An interesting headline appeared in today's Mladá Fronta. Zemřel nejstarší člověk světa, 114letá Japonka - iDNES.cz  (lit. The world's oldest person [man] died: 114-year old Japanese woman). This is an interesting example of how the strict gender assignment of all nouns can cause problems. In Czech, the word for person (člověk) is masculine, although it does not mean 'man') and what's more, the past tense of died (zemřel) needs to indicate the masculinity. That's why it's surprising to find out that at the end of the line that the oldest person was actually a woman. This often makes translation difficult because sometimes the fact that we don't know the gender can be used with a purpose in the construction of a text.

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