A Conversation for Ask h2g2
Grammatical Gender
Cooper the Pacifist Poet Started conversation Jul 7, 2001
What is your opinion on grammatical gender? Is it a sexist relic of the past, a "conceptual defect" (as Arpeggio calls it)? Is it a valuable rhetorical and poetic device?
Grammatical Gender
Cheerful Dragon Posted Jul 7, 2001
When the sex of the person referred to is known, I prefer to use the appropriate gender. When writing in general terms, if faced with a choice between 'he/she' and 'they', I tend to use they. It's quicker, less unwieldy and (these days) quite acceptable.
I assume this is what you mean. If not, please clarify.
Grammatical Gender
Blatherskite the Mugwump - Bandwidth Bandit Posted Jul 7, 2001
Except that "they" is actually a plural, when you might be looking for a singular. "One" can get a bit clumsy at times, and is often overly formal. I stick to tradition here, and use the male pronouns, when I can't get away from them.
At least in English, we've got a better situation than most. Look at the Romantics... who decided that a table was female?
Grammatical Gender
Emily 'Twa Bui' Ultramarine Posted Jul 7, 2001
Much as I dislike Ann Widdecombe, I agree with her on one point - the use of 'they' in place of he or she in the singular looks terribly ungainly. I prefer to use the correct gender, or if unsure to use both. When speaking, I don't mind using 'they' though.
That said, in English, women have it a bit better than in other languages. Look at French - there is no specific word for 'wife', only 'femme' (woman). Also the term 'human rights' gets translated as 'les droites de l'homme' -'the rights of man.
Grammatical Gender
Xanatic Posted Jul 8, 2001
Hell, in most cases Man is the normal word. "One giant leap for MANkind". Apparently the women didn´t care about the moon landing. but of course it was a hoax anyway.
But really, what need do we have for giving objects a gender. That whole der, die, das seem absurd. What do the linguistics have to say on the subject, just an example of man(m/f) trying to personalize everything?
Grammatical Gender
a girl called Ben Posted Jul 8, 2001
I use 'they'.
For some reason it sounds better in my ear than 'he or she' and is considerably more pronouncable than 's/he'. And we need a gender-neutral term so badly that I use it in order to make the usage usual.
'Vous' is plural as well as respectful; why can't 'they' be gender neutral as well as plural?
In languages with gender - which came first? The word formation or the gender? If the word formations which are called Masculin Feminin and Neuter were called Red Green and Blue, (for example), then it would be far less confusing.
a (gender-specific) girl called Ben
Grammatical Gender
Blatherskite the Mugwump - Bandwidth Bandit Posted Jul 8, 2001
Boring historical note: "'les droites de l'homme' -'the rights of man." - Not a coincidence. The French Revolution was motivated by a book by the same Thomas Paine who wrote the pamphlet "Common Sense" that triggered the US Revolution. The title of that work: "The Rights of Man."
Grammatical Gender
Martin Harper Posted Jul 8, 2001
I like hir for him/his/her, where the gender of the person is unknown. But that's preference...
I think the absence of a proper gender-neutral pronoun is a defect in English, since it means that we have to use ugly he/she terms, or else make assumptions about the gender of the person we are talking about. Nobody complains about the lack of a gender-specific third person pronoun to replace 'they', after all...
Grammatical Gender
Indefatigable Posted Jul 9, 2001
If you want to be grammatically correct, you can't say "they" when referring to a specific person. My tactic is usually to choose a gender for my hypothetical person and stick with it. For example, if I were trying to explain conservation of angular momentum, I might say that "when a figure skater wants to spin faster, he pulls his arms closer to his body". I could also choose to refer to the skater as female. If I have to make more references to hypothetical people, I'll probably alternate between "him" and "her" for each person introduced. Don't be a hyper-PC bean counter, making sure that you have an even number of female and male references in whatever you're writing-- just use both when you feel like it, so that you aren't being exclusionary. I have to admit that when I use this technique, I tend to use the opposite of whatever gender people might expect-- my figure skaters and nurses will be male, my astronauts and construction workers will be female.
The only thing that English lacks is a usable pronoun for people who are non-gender-specific. The head of the student association at my university is one of them; I can't tell whether this person is male or female. Given this individual's stance on sexual orientation and identity issues, I would not be surprised if this person was deliberately trying to be neither male nor female, or possibly both at the same time. I think the idea is that people treat you a certain way depending on your gender, and if they don't know what gender you are, it makes them think about their ingrained ideas about gender. I have nothing against transsexuality, transvestitism, or this kind of in-your-face personal statement. I like to think I'm enlightened, perhaps, because I am not confused, baffled, or angered by this person (as are so many people I know). I just treat this person like a human being, and not as male or female if that's what this person wants. I just want a pronoun. How do you pronounce "hir"? Does it sound like "her", in which case it's useless? Does it sound like "here"? Are there any non-gender-specific people out there who could give me some help on this?
Grammatical Gender
Wand'rin star Posted Jul 9, 2001
I use "they" but with PLURAL verbs "When figure skaters want to...they bring their arms in closer to their bodies etc" Because I am living in a place where the native language does not differentiate for she /he, my students constantly make mistakes in the 3rd person singular. So I teach "they + plural verb" if you are referring to people in general.
Grammatical gender has nothing to do with sex. As agcB said, they could just as well be called blue, green and purple (you need a third for languages that have the so-called neuter) Many words are spelt and sound the same, but have no semantic connection
To repeat (that's what grammar teachers do ad nauseam) If you know the person you are talking about is a woman, write "she/ her/hers"; if you know the person you are writing about is a man, write "he/his". If you don't know(and for most academic writing, especially science, you don't need to know) write "they" and make the verb plural or change the verbs to the passive and don't have any subjects at all.
I have been teaching English as a foreign language since the late 60s. Believe me, this is the way EFL is going - with a little push from us thousands of teachers. The native English speakers will finish up the same way!
Grammatical Gender
a girl called Ben Posted Jul 9, 2001
Talking of native speakers of English...
A Texan friend of mine, and I were both shocked on a recent visit to the UK by how badly the Brits speak English compared with the Swedes. In Stockholm even the girls and boys on the supermarket checkouts speak English.
I noticed it in Stansted airport, he noticed it in the Cotswolds.
Ho Hum.
a monoglot English-speaker called Ben
Grammatical Gender
a girl called Ben Posted Jul 9, 2001
On the subject of gender in people, (oh I DO like topic drift - sorry), I once met someone whose gender I still to not know. Usually it is possible to identify the current gender of an individual. This person was a cook in a local pub and truly could have been a butch woman or a man with a significantly unusual hormonal situation.
What I discovered is that I look at faces differently depending on the sex of the person I am looking at. It was like the optical illusion - is it a young girl or is it an old woman. I cannot remember which way round it is now, but for one sex I look at the eyes, and for the other I look at the face as a whole. I could only have found this out by speaking with someone whose sex was completely unclear.
They were a good cook, though.
a girl with a bloke's name which can give rise to some confusion itself called Ben
Grammatical Gender
Xanatic Posted Jul 9, 2001
Yeah, we have a Mikey and a Ben here. Confusing. And I always thought Fenchurch was a guy.
There was also a waiter in a French resturaunt where I just had to look at the persons chest to find out what sex it was. Male apparently. Poor guy.
Ben, you actually critisize the way Brits speak English? Isn´t English pretty much defined as what they speak in England? It´s just the swedish school children(and danish) that suffer under having to learn how English people should talk and not how they actually talk. Like having to say is not instead of isn´t.
Grammatical Gender
Cooper the Pacifist Poet Posted Jul 10, 2001
Well.
Thank you all for your opinions. Now it's my turn.
I believe that in the case of hypotheticals, either gender is appropriate--so long as it's consistent (i. e. each example takes the same gender all the way through).
I am disturbed by the recent trend (among English-speakers) to consider grammatical gender as something based on natural gender. In this light, one cannot but make the assumption that grammatical gender is inherently flawed. If we, however, consider grammatical gender as we would any other dimension of language--such as number or tense--we can get past this barrier.
A table in the Romance languages isn't female; it's feminine.
"Man" in English differs from "man"--the former is masculine, the latter male.
In German, the word for "wife" (Weib) is masculine.
The only problem many people have with grammatical gender is the nomenclature--"masculine", "feminine", "gender". But there are many other things labelled as such--masculine and feminine rimes come to mind.
Ever noticed that this controversy doesn't occur in languages with extensive grammatical gender?
Re: vous
We already have a plural/respectful pronoun, though: "you". "Thou" is singular/familiar.
--Cooper
Grammatical Gender
Dorothy Outta Kansas Posted Jul 10, 2001
Having checked up with a certain Mr. Webster's dictionary, I am happy to advise that the pronoun *they* 'sometimes refers to persons without an antecedent expressed.' In other words, *they* can be used when the gender of a singular subject is not specified. Admittedly this was from the 1913 edition, but since this agrees with my own understanding, I'm happy to publicise it!
Cooper - I don't think grammar is a relic, nor gender a sexist relic. Consider that language is still a tool for communication, and that the rules of language only enable more distinct manipulations of meaning. However, language is still evolving, and will always evolve, and so a group of teachers can add new rules by teaching according to today's suggestion that 'hir' and 'sie' are correct.
I believe I am unusually advantaged for my generation, which was not usually taught grammar in school - when I realised my teachers had no intention of explaining the rules of grammar to me, I learnt them from books instead. I have heard (I work in a Further Education College) that Syllabus Creators intend to bring back the section of English Language which deals with Grammar. Sympathies to the teacher of my age who has to explain it, never having had anyone to explain it to them (indefinite gender deliberately stated).
This is now a long Posting. Feel free to skip to the end!
To Colonel, Cooper, and Xanatic, regarding the gender of concrete nouns in foreign languages: a table is a German (fem.) Tisch and a French (fem.) table. A dog is a German (masc.) Hund and a French (masc.) chien. Obviously there's no trend where the article is neutral in German; but there does seem to be a common trend between masculine and feminine words, even where their root is vastly different. Any suggestions for a reason? Xanatic, perhaps the fathers of our languages were tripping and decided to make things hard for the next generation, hence the der/die/das!
Cooper - this particular controversy may not occur in languages with extensive grammatical gender; but there are certainly controversies a-plenty! Consider how, a decade back, a French politician tried to remove 'le weekend' and other Anglicisms from the language; and think of six months ago in Germany, where spelling-rules were rewritten and the last vestige of the Gothic alphabet, the 'ss', was removed from dictionaries! I imagine they might be considering matters of such magnitude as indeterminate gender articles, if they didn't have more pressing matters to deal with!
Xanatic - I don't know what to say! I'm definitely feeling female, but I don't know how to prove that. I'm guessing you're male, but I doubt this is the thread to pursue the conversation! Unless we dress it up and ask each other what gender article we should use for each other!
x x Fenny (finished, finally)
Grammatical Gender
Cooper the Pacifist Poet Posted Jul 11, 2001
That first post--I wasn't advocating a position, just offering some options.
--Cooper
Grammatical Gender
Fenny Reh Craeser <Zero Intolerance: A593796> Posted Jul 11, 2001
Erratum: Germany's spelling laws removed the letter called "SZ" and words are now spelled with "-ss".
Cooper - don't worry, I didn't have you marked for that point of view: it was just a convenient jumping point for my extra-long posting!
x x Fenny
Grammatical Gender
Xanatic Posted Jul 11, 2001
Why is it necessary to learn the grammar for your own language. The only use I´ve had is to put commas. And they´re now changing the comma rules that I´ve spent years learning.And when learning foreign languages, the grammar just seems to make it all harder.
But what is really the whole point of gender-words. Saying a word is masculinum or femininum doesn´t make sense to me. Sure, then you know wether to put der or die in front, but why not just das all the way.
Fenchurch: Sorry, it just sounded like a male name to me.
Grammatical Gender
Dorothy Outta Kansas Posted Jul 11, 2001
That's fine, Xanatic.
Fenchurch was picked due to her appearance in one of the HitchHikers books; it's the name of a Train Station in London. So I don't know whether it was originally a feminine name, but now it's *mine*!
x x Fenny (female)
Key: Complain about this post
Grammatical Gender
- 1: Cooper the Pacifist Poet (Jul 7, 2001)
- 2: Cheerful Dragon (Jul 7, 2001)
- 3: Blatherskite the Mugwump - Bandwidth Bandit (Jul 7, 2001)
- 4: Emily 'Twa Bui' Ultramarine (Jul 7, 2001)
- 5: Xanatic (Jul 8, 2001)
- 6: a girl called Ben (Jul 8, 2001)
- 7: Blatherskite the Mugwump - Bandwidth Bandit (Jul 8, 2001)
- 8: Martin Harper (Jul 8, 2001)
- 9: Indefatigable (Jul 9, 2001)
- 10: Wand'rin star (Jul 9, 2001)
- 11: a girl called Ben (Jul 9, 2001)
- 12: a girl called Ben (Jul 9, 2001)
- 13: Xanatic (Jul 9, 2001)
- 14: a girl called Ben (Jul 9, 2001)
- 15: Cooper the Pacifist Poet (Jul 10, 2001)
- 16: Dorothy Outta Kansas (Jul 10, 2001)
- 17: Cooper the Pacifist Poet (Jul 11, 2001)
- 18: Fenny Reh Craeser <Zero Intolerance: A593796> (Jul 11, 2001)
- 19: Xanatic (Jul 11, 2001)
- 20: Dorothy Outta Kansas (Jul 11, 2001)
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