left turn into a side road.
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Pedant (and MI 5)
Please forgive my earlier facetiousness.
So far as your first bugbear is concerned, my instincts suggest that referring to cars as she almost certainly derives from the custom whereby ships, whereas originally personified as masculine, have almost invariably been personified as feminine, rather than female, since the 16th century.
Having gone a-googling on this premise, I came up with the two references attached, namely:
www.sailnet.com/sailing/02/f&bjun02.htm
www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/sailing/03/20/lloyds.sex/
Needless to say, I am *much* more persuaded by the former - not least regarding the muck spreader! - than by the incredibly PC nature of the latter, to which the former interestingly enough refers.
Curiously enough, the only time I can think of that seafarers refer to ships as "he", rather than "she", is in a close quarters shiphandling situation when the reference to "he" is almost certainly in respect of the male assumed to be in charge of the other ship, despite the fact that it will frequently be a she in reality. A bit like close quarters "carhandling" really!
HTH, without being too pedantic of course ...
Jack
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Having first swung out to the right to give themselves enough room to get their Littelwagen round the corner.
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People that almost come to a full stop in front of me in order to make a simple left turn into a side road.
And (when I'm in the left-hand lane of a motorway) people who overtake then pull in front of me (sometimes even from the right-hand lane !! ) and then brake in preparation for leaving the motorway at the next exit. Especially when I'm not leaving at that exit.
L'escargot by name, but not by nature.
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People that almost come to a full stop in front of me in order to make a simple left turn into a side road.
It often confuses people behind me when I slow right down to turn left in to the road leading on to mine. What I know and they probably don't is that you often get cars parked on both sides just around the corner and it's also a bus route. Taking it at any speed is asking for an accident. Don't forget, it's up to you to take a corner slow enough so you can still stop if there is an obstruction just out of sight around it - no matter how fast the road is otherwise..
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in other European languages things are givena gender, eg La chat, feminine, le chien, masculine. The question should be why don't we do it as a matter of course?
Don't want to be pedantic but
le chien (dog) as well as la chienne (bitch)
le chat as well as la chatte
Things that bug me - people who have those safety pins to keep their bonnet down.
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you DO want to be pedantic CM, don't you?!! :-)
well, ma francais est terrible, but I would find it a darn sight easier if I didn't have to remember that a table is feminine and a chair is masculine! (Don't tell me if I have got that the right side round!). Whatever, I think that seeing as inanimate objects are assigned a gender in French, German, Spanish, etc etc, I think we are the odd ones out.
Things that bug me?... Once AGAIN following somebody who was obviously asleep at the wheel this morning - they pulled out in front of me, causing me to break hard, stuck to 40 mph on the perfectly good straight stretch of A road where the limit is 60 and then continued on through the village, still doing 40. Not paying attention to the road, the speed limits, other road users.... Aargh!
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Things that bug me?... Once AGAIN following somebody who was obviously asleep at the wheel this morning - they pulled out in front of me, causing me to break hard, stuck to 40 mph on the perfectly good straight stretch of A road where the limit is 60 and then continued on through the village, still doing 40. Not paying attention to the road, the speed limits, other road users.... Aargh!
Probably not asleep at all. This is standard driving procedure for blue rinse grannies in brand new Pug 106's or similar. (" I drive everywhere at a nice steady speed, so I must be safe.")
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French gender rules can be illogical! For example, le vagin (women's bits) and la barbe (beard). Why?
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Kind of ... le chat = masculine, regardless of the biological gender of the cat.
la chatte = caught by the swear word filter.
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