[peterdn]

I just finished reading the book. Although it does appear, the linguistic subtlety you mention is lost in translation and I'd have found that particular passage confusing if I hadn't read your comment first. In short, at one point Glebsky figures he can definitively discover Brun's gender by asking him/her a question such that the answer would be something like "I had a nibble" or "I wolfed down two sandwiches". In the text, it's left unclear how one could infer gender from such answers.

[pandaman]

I see, thanks. The translator probably tried to replace this with the differences in male/female vocabulary.

In the original it is all through the book as, without knowing the gender, Glebsky is pretty limited in the ways he can speak to or about Brune and he reflects on this quite a lot.