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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>> <FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>the
beautiful gender-neutral word "Mensch",<BR><BR>Ah, Fritz, yes -- but how curious
that the grammatical gender of "Mensch" </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>is masculine - "der Mensch". Don't you feel that, for the sake of
consistency, </DIV>
<DIV>it ought to be neuter - "das Mensch"? Maybe we could start
a movement</DIV>
<DIV>in favour of "das Mensch und die (singular) Mädchen"? Or are my
intution </DIV>
<DIV>about this based on the fact that, as a native speaker of English, I
am </DIV>
<DIV>insensitive to the truly arbitrary nature of grammatical gender in those
</DIV>
<DIV>languages that have it? I.e. does the fact that Mensch is
grammatically </DIV>
<DIV>masculine and Mädchen is grammatically neuter bother only English </DIV>
<DIV>speakers -- or only me -- and not German native speakers?<BR><BR>Returning
to Germany in 2003 after a 40-year absence (I spent a few months<BR>in Berlin
when I was a student), I was struck by several language changes, for </DIV>
<DIV>example:<BR> <BR>"Fräulein" had become politically incorrect during
my 40-year absence. <BR>Now all women are addressed and referred to as "Frau X",
without regard<BR>to age or marital status. Progress? I think
so.<BR><BR>Considerable ingenuity is used to maintain gender-neutrality in
communications </DIV>
<DIV>like emails, using slashes, parentheses, and word-internal capitals.
So, </DIV>
<DIV>someone wanting to start an email. gender-neutrally with the words "Dear
</DIV>
<DIV>Colleagues" (plural) <FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>will write "Liebe Kolleg<STRONG>I</STRONG>nnen" with a capital I in the
middle </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>of the
</FONT></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3>word. The singular of this is </FONT></FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>"Liebe(r) Kolleg(in)". Probably
there is a </FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>study of all
this somewhere but if there is, </FONT></FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>I don't know it. <BR><BR>The problems
of using English "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun<BR>(which goes back
at least to the 18th century and the use of which in a <BR>lexicographical
context was pioneered in the Cobuild dictionary in the 1980s)<BR>pale into
insignificance compared with equivalent problems in German. <BR><BR>And oh, by
the way, another thing that changed in my 40-year absence -- <BR><BR>There are
still strikingly more notices in Germany than in England telling <BR>you that
you are not allowed to do something, but now they tend to say <BR>"nicht
gestattet" (not allowed) rather than "verboten" (forbidden). I'm not
<BR>sure what the pragmatic force of this is. Can you shed any light on it?
</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>-- Patrick
</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Current Address:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> Dr Patrick
Hanks<BR> Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen
Sprache,<BR> Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der
Wissenschaften,<BR> Jägerstrasse 22-23,<BR>
Berlin 10117,<BR> Germany.<BR> Phone: + 49
30 20370 539<BR> Fax: + 49 30 20370 214</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> <BR> </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman"
size=3> <BR></FONT>----- Original Message ----- <BR>From: Fritz Goerling
<BR>To: lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com <BR>Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 4:07
PM<BR>Subject: RE: [Lexicog] Re: lexical entries as singulars or
plurals<BR><BR><BR><BR>Not quite, Bill,<BR><BR>sg. Mann
(man)
pl. Männer (men) <BR>sg. Mensch (person) pl.
Menschen (people)<BR>As we have the beautiful gender-neutral word
"Mensch",<BR>we don't have that problem/issue of inclusive language in German
which<BR>for most non-anglophones is a non-issue, "much ado about
nothing."<BR>A man is a "Mann" and a woman is a "Frau" in German. So noone
has a <BR>problem with the fact that "wo-man" is derived from "man" (wif-man)
which has<BR>given rise to strange coinings like "womyn" (sg.) and
"wimmin" (pl.)<BR>in order to avoid the word "man."<BR><BR>Fritz
Goerling<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>If I'm not mistaken, another "split" example in
German is:<BR><BR>mann "man" maennen "men"<BR>mann
"person" leute
"people"<BR><BR><BR>--<BR>Bill Poser, Linguistics, University of
Pennsylvania<BR>http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wjposer/
billposer@alum.mit.edu<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>
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