I have gender issues.

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solitario
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I have gender issues.

Post by solitario »

Yeah, you heard me...

What is the deal with words that are masculine and feminine? Such as adulēscēns?
How do you differentiate gender? With meus/mea?
And would this sentence make sense grammatically, even if the "colleague" were a guy?:
Collēga meus cohortem meam est.
My colleague is my bodyguard.
VALETE BENE!

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benissimus
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Post by benissimus »

It is rare to have a feminine noun describing a male. Thus, cohors does not mean a single bodyguard, but it refers to the group of protectors of an official, or his "bodyguard". This is not the same sense as how we usually use "bodyguard", but you could call a friend a bodyguard in a figurative sense.
Collēga meus cohortem meam est.
There is a problem with having cohortem meam in the accusative with the verb est.
flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae

solitario
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Post by solitario »

benissimus wrote:
Collēga meus cohortem meam est.
There is a problem with having cohortem meam in the accusative with the verb est.
Because "cohors" doesn't really receive an action, right?
How about "Collega meus cohors mea est"? If I were to use it figuratively.

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benissimus
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Post by benissimus »

That is fine, just remember that no form of the verb esse may take a direct object. If you want to reduce some of the redundancy, you could switch the second mea for mihi or drop one of them altogether, but that is a matter of style. I'm glad you were able to resolve your gender issues without doing anything too drastic ;)
flebile nescio quid queritur lyra, flebile lingua murmurat exanimis, respondent flebile ripae

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Post by Moerus »

Mostly the context will show you the gender with such words as adulescens.

Sometimes Latin writers use the words mas (male) and femina (female) to say what the gender is. This is mostly used with words, used for animals, when there is only one word with a grammatical gender to denote the females and the males.
Exemplum: The word aquila is used for males ans females, but in the grammar it's always f. But if you want to denote it's a male, you can put: aquila mas and for a female aquila femina. Adjectives will then be put with mas or femina: aquila mas magnus, ...
But when you only use aquila, you have to say: pulchra aquila, which can denote a male or a female: the context will clear up this one.

When there is a word for the male animal and an other for the female animal: you don't have to use mas or femina off course: equus for a male, but equa for a female.

This is normally only used for animals. I think it can be used for humans too, but only in biological non-classical texts.
If you really want to denote the sense of words like adulescens, just use an other word. You can put in as an apposition and use the subject, to which it would be apposed, to mark the gender.

Vale,
Philippus Moerus.

solitario
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Post by solitario »

Thanks folks. :D

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