LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.27 (04) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 27 October 2009 - Volume 04
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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.27 (02) [EN]

Ron writes: If gender *is* important in a given context, it can be explained
by other means. English speakers can relate to this no doubt. Of course,
gender marking of words for human beings are still floating around but are
on their way out in English (e.g. "waitress" vs "waiter", "headmistress" vs
"headmaster"), though some of them will probably remain for some time to
come at least (e.g. "queen" vs "king").

This is an interesting problem. In Dutch there are many more of those gender
markings than in English. In the early days of feminism I felt that having
them was an advantage in this new world order. You did not have to qualify
that your hairdresser was male or female. There was ‘kapper’ and ‘kapster’
after all. But lately I have noticed that giving each gender their own
qualifier does not give the wished-for results. F.i. in Dutch the difference
between ‘Secretaris’ and ‘Secretaresse’ is now used to show the difference
between a powerful cog in a hierarchy….like “Secretary of the Navy” and a
female person who performs secretarial duties in an office. If such a person
should be male he would be called an ‘administratief medewerker’. So I guess
sexism trumps practicality. But then it is also true the Secretary of the
Navy works for the President.

Jacqueline BdJ

Seattle USA

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