A question about Rock in WoR

[Zola she/her]

It's pretty clear that Rock has some sort of affinity to spren, in that he can see them when others can't.  He hasn't said why, but it was hinted that there is an explainiation that he'll get around to at some point.

 

That being established, in chapter 87, when Kaladin meets Teft, Rock, and co. on top of the plateau, Rock looks at the honorblade that Kaladin has retrieved from Szeth, and this conversation happens.

 

"Another one?" Rock asked, eyeing Kaladin's Shardblade. "Or is he yours?" 

"No," Kaladin said. "I took it from the assassin."

 

I was just curious as to why Rock would refer to the blade as a "He"  when everyone else calls the blade an "it." 

Syl pretty clearly stated that the blade has nothing to do with any Spren on the page before, but Rocks wording in the entire exchange struck me as a little weird.  Maybe it's just supposed to be a cultural thing?  Everyone else refers to their stuff as a She and horneaters call their stuff He?

 

Just wondering what everyone thought, since most of you are clearly more well versed in this than I am.

 

[chikinllama]

I'm on my phone right now, so I can get any quotes, but I believe the horneater accent when speaking Alethi uses "he" or "she" instead of "it" when choosing pronouns for neuter objects.

However, his use if the phrase "another one" could hint that honorblades might be sentient, like the spren.

[Mysty she/her]

It could just be a product of the horneater language. Their syntax is different than alethi. Or maybe that is how horneaters refer to objects. For instance, in spanish all objects have a gender, so maybe a sword is masculine in horneater. It could also be similar to how we refer to ships as "her".

Before the battle at narak, has Rock ever been close enough to a shardblade to possibly guess that they are dead spren? There are no shards on the peaks, sadeas didn't have a blade when his (horneater word for leader) came down to challenge. And since he was cook, he was never on guard duty. He was there when Dalinar gave sadeas oathbringer, but Rock was in the crowd, not up close.

I wonder if Rock could have figured out the spren connection had he seen one close up.

[Swimmingly he/him]

If you read through, you notice Rock using "he" instead of "it" when he points to just about everything. We've had similar discussions based on him calling the sphere in the surgebinding-testing chasm scene "he" rather than "it". Personally, I agree that it's just a sociolinguistic thing, or one of Rock's quirks.

[Zizoz he/him]

Indeed, it's probably just a result of Rock being a nonnative Alethi speaker. Shallan also calls objects "he" when she's pretending to be a Horneater.

[Kurkistan he/him]

More than a dialect thing, it could also be a cultural impact on their language in personifying the "Spren" in objects.

[Zizoz he/him]

Possibly.

 

One thing to keep in mind though is that they're not actually speaking English. It's possible that the actual error being committed is not the one we see. I've considered that perhaps Alethi has grammatical gender while the Horneater language doesn't, resulting in Rock choosing the masculine pronoun too often. I don't recall him using "she" in place of "it" off the top of my head, but I could easily be forgetting stuff. Anyone know if this happens? Also, how is this translated into other languages?