Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 08:50:26 -0600 From: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Gender in Indo-European languages Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010209085026.009e28e0@mail85.pair.com> In-Reply-To: <20010209114704.A62359@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20010209095838.E11145@wantadilla.lemis.com> <3A81DDC9.EF6D7D84@originative.co.uk> <3.0.6.32.20010207223155.009d42a0@mail85.pair.com> <20010208110159.E2429@lpt.ens.fr> <xzpzofxffa2.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <20010209095838.E11145@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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>> In a newly-designed language, this would be reasonable. In existing
>> languages there are syntactical conventions. In English and most
>> other languages I can think of, a group of people of mixed gender is
>> masculine.
Argh! That's what we get for using English as the universal language.
If we used Slovak, none of these problems would exist. (And yes,
Slovak is an Indo-European language.)
Slovak has a different word for man as a human being and a different
one for man as a male human. Slovak does not need to say he, she, etc.
Instead, it just uses the verb in the third person, and implies the
appropriate pronoun. Furthermore, beside mine, yours, his, hers, etc,
it has a personless variety of all the above (similar to Latin suus).
It could be very roughly translated into English as "self's". So, we
say things like "turn on self's computer!" and "turn on self's
computer", and "turns on self's computer." Whereas in English these
would be unclear and would have to be "turn on your computer", "I
turn on my computer" and "he/she turns on his/her computer".
It is amazing to me to see entire political movements being formed
in the US based simply on the imperfection and rigidity of the English
tongue.
The most ridiculous thing I have ever seen was an author claiming that
King Solomon was a sexist, basing that claim on the English translation
of the Bible. Hehehe! She even claimed that English was the original
language of mankind, then forgotten, and now being rediscovered. And
this crap came out of a major US publishing house.
Cheers,
Adam
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