Quote:
Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar
In reply to your first paragraph, there are differences in the perceived genders of sun and moon in different languages. In German, for example, the sun is female and the moon male (die Sonne, der Mond). On the other hand, Lewis Carroll has the opposite in one of his (English, of course) nonsense poems - despite the fact that there is no mandatory gender of the words in English:
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No
mandatory genders in English, but I've always had the impression that we incline toward calling the sun male and the moon female. Possibly this is because of the influence of Greek and Roman myths, with Apollo the sun-god and Diana/Artemis the moon-goddess.
Is the reversed position true of other Nordic languages, besides German--I'm especially thinking of the Scandinavians? Given that Tolkien's mythology has its origins in being a mythology for the English, in the sense of a
Nordic mythology, I wonder if the Arien/Tilion choice was influenced thereby.