LL-L "Gender" 2003.05.14 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 14.MAY.2003 (07) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: corber <corber at shaw.ca>
Subject: gender in speach

Dear LLers;
  When I lived in Northern British Columbia,where the Canadian Natives
called" Carrier"( because in the
old days widows would carry the bones of their departed husbands on
their backs for a period) had no
gender in their language,they referred to all people as "he"when
speaking English, like "my wife he not
here"..Another interesting thing about their language is that they call
a corner "Aack",whereas all other
native languages there refer to a corner as a point. Maybe the "aack"
word was learned from an ancestor
of mine that traded in that area 1912-1920..The English speakers loaned
words from the natives there
too,such as "skookum" for robust,muscular,strong."chuck"for ocean or
lake,"clootch" for woman (usually
derogatory).....Cornelius Bergen

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From: globalmoose at t-online.de (Global Moose Translations)
Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2003.05.14 (04) [E/LS]

Ron,

thanks for the clarification. I had been wondering about this for a long
time; all the languages I speak or at least understand are either
Germanic
(including Scandinavian), Romanic or Slavic. It just seems to make so
little
sense that gender distinctions should be used for everything, even where
they are completely irrelevant (and painful to anyone who has ever had
to
learn to spell French, for example).

I'm not a militant feminist, by the way - just a fervent "neutralist",
meaning that I believe in thinking of people as individuals and not
giving
them a big fat label (and I don't think any label could possibly be
bigger
than "man" or "woman") right up front.

Still, I wouldn't go as far as trying to artificially change a language
to
reflect that view (as in history vs. herstory - maybe theirstory in my
case - although I rather like the pun). But I would always use words
like
"humankind" and "chairperson" over "mankind" and "chairman".

Wildly neutral, :-)
Gabriele Kahn

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Gender

Gabriele:

> thanks for the clarification.

You are most welcome.

Let me just add to this that there are language families and groups in
which gender distinction is even more far-reaching and systematic than
in Indo-European.  In the Semitic family (Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic,
Ethiopic, etc.), for instance, the morphology of nouns, pronouns
(personal and demonstrative), adjectives, verbs and numerals is strictly
devided by masculine and feminine, both in the singular and in the
plural forms (and in dual forms where those survive).  The second person
singular and plural pronouns (all "you" in Modern English) are also
devided by gender.  The first person pronouns ("I" and "we") are not,
but, as in all other instances, gender-specific adjective and verbs
forms have to be used with them.  Thus, for instance in Hebrew, a male
would say _'ani gadol_ 'I am big/tall', _'ani holekh_ 'I go' and
_'anakhnu holkhim_ 'we go', while a female would render the same as
_'ani g'dolah_, _'ani holekhet_, and _'anakhnu holkhot_ respectively
(unless males are included among "we" in which case a female would use
masculine _anakhnu holkhim_), and distinction applies in imperative
forms too: _lekh!_ 'go!' (to a male), _l'khi!_ 'go!' (to a female),
etc., etc.

In short: things could be even less neutral.

Most neutrally yours,
Reinhard/Ron

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