Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 09:58:38 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org> Cc: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Gender in Indo-European languages (was: Laugh: [Fwd: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-008]) Message-ID: <20010209095838.E11145@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <xzpzofxffa2.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>; from des@ofug.org on Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 02:57:57PM %2B0100 References: <3A81DDC9.EF6D7D84@originative.co.uk> <3.0.6.32.20010207223155.009d42a0@mail85.pair.com> <20010208110159.E2429@lpt.ens.fr> <xzpzofxffa2.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thursday, 8 February 2001 at 14:57:57 +0100, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote:
> Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> writes:
>> The idea is that if "his" is supposed to be gender-neutral in
>> generic situations, "her" should also be regarded as
>> gender-neutral.
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.
> This discussion reminds me of the LaTeX macros that you use instead
> of third person singular pronouns and possessive adjectives, which
> alternate between the male and female form.
>
> BTW, Norwegian has a very useful word which means "the concerned
> person", which makes it relatively easy to construct gender-neutral
> phrases.
Isn't "person" feminine? It is in other West European languages.
> The only way to do that in English is to "play the pronoun game",
> i.e. use (gender-neutral) plural forms instead of singular forms,
> which makes for some pretty corny sentences...
I'd say using "she" instead of "he" in the (no longer) quoted sentence
looks corny. It contravenes rules of grammar in an attempt to look
non-sexist. I think it creates exactly the opposite impression.
Indo-European languages have two or three gender forms, though in
many, including English, they are degenerate. In others, the gender
needs have only superficial relationship to the object in question.
For example, in German the words "Mädchen" ("girl") and "Weib" (woman)
are neuter. In old English, "wif" ("wife") was neuter (really the
same word as "Weib"; genders die hard) and "wif-mann" ("woman") was
masculine.
Greg
--
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010209095838.E11145>