h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

some additions:

in turkish, no gendered pronoun exist, neither gender as a grammatical category. thus, it is possible, to read (and write) a book without knowing the gender or sex of the characters, unless they are shown via names or descriptions ('the man' digested his meal before jumping downhill')

In Ojibwa, a north-american language of the Algonquin-family, all personal pronouns are genderless:
nin - 'I' or 'me'
kin - 'you'
win - 'he' or 'she'
winwa - 'they', 'them'
they are used in special emhasis only and not inflected.

Ojibwa is an interesting case because, unlike other languages, it has two gender-categories, which not relate to sex, but to wether an entity is animate or inanimate.
animated are persons, animals, spirits and trees, the rest is inanimated.
This is also reflected in pronouns such as demonstrative, interregotative or indefinite pronouns. The easiest form to describe is the interrogative pronoun (the demonstrative being a bit complicated):

The most important one, which refers to english 'who' or 'what' is
animate:
wanes (in my transcription written with a 'v' above the S)
inanimate:
wegcnes (again with a 'v'-like sign above the s and the c inverted, looking to the left instead.



hope this was helpfull, bye

Gosh, that was very useful! Are you a linguist?

well, just a humble student.
you too? or have you written the entry out of feminist (or gender-political) interest?

feminist and gender-political interest, yeah. But also enjoy learning about language and such stuff too, so it is, as they say, on many levels...

-Lucinda

might be interested: i just found out about the h2g2's feminist alliance (which presently seems to take a nap): A657407

Linguist, gender-political....
I'd just like to point out a few horrible misrepresentations of the German language made in your "article." Frau, the term for woman and wife, is feminine. Die Frau. Maedchen, little maiden or girl, is of the neuter gender for a specific reason (this also applies to the term Fraeulein): the -chen at the end of the word (like the -lein) is what is called a diminutive - a suffix added to refer to the 'size' or in this case age of the noun it's attached to. These diminutives bring along their own gender - here, neuter. I won't say all diminutives are of the neuter gender, because I am not entirely sure, but I believe they are.
And for the record, the root of Maedchen, Maid, meaning maiden, is feminine as well.
I hope you won't 'guesstimate' while researching in the future. It only serves to feed the anger of lost people searching for identity. At least those who haven't found it in popular culture.

I'd struggle to call most of the Germans I know 'lost people searching for identity'.

Anywho, you admit that Mädchen and Fraulein are both neuter, and these are the words to which I was refering. I was also aware that the -chen suffix makes words neuter, and that the roots of both words were female. I don't think this invalidates my point: that the link between grammatical gender and biological gender in German is not a straightforward thing.

I did exaggerate the level of this disconnect, I must admit. Must be leftover frustration from trying to memorise all those genders...

-Martin