Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 26, 2014

The medication takes a liquid form when she gets home.

Okay, This is Calvin and this is Suzy…

Calvin: “CLASS DISMISSED!!!”

In German “mädchen” – a girl – is neuter.

She’ll just come to class with a bag of brownies.

Wait a few years, till you study German!

American English needs a gender neutral pronoun and a multiparty object pronoun badly.

Is Calvin Tumblr?

‘Neutral’ sounded to neutral, so I used neuter. But let’s just say that in German she is it.

You can tell this is an old strip. Gender is still a grammatical term, not a biological one yet.

Good grief!

‘Neuter’ is the correct grammatical term, not neutral.

Hear, hear!

I don’t remember this particular strip in all my years reading C&H. I’m trying hard NOT to laugh out loud here in my cube!

As if ESL weren’t complicated enough

One of my favorite quotes from my favorite author: “Words have sex in foreign parts.” – Nanny Ogg in Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett.

Russian kids learn gun safety and how to assemble/reassemble. We teach kids to put condoms on zucchinis. We are doomed.

Calvin, just add an O for masculine (desko) or an A for feminine (chaira). Not too hard to figure out.

I said to a friend from France, “I suppose you don’t have spelling bees for French.” He replied, “No, we have gender bees instead.”

The mind boggles, Calvin.

xxx

US arms dealers don’t have any problems whilst dominating global arms sales… Is Calvin a pacifist?

English doesn’t really have gendered nouns, but that’s because we have gendered pronouns, I remember when I was trying to learn spanish there really wasn’t much in the way of pronouns.

Gender also refers to electrical connectors.Plus, a round connector can have a shell of one gender and contacts of another.Plus, there is a (hermorph sp?) classification where two identical connectors can be mated!

In Spanish, El Toro (m) means bull, so, logically, la tora should be a cow – but isn’t!

Teacher babe Calvin makes your day interesting.

Calvin, her doctor is the one who prescribed the medication mix to her!

Same with Spanish and Italian, and I see no real point in it. Why is a desk masculine and a chair feminine? Are they going to “love each other very much” and make little footstools?"

Neuter.