<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 19 March 2008 - Volume 03<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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=========================================================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Maria Elsie Zinsser</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:ezinsser@icon.co.za">ezinsser@icon.co.za</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Gender" 2008.03.21 (02) [E]</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><br></span><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2">Hallo Ívison,<br><br>No problem! I did say it tongue in cheek (as in humour) but I am glad you thought about it. <br>
Now I've learnt something new, as well as you.<br><br>Obrigado!<br>Elsie <br><font size="3"><br></font></font><div style="margin-left: 40px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">From: Ivison dos Passos Martins <</font><a href="mailto:ipm7d@OI.COM.BR" target="_blank"><font size="3">ipm7d@OI.COM.BR</font></a><font size="3">></font></font><br>
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2008.02.06 (02) [E]</font></font><br><br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">Dear Maria Elsie Zinsser,</font></font><br>
<br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">I'm really sorry I'd written "dear sirs". I did want to sound sexist.</font></font><br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">Next time I'll pay attention to it. As my first language is Portuguese I</font></font><br>
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">didn't notice it, because to me the word "sirs" refers to ladies and</font></font><br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">gentlemen. But thanks for your comments. You're right.</font></font><br>
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3"> And please feel free, like anyone else,to email me on what language</font></font><br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3">subject you want.</font></font><br>
<br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3"> My apologies,</font></font><br><br><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><font size="3"> Ívison.</font></font><br>
</div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>----------<br><br>From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Marsha Wilson</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:marshatrue@mtangel.net">marshatrue@mtangel.net</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Gender" 2008.03.21 (09) [E]<br><br></span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" id="1euh" class="ArwC7c ckChnd">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div>How about taking reference to gender(s) out of
it entirely?</div>
<div>"If claimant's documents cannot be provided,
claimant must request duplicates." (or...."duplicates must be requested."
This sort of go-round nearly always worked when I was writing office
procedures.</div>
<div> </div><font color="#888888">
<div>Marsha Wilson</div></font><div class="Ih2E3d">
<blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px;">
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;">----- Original Message -----</div><font color="navy"><font size="1"><font size="2"> When I want to write an instruction for what to tell one of our Unemployment Insurance claimants, I have to work creatively with it. Let's say I want to tell our Customer Service Reps that the claimant should do something specific. I will write, "If the claimant cannot provide [possessive pronoun] documents, then [subject pronoun] must request duplicates." What do I put in the space for the pronouns? Spanish would say use the masculine pronouns, and everyone will know it includes both genders. Well, not in the USA. None of the solutions provide a satisfactory (IMO) outcome. I can try:</font><br>
</font></font></blockquote></div></div>
</div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">M.-L. Lessing</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:marless@gmx.de">marless@gmx.de</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe">LL-L "Gender" 2008.03.21 (09) [E]<br><br></span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<font size="4">Hello Mark & Mark,</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="4">I know, I know, it is a great nuisance
with gender-correct language. I too do not like the artificial constructions and
the hateful pressure to use them and all that. But still, your argument (Mark
Dreyer) that "sirs" refers to both sexes and that "man" embraces "woman" does
not hold. As far as I am informed, the sentence "Alle Schweizer sind
wahlberechtigt" has been part of the swiss constitution for centuries, and still
the female swiss men (Schweizerinnen) had great difficulty in proving that they
were "embraced". And even if they were ---? What then? Remember old gravestones?
"Hier ruht Karl Meier und Frau." Well, yes, the woman was dead too, and her body
was lying there too. But her name was not named. Remember old telephone
books? Full of men. Well, yes, the women could be phoned too, and they could pay
the telephone bills, too; but their names were not named. Women know that they
exist; each single woman knows. But does anybody else know of her existence
under such circumstances? Since language is the substance thougts are made of,
it is at least questionable whether something that does not appear in language
does appear in human bewusstsein; and that is almost as much as existence.
</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="4">Now all this sounds uncomfortable and
hard. But do you know, I have a name and I have a sex, and I would never want to
live a life without my being visible in my own beloved language. (Not that I
would ever have lived a life as a man's appendix and "embraced" by other words
and ending up under a gravestone as "...und Frau". But that is over for ever, I
hope.) </font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="4">Still, how can language fulfil the task
of making all its speakers visible without running mad? And here, dear Mark
(Brooks), your complaint made me laugh. Do you have any idea how much more
difficult such things are in German? In German, the very nouns that you deal
with have two sexes: Kunden and Kundinnen -- where the -innen ending denotes the
female. And yes!, political correctness demands for both forms to be named!
Ladies first, of course. In every official document ("Die Studentinnen und
Studenten des Fachbereichs Maschinenbau", even when Maschinenbau has only 5%
female students) and in every official speech ("Ich danke den Wählerinnen
und Wählern!", "Wir grüßen unsere Soldatinnen und Soldaten in
Afghanistan!"). This leads to famous things as Erich Honeckers "Genossinnen
und Genossen!", where both words were so blurred that they sounded practically
equal. Yes, DDR had it too, partly. We live with that, dear Mark. Compared
to the monster we fight yours is a teddybear. So, pity us and be comforted! :-)
-- But we notice a tendency to leave the female form out when something negative
has to be stated. "Die Politiker sind doch alle korrupt!" Are Politikerinnen (=
female politicians) "embraced" here? We may suppose so. That may be a form of
old-fashioned chivalry -- practised on so extravagant an object as corrupt
female politicians. Ah, for old chivalry! :-)) </font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="4">But still. But still. How can language
name the names of both sexes, without such things as "embracing"? Gender-neutral
pronouns would be fine. Finer even if they were a natural phenomenon and had not
to be invented and applied artificially. We gemans would be glad if we only had
your gender-neutral nouns. As long as we have none, some progressive people have
decided that now is the time for males to be "embraced" for some centuries,
since females seem fed up with such embracings. Recently when I visited church,
the pastor -- a middle-aged man -- spoke of "die Verfasserin des Hebräerbriefes"
(= the female writer of the letter to the hebrews). Now, this for St. Paul! He
was embraced here by a female form, and I don't know how he would have liked it.
It sounded queer and even unhistoric to my ears. But in fact it was nothing
different than the other way round... Recently, in the german protestant
church, a new bible translation has been made and printed, the "Bibel in
gerechter Sprache" (= bible in just language, gender-correct language). It is
full of such embracings: Richterinnen, Pharisäerinnen, Soldatinnen, female forms
of nouns where there never have been female persons. Opinion about this
work widely differs. Some think it a great breakthrough, others think it a great
waste of money and time. I think it is at least a great Murks (please, Reinhard,
translate "Murks" into English!) with german language. But our language is Murks
here itself. I don't know how to help it. But I won't be embraced without being
asked :-)</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="4">Herzliche Ostergrüße!</font></div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font size="4">Marlou</font></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: Gender<br><br>Dear Lowlanders,<br><br><i>Murks</i> might be translated as "botch-up" or "bungling," Marlou.<br><br>Folks, speakers of European languages tend to accept linguistic gender distinctions as a given. But in reality it is not common to all languages and language families, and languages that do not have it cope very well without it.<br>
<br>As far as I can tell, "innate" linguistic gender distinction is heavily clustered in Europe and Western Asia, with predominance in Indo-European and Semitic. <br><br>In the Semitic family (which includes Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew), there is only masculine versus feminine distinction with no neuter. Almost all types of words are marked accordingly. This includes verbs, adjectives and numerals.<br>
<br>Many, if not most, other languages do not mark words by gender (which does not mean that there aren't any gender-specific nouns).<br><br>This applies or originally applied for instance among the Uralic (Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic), Altaic (Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic), Sino-Tibetan and Oceanic languages (among many others), originally probably also in Japanese and Korean. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Among the Turkic languages, there is no trace of grammatical gender distinction, and even in most of those spoken by Islamicized and Christianized communities Arabic, Russian and other European influences were not able to introduce grammatical gender distinction or even feminine noun marking. This sort of distinction tends to go against the grain of speakers of such languages, and they tend to have a hard time with it when using foreign languages that do have it.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">I understand that most non-Altaic languages of Siberia, too, have no grammatical gender distinction.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Interestingly, under Western influence, Chinese introduced pronominal gender distinction in writing only (by changing the "radical" part of the character), making originally gender-neutral 他 the masculine form and creating feminine 她 and neuter 它, even though they are all pronounced alike (e.g., Standard Mandarin </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">tā</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">). </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The Bantu languages are well known for their noun classification (in which nouns are allocated to various semantic groups and they and dependent words are marked accordingly), but there is no gender-based classification. Among the neighboring Niger-Kongo languages, however, noun classes do include male and female. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">It is a mixed bag among the American languages with predominance of systems that do not have gender distinction.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">It is a mixed bag among the languages of Australia as well, where some seem to have no gender distinction and others have noun classes that include gender distinction but are not </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">based</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> on gender distinction. The Dyirbal language of northeastern Queensland, for instance, has four noun classes: (1) animate objects and men, (2) water, fire, violence and women (!), (3) edible plants, fruit and vegetables, and (4) all others. The Diyari language of South Australia has only two noun classes: (1) female, and (2) other (!).</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, this begs the question if there are any correlations between this and the corresponding social systems. One would assume there are, considering that languages tend to reflect the way societies view the world and themselves. However, this is difficult to determine in many cases because of numerous of cultural and developmental layers. For example, gender distinction has been strong throughout recorded Chinese history. But Chinese culture is so ancient and has absorbed so many other cultures that much is shrouded in mist. Yet, if we take a look at the earliest recording of ancient Chinese songs (the 詩經 </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Shī Jīng</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">) we notice that status of females then was much higher than it was in later times. Also, rural Tibeto-Burman (hence also Sino-Tibetan) societies in which shamanism is still practiced have much gender equality. It is similar if we look at Turkic peoples. Gender equality is predominant among Kazakh and Kyrgyz people that are still nomadic or semi-nomadic, and their folktales have both male and female heroes, where female heroes riding super-fast steeds occasionally rescue males in distress. This is similar to related Mongolic traditions. In a horse-back betrothal ceremony that survives among traditional Kazakhs (who are officially Moslems) marriageable girls pursue and catch marriageable boys of their choice (not the other way around!).</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">All food for thought, I hope.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Happy Easter to those of you that celebrate it! Also happy Nowruz (New Year) to our Persian, Kurdish, Turkic and Baha'i friends! And happy Purim to our Jewish friends as well!</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">