Ní fadhb, a deartháir. 
What city is she from? Asking because my wife is from GTO state, too.
This happens in Chinese except the number doesn’t change, the measure word does. We have measure words in English (you never say “a water,” you say “a cup of water”) but in Chinese they are always used. You can’t say “one cat” you have to say “one zhe cat” since zhe is the measure word for cats (and most animals). There’s a whole field of humor we miss in English because using the wrong measure word is sometimes very funny–or so I’m told.
Flip side: Chinese does not have articles or (except in certain circumstances) plurals.
Disclaimer: I’m just a 2nd year student of Chinese, and not a particularly talented one at that.
This is why this site is so cool. I was just talking about this the other day to someone, then I go to this site and theres a thread that mentions the same thing. I had no idea that the distinction existed in Irish either; goes to show how much I paid attention in class.
Sanskrit has this too, bhavatah. for a male person and bhavatya-h. a female person. Hmm, could I type in Devanagari on the SDMB?
Homeric Greek used the dual often enough, but in Attic Greek it is very very rare.
Ugh, why did you have to ruin a perfectly good post by quoting that charlatan?
UnuMondo
Well, Trinidadian English has an equivalent word (I’m guessing, I don’t know Hebrew): Bacchanal.
English doesn’t distinguish between two different senses of “there”: there where you are (Spanish allí; Tagalog diyan) vs. over there where neither of us are (Spanish ahí; Tagalog doon).
UnuMondo: What makes Mario Pei a `charlatan’?
(I don’t know the guy from Adam, I’m not attacking your assessment, I’m just curious (and eager to hear one geek ragging on the work of another :D).)
Avumede: A bacchanal is a loud party, preferably one with plenty of alcohol. Bacchus was the Greek god of wine and partying and the wilder side of nature, equivalent to the Roman Dionysus, hence Nietzsche’s seperation of cultures into Apollonian and Dionysian categories.
I don’t know of any Hebrew connection.
I would consider that an advantage over other languages. Why do tables chairs, slat shakers and lamps have to have genders? It seems to me that you’re sexualizing a lot of things that really don’t have any sexuality.
First off, `slat shaker’? Do you really need to shake thin strips of wood that often?
Secondly, gender' and sex’ have nothing in common, especially in grammar. Just because shoes, for example, are feminine doesn’t mean that they’re feminine: They could be owned and worn by a man. The grammatical construction is divorced from any possible sexuality.
Thirdly, languages do odd things. Gender happens to be one of the more common oddities, at least in Europe. I have no idea why a language would burden itself with it, myself, but I suppose grammar nitpickers have to have something to do. (“Egads, you’ve given my footware a sex-change operation! Say the shoes,' not tha shoes.’”) (Sorry.) 