RERE: Paired Horse and bladibla

[T.I. Console]

Lars Martin Fosse wrote:

Today, Norwegian, German and the slavonic languages have three genders, the Romance languages have the feminine and the masculine, Danish and Dutch have the masculine and the neutre, which in a way is reverting to the old animate/inanimate system. 

Hoho, as a speaker of Dutch I lived under the impression that we also had feminine? Not visible in the determiner, but for example, in the relative possessive pronoun,

de man wiens auto gestolen was (litt: the man whose car stolen was)
de vrouw wier auto gestolen was (litt: the woman whose car stolen was)

Especially in the older language this is clearly visible, and still so in a number of fixed expressions where the old case-system has been preserved.

But of course there is a clear trend to simplifiy things (back?) into a gender/neuter system.

Sandra van der Geer
Leiden, NL
info at ticonsole.nl
http://www.ticonsole.nl/books