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Lack of Noun Gender in English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 57 of 126 19 December 2013 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Le sigh. There is also the expressions that the ends justify the means, and so on and so forth, they all fail sometimes. Historically within most languages, including the languages that I speak well, there has not been any reason to assume that gender system or its implementation is even close to sexist. The fact that you want to twist that to suit your needs and Feel Offended is your own trouble. You're allowed to interpret it as sexist, I'm allowed to say you are wrong. You are historically so far off the mark that if you were aiming to fly to Jupiter, you'd be in the Andromeda galaxy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 58 of 126 19 December 2013 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
As for language use being sexist, do you mean in the modern world when someone writes "he" instead of "they", "he or she" etc? Yes, that's sexist, even if it's done carelessly and not deliberately. Using the standard words that I consider problematic in terms of their history/etymology, lik Mädchen? No, not sexist. But any natural language is a product of the society and it tends to contain the biases of said society. (isn't your Korean a good example of that?) Edited by Serpent on 19 December 2013 at 2:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 59 of 126 19 December 2013 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
no because the gender we choose for words is based on historic linguistic development and not at all on the gender we physically associate with things. the cat could have been a "kater" just as well, but we call it a "kat" unless we're specifically referring to a male cat.
I don't speak Korean well enough to judge, but even if I did, that wouldn't really bother me. Calling themselves yellow people is their own affair. They can call me white person if that is the word they use. It's a word. Unless they are using the word as an insult or to discriminate (i.e. if the word has that connotation) then I will consider it sexist or racist, but to them, that is what you call someone from the Netherlands. Even if that historically isn't PC, I don't care, because that's not the CONNOTATION of the word. Connotations matter, and in Dutch, grammatical gender never connotates anything sexist or racist, the semantics of some words (like "neger") do. In Dutch singular "they" doesn't exist, you have to say "zijn/haar". Am I being sexist when I say that? No. That is how you refer to that situation in Dutch, it doesn't connotate sexism. It covers everything (zijn also covers neuter), so it covers everyone. Dutch still has to find a gender-neutral pronoun solution that adequately corresponds to trans needs but saying it isn't inherently sexist because the connotation of the word in practice is not discriminatory Edited by tarvos on 19 December 2013 at 2:39pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 60 of 126 19 December 2013 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
As for Korean, I mostly meant how the language reflects the complicated dynamics inside the society. Like in Japanese too.
Edited by Serpent on 19 December 2013 at 3:27pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 61 of 126 19 December 2013 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, because I understand what the word connotation means 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 62 of 126 19 December 2013 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I never said the word Mädchen has a sexist connotation though. Although given how in the colloquial language it can be referred to as sie rather than es, I'm not 100% sure it doesn't. But regardless of its connotation, it has a sexist history, since there's no corresponding "Knabchen" for males who are too young to be human.
It's quite telling that I speak about the words for woman-something being derived from man-something, and you can't give any counter-examples about humans but only about cats. Also, the question that brought this all about was why the feminine gender is used more for personification in English (referring to countries as "she" etc). I think it has a lot to do with benevolent sexism. Edited by Serpent on 19 December 2013 at 3:29pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 63 of 126 19 December 2013 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This thread is starting to remind me of this one.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 64 of 126 19 December 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm not implying there are any conspiracies, and neither are most people speaking up against any sort of discrimination. The whole point is that the language reflects the bias in the culture and eventually becomes the way to further promote that bias.
As for languages without gender-specific pronouns, there are studies showing that people may be inclined to think male by default when the pronoun is actually neutral. Edited by Serpent on 19 December 2013 at 6:36pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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