Senethro
Overlord
You don't understand a lot of things. They has been used as a gender neutral already in previous centuries but this usage was discouraged by a bunch of latin fetishists. If a change keeps happening then it is hardly forced.
Swedish Hens
- Thread starter Kyriakos
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You don't understand a lot of things. They has been used as a gender neutral already in previous centuries but this usage was discouraged by a bunch of latin fetishists. If a change keeps happening then it is hardly forced.
sophie
Break My Heart
I think he's talking about "ze". It's not "forcing a change" on English though. It's introducing a new word to solve a problem that genuinely exists in English right now. The problem is the word that was introduced sounds kind of dumb. So we need a new better word. "They", as Senethro notes above is the "traditional" word. And it does solve the problem, more or less. The problem is having to deal with all the idiots who erroneously assert that using "they" as an impersonal pronoun is grammatically incorrect.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
"They" is used as formal/polite form of singular second person pronoun in the other germanic languages.
Well, it fell out of fashion in Norway, and we are rather infamous as one of the least polite group of people in Europe because of it ("Who is this who thinks he can say 'you' to me?")
Well, it fell out of fashion in Norway, and we are rather infamous as one of the least polite group of people in Europe because of it ("Who is this who thinks he can say 'you' to me?")
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
What? No, I mean they. in german "Sie", in norwegian "De"
sophie
Break My Heart
I would love to hear from some of our Spanish/French/Italian posters about how gender studies/people in general feel about how those respective languages approach mixed gender/gender ambiguity.
Namely that in 3rd person plural where the group is of mixed gender the pronouns/adjectives default to masculine 3rd person:
él+él = ellos; ella+ella = ellas; él+ella=ellos.
Spanish also has gender ambiguous demonstratives:
este/ese for masculine; esta/esa for feminine; esto/eso for when the gender is unspecified.
What do people think of these distinctions on the major romance languages, as in the Germanic languages the 3rd person plural pronouns are always gender neutral/ambiguous:
he+he = they, she+she = they, he+she = they; er+er = sie, sie+sie = sie, er+sie = sie
Namely that in 3rd person plural where the group is of mixed gender the pronouns/adjectives default to masculine 3rd person:
él+él = ellos; ella+ella = ellas; él+ella=ellos.
Spanish also has gender ambiguous demonstratives:
este/ese for masculine; esta/esa for feminine; esto/eso for when the gender is unspecified.
What do people think of these distinctions on the major romance languages, as in the Germanic languages the 3rd person plural pronouns are always gender neutral/ambiguous:
he+he = they, she+she = they, he+she = they; er+er = sie, sie+sie = sie, er+sie = sie
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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I think they're irretrievably sexist as languages. Though their native speakers probably aren't that bothered in practice. Apart from ardent feminists.
It's maybe why Romance language cultures aren't as accommodating to feminists as even the fairly sexist English.
Honestly, French feminists have an uphill struggle.
It's maybe why Romance language cultures aren't as accommodating to feminists as even the fairly sexist English.
Honestly, French feminists have an uphill struggle.
Singular they has been around since at least Chaucer so don't sweat it. Just becuase it's grammatically plural (used with "are") doesn't mean it has to literally refer to more than one person in a given sentence.
Lillefix
I'm serious. You can.
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One rather sexist thing in Norwegian is that you can say Englishman and Frenchman, but not Englishwoman or Frenchwoman(you have to say English or French woman in two words). And a Norwegian in Norwegian is literally Northman. There's no such thing as a Northwoman in normal parlance.
Senethro
Overlord
I don't even know who you're responding to but in a biological sense there are a great many edge cases blurring or falling outside the most common definitions of man and woman.
sophie
Break My Heart
I have no idea what this has to do with the topic being discussed.
You do realize that gender and sex are two different Things, right?
Tahuti
Writing Deity
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Saying such is rather indicative of taking a certain viewpoint on it. In reality, there is still debate going on that has the chance of taking the opposite route.
Tahuti
Writing Deity
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Well, if I am not mistaken, 'gender' means nurtured differences between sexes, 'sex' refers to sexual dimorphism. However, nature and nurture are rather fuzzy here, to the point you might question the usefulness of such distinction, conceptually or otherwise.
That is also debatable, but more notably from the other side:
Does anything not differ itself from its grammatical translation? Language is not inherently in one with anything it refers to, not even itself.
We are still using language, though, and not using it would not be an improvement.
