From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Feb 9 7: 8:27 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mail.bfm.org (mail.bfm.org [216.127.218.26]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D1FFE37B72C for ; Fri, 9 Feb 2001 06:49:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from WhizKid (r8.bfm.org [216.127.220.104]) by mail.bfm.org (Post.Office MTA v3.5.3 release 223 ID# 0-52399U2500L250S0V35) with SMTP id org for ; Fri, 9 Feb 2001 08:52:12 -0600 Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.20010209085026.009e28e0@mail85.pair.com> X-Sender: whizkid@mail85.pair.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.6 (32) Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 08:50:26 -0600 To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG From: "G. Adam Stanislav" Subject: Re: Gender in Indo-European languages In-Reply-To: <20010209114704.A62359@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20010209095838.E11145@wantadilla.lemis.com> <3A81DDC9.EF6D7D84@originative.co.uk> <3.0.6.32.20010207223155.009d42a0@mail85.pair.com> <20010208110159.E2429@lpt.ens.fr> <20010209095838.E11145@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org >> In a newly-designed language, this would be reasonable. In existing >> languages there are syntactical conventions. In English and most >> other languages I can think of, a group of people of mixed gender is >> masculine. Argh! That's what we get for using English as the universal language. If we used Slovak, none of these problems would exist. (And yes, Slovak is an Indo-European language.) Slovak has a different word for man as a human being and a different one for man as a male human. Slovak does not need to say he, she, etc. Instead, it just uses the verb in the third person, and implies the appropriate pronoun. Furthermore, beside mine, yours, his, hers, etc, it has a personless variety of all the above (similar to Latin suus). It could be very roughly translated into English as "self's". So, we say things like "turn on self's computer!" and "turn on self's computer", and "turns on self's computer." Whereas in English these would be unclear and would have to be "turn on your computer", "I turn on my computer" and "he/she turns on his/her computer". It is amazing to me to see entire political movements being formed in the US based simply on the imperfection and rigidity of the English tongue. The most ridiculous thing I have ever seen was an author claiming that King Solomon was a sexist, basing that claim on the English translation of the Bible. Hehehe! She even claimed that English was the original language of mankind, then forgotten, and now being rediscovered. And this crap came out of a major US publishing house. Cheers, Adam ----------------------------------------------------------- "I think, therefore I am." - Seventeenth Century Philosophy "I publish what I think, therefore I have." - Twenty-First Century Action Details at http://www.OnlinePublisher.net/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message