Child's comment: Mom, he's wearing a skirt

[Rick]

Could you explain the link you see between the story and the language
in which it occured? As a native French speaker, I don't see any.

In French and other languages, to be gramatically correct, one must be concerned with the gender of nouns, whereas in English, one does not worry about the gender of nouns. As a native English speaker, when my classmates and I were learning French, we often noted that English must be "easier" to learn, as we did not have to memorize the gener of the nouns. Of course, it was easier, because we were native English speakers.

So, what struck me as being humerous in the story to which I responded was that while "skirt" is the noun for a feminine garmant, and "kilt" is the noun for a masculin garment, the definition of "kilt" offered was that it was a masculine "skirt." Thus for a language like English, where we do not formally have to deal with the gender of a noun, it is rather ironic how often we really do have to deal with the gender associated with a noun.

Rick

[Geoduck]

Almost forgot this one:

While on the cruise also, my wife and I were on the bow of the ship watching our docking in Cozumel. I had on my UK Survival ready for treking thru the jungle. Anyway, as we were leaving the bow a woman approached my wife and asked if we were from Seattle. My wife not being into the kilt culture wasn't sure why she was asking but the lady explained that she hadn't seen a utilikilt since she moved to the east coast but that "Everyone on Seattle wears kilts."

I have to say that it isn't all of us up here in the Great NW, but a good chuck. . Out of about 50 employees here, three of us own UK's, but they are recognized around Seattle.

To stay on topic and make my point, I was wearing my postal blue Mocker on Saturday (looked very nice with my Mariner's jersey) and walking to the Mariners-Devil Rays game. As we passed a group of junior high aged boys wand girls. All my wife and I heard was a girl tearing someone a new oriface "Its a kilt, damn it! and you clearly don't have the guts to wear one!"

I just walked away chuckling. Strangely enough, that was the only thing I heard all night.