Why is a country referred as "She"?
My curious fella once asked - "Baba, why is a country referred to as 'she' or 'her'?" e.g. Her Flag etc. I didn't have an immediate answer. I somewhat knew why would it be, but I couldn't put it in a logical convincing manner. I realised, I needed to look up some references. My thinking was on following lines. The word "mother" instantaneously gives reference to "birth", "care". Since one takes birth in a given land, it is easy to relate it to be "motherland". It invokes the emotions similar to visiting your mother when you come back to your native place. So the feminine reference is largely on an emotional basis rather than any grammatical one. My research started indicating that although majority of the references are feminine, there's no basis for that in english grammar. English language is gender neutral and has no feminine and masculine distinction between words. However Latin, from which English is or...