On Wed, 13 Nov 2024 04:41:30 +0000, Hibou
Post by HibouPost by Athel Cornish-BowdenI imagine you can usually guess the gender from the Italian cognate.
That certainly works with Spanish, most of the time. Although I'm not a
native Spanish speaker I find it's usually much easier to guess the
gender than it is with French. If it ends in o it is likely to be
masculine, though mano is an important exception; if it ends in a it is
likely to be feminine; if it ends in a consonant it's likely to be
masculine, though this last isn't very reliable. I imagine the first two
of these work with Italian, though not the last, as you don't have many
words in Italian that end in a consonant.
Yep.
In the thriller 'Qui a tué Bambi ?', the doctor-suspect plays a game
with the nurse-victim. He invites her to ask him questions about a dream
he's had, and - without telling her what he is doing - replies either
'Oui' or 'Non' depending on whether the question ends in a vowel or not.
« Le Dr. Philipp : C'est un jeu. Il n'y a pas de rêve à deviner. Quand
la question se termine par une voyelle je réponds oui, quand c'est par
une consonne je réponds non. C'est vous qui inventez l'histoire au fur
et à mesure, en posant les questions. »
There is no dream. ... It's you who invent the story as you put your
questions.
Interesting, provokes some thought.
Post by HibouI suppose that wouldn't work in Italian. Too biased towards yes.
"Biased towards yes" might be an advantage -- I've never
been or known an improv artist, but according to comics
mentioning improvisational theater, the guiding rule is to
respond to everything suggested with "yes" and go on from
there. I suspect that "yes, but..." may be better for humor
and worse for continuity than saying "yes, and...".
After a few seconds of thought, it occurs to me that responding
a binary Yes/No is EASY: WHICH latest-vowel (dividing them into
sets), which hand would type N-th letter of the K-th word....
--
Rich Ulrich