Читать книгу The Comic Latin Grammar: A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue - Leigh Percival - Страница 8

The genders of nouns, which are three, the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter, are denoted in Latin by articles. We have articles, also, in English, which distinguish the masculine from the feminine, but they are articles of dress; such as petticoats and breeches, mantillas and mackintoshes. But as there are many things in Latin, called masculine and feminine, which are nevertheless not male and female, the articles attached to them are not parts of dress, but parts of speech.

We will now, with our readers’ permission, initiate them into a new mode of declining the article hic, hæc, hoc. And we take this opportunity of protesting against the old and short-sighted system of teaching a boy only one thing at a time, which originated, no doubt, from the general ignorance of everything but the dead languages which prevailed in the monkish ages. We propose to make declensions, conjugations, &c., a vehicle for imparting something more than the mere dry facts of the immediate subject. And if we can occasionally inculcate an original remark, a scientific principle, or a moral aphorism, we shall, of course, think ourselves sufficiently rewarded by the consciousness – et cætera, et cætera, et cætera.

Masc. hic. Fem. hæc. Neut. hoc, &c

Nouns declined with two articles, are called common. This word common requires explanation – it is not used in the same sense as that in which we say, that quackery is common in medicine, knavery in the law, and humbug everywhere – pigeons at Crockford’s, lame ducks at the Stock Exchange, Jews at the ditto, and Royal ditto, and foreigners in Leicester Square – No; a common noun is one that is both masculine and feminine; in one sense of the word therefore it is uncommon. Parens, a parent, which may be declined both with hic, and hæc, is, for obvious reasons, a noun of this class; and so is fur, a thief; likewise miles, a soldier, which will appear strange to those of our readers, who do not call to mind the existence of the ancient amazons; the dashing white sergeant being the only female soldier known in modern times. Nor have we more than one authenticated instance of a female sailor, if we except the heroine commemorated in the somewhat apocryphal narrative – Billy Taylor.

Nouns are called doubtful when declined with the article hic or hæc – whichever you please, as the showman said of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte. Anguis, a snake, is a doubtful noun. At all events he is a doubtful customer.

Epicene nouns are those which, though declined with one article only, represent both sexes, as hic passer, a sparrow, hæc aquila, an eagle, – cock and hen. A sparrow, however, to say nothing of an eagle, must appear a doubtful noun with regard to gender, to a cockney sportsman.

After all, there is no rule in the Latin language about gender so comprehensive as that observed in Hampshire, where they call every thing he but a tom-cat, and that she.