phineas wrote: 
I consider it boorish to look under a chair to see what gender it is.

 dionysius wrote: 
Years ago, in Nepal, I sat next at a table next to a group of travellers, among them a Frenchman who was declaiming loudly that, because there is no 'gender' in English, "It is a baby language... THE butter, THE chair..."  I wish I had been quick enough to ask if he thought, then, that French must be an adolescent language (2 genders), compared to, say, German with three. And would that in turn make Mandarin, which doesn't even use definite articles, an embryonic language.

But no, I just ordered a banana lassi and some toast...

dionysius wrote:
Yes...I actually minored in German in college.     That makes sense.. and B said that 'die DJin' wouldn't really sound good, so I guess that's why they came up with DJane.  They kinda thought 'DJay' even though they know that 'DJ' actually is an abbreviation of 'disc jockey'.    Danish used to have more of a separation too, but they kinda got rid of it. 

Speaking of gender specificities and rrrrromance languages (have to rrrroll the rrrrr), it's interesting to note that in spanish the vulgar terms for genitals are gender inverse.  That is, "vulgar penis" has a female ending and "vulgar vagina" has a male ending.  As such, you'd use "La" with the male and "el" with the female term.  Reminds me of a movie I saw once actually...

Hmmm... "vulgar penis"...where's that Name My Band thread...

 Talalala wrote: 

Well, not that strange. Many languages have stronger grammatical gender than English does. Even inanimate objects can have "gender" which will determine if it gets a masculine, feminine or (in some languages) neuter adjective or article, for instance. Der DJ and die DJ might grate on German-speaking ears without further gender distinction. The Romance languages are even stronger with the gendered nouns, often with distinctive endings and declension. Anyone out there with specific examples from their own languages?

 Talalala wrote:  i like it!

My husband just told me that in Germany, female DJ's are called  "DJanes" ...   HUH.   Strange compulsion to make things masculine or feminine.  Semantic reasons?