Saumon Gentil (was: SC - Re: SC- Turkish Food)

[Laura C. Minnick]

Dana Huffman wrote:
> 
> --- Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com> wrote:
> ... It's the original recipe, that
> > Hieatt and Butler are commenting on, which instructs us
> > to do away the
> > bones, and then grind hem in an mortar, or some such. ...
> 
> This may be a silly question, but since I've learned to
> heed such clues in Spanish, I thought I'd bring it up.
> 
> Are there any number or gender clues in the original?  If
> the original says (the equivalent of) grind IT (or even
> HIM) in the mortar, that might be evidence that the pronoun
> refers to the fish, assuming we're dealing with only one
> salmon?  Whereas if you're supposed to grind THEM, and
> you've only the one fish, chances are it's the bones?  Of
> course, if you're dealing with an indeterminate number of
> fish, the point is moot.
> 
> Or does medieval English even work that way?

What the original is in is Middle English- a sort of halfway point
between the Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and teh 'Shakspearean' Early
Modern English. There are quantifiers (numbers) in the pronouns, as we
do now (I/we, he/they, etc.) but nouns are no longer gendered, as they
were in the A/S. They were gradually losing their declensions and
heading towards position within the sentence to determine the part of
speech.

'Lainie

Was a good idea though