The Birds And The Bees

Readers keeping up with the theoretical issues surrounding gender and translation may find this helpful or interesting or both. It’s reposted from my The Glamour of the Grammar column for the Jerusalem Post:

Unlike in English, Hebrew nouns, verbs, and adjectives come in two varieties, commonly called masculine and feminine. The endings -a (singular) and -ot (plural) frequently mark the feminine, and while the masculine nouns have no particular ending in the singular, typically their plural marker is -im. So “man” is ish and “woman” is isha. Adjectives (which in Hebrew follow the nouns they describe) match – ish tov is a “good man” and isha tova is a “good woman.” But that’s just the beginning of the story….

UPDATE. The link works now: Read more….