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Genderless languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6814 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 1 of 18 20 June 2013 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are there any perfectly gender-less languages? I'm not aware of any. Perhaps Chinese?
Assuming there aren't, are there any languages that don't have words for... -brother/sister -mother/father -he/she (I know Persian and Hungarian, for example, have a gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun) -aunt/uncle -niece/nephew ...and instead use single words to describe their relationship to you? For example, in English, we have: -'cousin' (no words to differentiate male/female cousins) -'sibling' (but also brother/sister) -'parent' (but also mother/father) -'grandparent' (but also grandmother/grandfather'), etc. This topic is interesting to me, and I appreciate any feedback. Thanks EDIT: Here is a link to a Wikipedia article describing gender neutrality in languages, but I couldn't find my answer there. Edited by AML on 20 June 2013 at 3:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 18 20 June 2013 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here some people claim that in the politically correct West it's not allowed to say mother and father anymore but only parent 1 and parent 2. Ugh.
Also, Finnish has no separate pronouns for he/she nor separate words for male/female cousins. But also no singular for parents, grandparents or siblings - all of these exist but only as plurals. In Russian there are no general words for siblings or grandparents at all. Edited by Serpent on 20 June 2013 at 4:24pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6428 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 18 20 June 2013 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pirahã apparently only has one word for parent, and no gendered equivalents. One source says other relationships are gendered, though apparently kinship terms aren't frequently used. Another, perhaps more reliable, says they don't have gendered kinship terms.
Serpent: I spend a fair amount of time with very politically correct people in the West, from both Europe and North America. Several use gender-neutral pronouns. Nonetheless, I've never heard the 'parent 1/parent 2' terminology, and my knee-jerk reaction is that that would be analysed as sexist... it's certainly not widespread. It sounds more like anti-Western propaganda than a description of common use, even among quite PC folk. Edit: added a link to Everett's speech. Edited by Volte on 20 June 2013 at 4:43pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4667 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 4 of 18 20 June 2013 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think this qualifies: Pirahã
At least their kinship terms are totally genderless. edit: argh, too late. :( Edited by vermillon on 20 June 2013 at 4:39pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5370 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 18 20 June 2013 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Somehow, being called "parent 1" sounds a bit better than "parent 2". 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6814 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 6 of 18 20 June 2013 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | ||
Interesting. Thanks. Here it claims they have separate words for son and daughter. But, yes, in general the kinship terms appear otherwise genderless. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 18 20 June 2013 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4263 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish | Message 8 of 18 20 June 2013 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps you'd have to distinguish the morphogical and the lexical levels. I'm not a specialist and I did not make research in that field, but... - morphologically, I think that there are a lot of genderless languages (e.g. Finnish). - lexically, there might be none (all languages *can* distinguish genders at the lexical level). To take your example, in Chinese, there's no gender at the morphological level. (The pronouns 他 (he, masculine) and 她 (she, feminine) or 你 (you, masc.) and 妳 (you, fem.) are "graphical artifacts", in the sense that there's no difference in pronounciation, agreement, etc.) On the other hand, Chinese does make distinctions at the lexical level. E.g. there are many many words to distinguish female and male relatives. To take only two examples, 舅舅 is a *maternal* uncle, while 叔叔 is your *father's* younger brother. Edited by lorinth on 20 June 2013 at 9:28pm 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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