English and Gender(s)

A while ago, Adamn claimed that English had 3 Genders.Is this true,partially true or false?

off topic hey Sander does ur nick have to do anything with the SAND word? Alike work - worker?

What? LOL No, it's my name.

Yeh but when I say 'TEACHER' you have no idea what gender she or he is. Right?

Damn right you can't tell the gender, which suits me fine. I don't like it that in German I have to be a 'Lehrerin'. Why is it important to call me a female teacher? I'm just a teacher!

I guess it's nice not to have to think of that I guess :-) point is , English doesn't use it.The fact that English uses personal pronouns like 'he and she' doesn't really mean they know a gender let alon think about it.

I really like the fact that in English you can say 'my partner' without having to say if it's a man or woman. OK, usually it becomes obvious from the personal pronouns you use, but it gives people a chance to be more private about their private life if they want to.

I thought if you dont care for the proper pronunciation I could not try that hard

I don't care about Russian pronunciation.
I care very much about proper ENGLISH pronunciation.

Using he/she/it for things that really ARE hes, shes, and its is not the same as grammatical gender in other languages --- I don't care how much people argue that it is. When I took Spanish and (briefly) French, that was the most alien idea in the world, that inanimate objects had to be arbitrarily male or female.

Has anybody read the book 'Me talk pretty one day' by David Sedaris? There's a few chapters detailing his experiences of learning French in Paris, and his amazement that French awards gender to inanimate objects, things that he'd always assumed were neuter.
(There's a hilarious bit where some of the students try to explain the concept of Easter to a Muslim, without knowing any of the vital words like 'crucifixion', 'resurrection' or 'sins'!)

I can remember this feeling of 'huh??' myself, when I started learning French.

I read that book -- I HAVE that book, sitting on the table not five feet away -- and it is hysterical! And his tales of French class -- and his evil French teacher -- almost made me pee in my pants. The battle of the bell vs. the bunny especially.

You're all thinking in English so, you're confusing gender with sex of course and you're therefore judging French by your own language biases.

Any native French speaker knows that a table is feminine even though they also know it's not female. The French two-gender system does not make that language any more complicated than English for a native speaker.

A tough concept for an English speaker perhaps, but one which any French speaker simply takes for granted.

With Dutch we have 3 genders, but the preposition for Male and Female is the same (de).

Like JJM said it's a way of thinking...

Sander : « Ouais mais quand je dis 'PROF' tu n'as aucune idée du genre de ce(tte) prof. Non ? »

Tu n'as certes aucune idée du ***SEXE*** de cette personne, mais tu connais le genre du substantif la désignant : neutre faible (masculin ou féminin). Ce neutre faible n'est pas marqué : il n'y a pas de suffixation particulière qui permette de l'identifier moprhologiquement. Mais ça ne pose pas de problème : l'anglais est (presque) dépourvu de système de ***MARQUAGE*** des genres grammaticaux (à part <empress> etc).

Merci de ta remarque, Sander, car on peut donc considérer 4 genres grammaticaux non-marqués en anglais :
1/ le neutre fort (ni féminin, ni masculin) : the house > it
2/ le féminin : the girl > she
3/ le masculin : the man > he
4/ le neutre faible (féminin ou masculin) : teacher > he ou she.