Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 21, 2024

The medication takes a liquid form when she gets home.

Wait until high school, Calvin. Assuming you’ll get there, that is.

English doesn’t use gender for words Calvin makes things much easier

Gender wars… 1994 style!

The little cretin will drive anyone to drink!!!

Don’t waste your breath, Calvin. The Republican Party would ban any form of sex education in public schools!

Is Ms Wormwood old? All us geezers take meds by the dozen.

Calm down, Calvin. Be glad that you don’t have six different words for “the” like we have.

If it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t need those meds.

The gender thing is only in other languages, Calvin. But it’s complicated because a noun in French may be masculine but in Spanish it may be feminine. That makes things more complicated! English is hard enough without all that so be thankful.

Calvin? Demanding to be educated? Who are you, and what have you done with him?

When I first encountered Spanish, I had no idea about such things and just kind of picked it up a bit. Then I found out about el mapa (among other absurdities). Though there is a very VERY minor advantage: “las lunas” is a bunch of moons, but “Los Lunas” is the town that grew up where great grandpa Luna settled.

That’s not what Sex Ed is, Calvin.

It’s not an unreasonable question. English must have had gendered nouns at some time, as both the Latin and the Teutonic languages do. How about the Celtic languages? I’m not sure. I wonder when we left off using them and why? Some dialects still have the odd gendered words.

I’m thankful that English doesn’t have this particular “problem”!

When I took German in high school, I had no trouble with the vocabulary lists, except for grammatical gender. I suppose it seems natural if you grow up with it, but I wonder if even Germans get it wrong sometimes.

Sure this wasn’t written last week?

Now days one can’t even be sure about a person. Happy Birthday Elliot/Ellen Page.

The teacher should know that English lost grammatical gender in early Middle English as the adjectives lost their endings. By the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, English had natural gender and adjectives added an -e with plural nouns. Of course, then that -e dropped or disappeared with adjective ending in -e. Anyone who studied Indo-European languages would know that each language treats the gender of its nouns differently. In French, sun is masculine and moon is feminine. In German, it’s the opposite. In Polish, sun is neuter and moon is masculine, but stars are feminine. If Calvin be so inclined, he should study Old English to learn the grammatical genders of nouns.

I don’t know WHY it is, but it’s just not a feature like it is for the Romance languages.

That’s heroin you see Miss Wormwood using there, Calvin.

“Desk” is neuter, “chair” is masculine. If we go through the rest of the classroom, “floor” and “ceiling” are both neuter, “wall” and “window” are both masculine, and “blackboard” and “chalk” are both feminine, as is “door”. “Classroom” is feminine, and “teacher” is masculine (even if it’s a woman). At least, that’s the way it is in Icelandic classrooms.

“I DEMAND A SEX EDUCATION”Add that to the “Calvin out of Context” compilation.

and now we have to worry about misgendering the desk….

With Calvin, Ms. Wormworth had BETTER have meds being that she’s not allowed to have any Jack Daniels or Absolut Vodka! LOL!!

Sex Ed should began in middle school, this is very important for all children to learn and understand where and how our lives began.

He’s love many European countries then…

Be thankful English doesn’t insist on genderizing all nouns. (Is that even a word in English?)

Bill Watterson, future prognosticator.

If he only knew what was to come from the left.

It is bad enough that we are stuck with he, she, him, her, his, hers.

Although it does come in handy sometimes like, “She told him to take her car,” instead of “She told him to take his car.”

Since English is three languages in a trench coat, which source’s gender would we use?

“Doc, can you increase the dosage…these medications don’t seem to be working!”

Why would Calvin be confused by the multitude of genders for people? There are only two of them. Not that confusing, even for Calvin.

Adding gender to nouns is presumptive, we do it know the gender they associate with, what their genders are, and even if they have genders. Ask yourself, how does a male cat feel about being tagged with a feminine noun?

Yes, I’m being silly … maybe that’s my proper gender?

So many people who can’t figure out their own gender, and Calvin wants us to worry about desks and chairs?

Get some sex education Calvin and you won’t ever look at Susie the same way again.

You can tell this strip is 20 years old.

Oh so many thoughts to express, I won’t though, except for this one about so many thoughts.

we used to post these in the teachers lounge

Oh how much has changed since this was published.

Reminds me of the Monty Python skit about woody and tinny words.

Https://Www.youtube.Com/watch?v=-gwXJsWHupg

LOL….Calvin is destined for Special Ed.

Actually, desk and chair are neuter, Calvin.

I have always considered kitchen islands to be female.

After all, no man is an island.

Unfortunately Calvin English does not use gender nouns or gender much as a matter of fact, German does a bit but I recommend you take a romance language like Spanish or French in High School as a second language.

I dunno, “chair” sounds kind of masculine as well.

My uncle was once asked by his French teacher how he could tell whether pen was masculine or feminine. He answered “I would look under its drawers.”

In retrospect, she really teed him up for that one.

English is a nonbinary language – so far ahead of its time. :)

Le Bureau. La chaise. There, I said it. DeSantis can sue me if he likes.

It is a good question. Why DON’T English speakers have noun genders? Is it because our “THE” is neutral?

Calvin will end up drivin’ a hot-rod Lincoln…

One of the funniest episodes of “Emily In Paris” pondered the mystery of why, in French, it’s “LE vagin.”

Where did Calvin learn about the fine points of grammar?

I will have to admit, that is one thing that I don’t understand with some languages. That was the hardest part for me learning French and Spanish.

As a child I thought that some numbers had genders, 7 was female, 8 & 9 were male.

At six, what experience does Calvin have with other languages?

And here we have to wonder if we use the right gender pronoun on PEOPLE!!… At least if you call a dining room table by the wrong pronoun, they don’t get all shook up by it and call you names !

English used to have genders, but not anymore, thank goodness!

I wonder what kind of meds she takes. I know it was mentioned she chugs Maalox from the bottle.

This comic and comments has been a little strange for me as I don’t ever recall being taught that objects have genders. I always thought that just humans and animals have genders- male and female.

THIS will never get old… :D

Funny – I never saw Calvin as all that woke before.

Actually, most nouns are gendered in other languages – like French or Spanish – it’s just that wierdo language English that assumes everything is gender-neutral

Calvin goes to a segregated school. There are no children of color in his class.

This is a rare occasion this comic is from Febuary 26 2014 and the next one after this is from febuary 27 2014.