Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 10:16:52 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Gender in Indo-European languages Message-ID: <20010210101652.Q16260@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20010209085026.009e28e0@mail85.pair.com>; from adam@whizkidtech.net on Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 08:50:26AM -0600 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> <20010209114704.A62359@lpt.ens.fr> <3.0.6.32.20010209085026.009e28e0@mail85.pair.com>
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On Friday, 9 February 2001 at 8:50:26 -0600, G. Adam Stanislav wrote: >>> 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. So do many Indo-European languages. In German, "human being" is "Mensch", and "man" is "Mann". > Slovak does not need to say he, she, etc. Instead, it just uses the > verb in the third person, and implies the appropriate pronoun. This is typical of the slavonic languages, of course. > 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". This sounds like a reflexive pronoun, though I can't think of a similar usage in other languages for this particular case. I could imagine a dialectical use something like "start yourself your 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. I think this says more about the people than the language. I'd guess that, in fact, English is one of the most flexible languages I know. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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