[Lexicog] Gender: Crazy English and the awful German language

Fritz Goerling Fritz_Goerling at SIL.ORG
Wed Apr 12 21:47:38 UTC 2006


There is a third option, David: expunge all "offensive" words because
inclusive coinages

like "person in the moon", "personhole", "personpower", "person-of-war", "a
person

of THEIR word" might defeat the purpose.

 

Fritz

 

Either throw up its hands in horror or say something stupid. (The second
option seems to me to be the most popular one.)

--David Tuggy

Fritz Goerling wrote: 

How would a politically correct dictionary handle all this "discrimination?"

 

Fritz Goerling

 

*	On the other hand, why can you say "Necessity is the mother of
invention" 
but not "Necessity is the father of invention" and "mother-of-pearl" and not

"father-of-pearl' and "mother ship" and not "father ship"? Why do we speak 
of "daughter languages" and not "son languages"? Why "nursemaid" and not 
"nurseman"? Why "maiden voyage" and not "bachelor voyage"? Why is the game 
called "Aunt Sally" and not "Uncle Ben"? and so on.

Gender preferences work both ways in English.

John Roberts



 

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