I decided to dress up as a zombie

Question

You gave a “hint” that the person dressing up was Daniel, a man, so checked up in my trusty Oxford dictionary if there is a male / female spelling, and it has a ‘le zombi’ for a male zombie, and ‘le zombie’ for a female zombie. You’ve used ‘zombie’ so why bother with the hint ?

Accepted Answer

Bonjour à tous !
Wow, what a can of worms this tiny word turned out to be :)
Indeed, the intention behind that hint was to address the agreement of "mort-vivant" as an alternative to "zombie" :) As for "zombie", I must admit I only ever knew the spelling "zombie" myself, but looking it up, I do agree with Maarten here regarding the fact that both "zombi" and "zombie" are alternate spellings regardless of gender, so should both be marked as correct (which is now done).As for that hint, I guess that, as pointed out by Chris and Maarten, it's more confusing than not, and I therefore decided to simply remove it here :)
Merci beaucoup pour vos interventions !Bonne journée à tous !

Answer

Bonjour Anita,
Thank you for your excellent question. I only ever knew of the spelling ‘zombie’. On apprend des choses tous les jours! ;-)
The reason for the Hint ‘Daniel is speaking (man)’ is to help you remember about the non-agreement rule with ‘avoir’ in Le Passé Composé.
I hope this is helpful.
Bonne journée!

Answer

@Céline: The answer given is: Aujourd'hui, j'ai décidé de m'habiller en zombie. All the alternatives follow the same pattern. I don't see any way this answer would change if a female were speaking (am I missing something???). Maybe you were thinking of je me suis décidé? If so, you should list it as an alternative. But, anyway, I think the hint is not helping much. I'd actually suggest it be removed.

Answer

As far as I can see from Larousse and Robert en ligne, zombi and zombie are simply alternative acceptable spellings for the same masculine noun - neither suggests a change of gender grammatical or otherwise, and as the noun is masculine, it is le zombi/e. Word reference does carry some entries suggesting that le zombi is masculine, la zombie feminine, but there is no reference to this in the 2 more established dictionaries. Can't find zombi/e in any shape or form (sorry) in Académie Française dictionary !

Answer

Hi Maarten, I agree with you on the le zombi/e issue. But what about the hint that a different form of the answer is needed depending on whether a male of female subject is speaking. I can't see how that would matter. Do you agree?

Answer

Yes, I agree Chris. Can't see how it helps here and therefore it may just cause confusion, which is clearly not the intention. I have also been pondering whether there really are male and female zombies anyway ? Perhaps it would always be male or female dressed as, or disguised as, a zombi/e ? I  just don't know enough about zombies to answer my own question !