Posted by Martin G. on July 14, 1999 at 16:16:35:
In Reply to: "What a word's worth" - Part 1 posted by Martin G. on July 14, 1999 at 15:51:56:
Now consider the following experiment: go to any of your acquaintances, and ask them the following riddle:
A man and his son are driving in a car. They get stuck on a railway crossing and get hit by a train. The man is killed outright, the son is taken seriously hurt to hospital and into the operating theatre.
The doctor walks into the operating theatre, takes one look at the patient, and says: "I can't operate on him! He's my son!"
How can this be?
When I first heard this riddle, I thought this was not very clever, but then I did try it out on people, and about half actually didn't get it till the joke was pointed out.
This joke is possible in English and French, but impossible in German and most of the Slavic languages.
So: does English and French grammar (specifically gram. gender here) influence attitudes?
BTW, the doctor is the patient's mother, of course.