BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - Why Is a Ship Called: "She"? :-)

On 20 Nov 2005 21:56:54 -0800, wrote:

Boots wrote:
because back in the old days of sailing ships they were
named after wife's and or girl friends
"Usenet Joe" wrote in message
...

They are not "shes" in most of the world. At least the parts that have
been sailing for a few thousand years before the USA.
Poland is one.

Good catch. Few East Asian languages discriminate between he, she and
it.

Zheng He, the admiral in charge of Chinese fleets sailing from China
to Ceylon and East Africa before the European voyages of discovery,
likely communicated in classical Chinese and a language not too
dissimilar to modern standard Chinese - neither language discriminate
between the masculine, feminine, and neuter third person pronouns.

The modern descendants of the Bugis, operating what many claim was the
biggest sail fleet (in terms of the number of hulls) of all time, can
discriminate between it and he/she (but not between he and she without
adding additional qualifiers) but the difference is subtle. They and
other Malays tend to avoid third person pronouns (preferring to talk
about 'your boat', 'my boat', 'Intan's boat') but I think they use
'it' for a boat when context demands it. I'll try to be more attentive
to confirm that.

Cheers