From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Sep 23 10:31:13 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:31:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EIrOD-0003XU-6Q for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:31:13 -0700 Received: from bay102-f20.bay102.hotmail.com ([64.4.61.30] helo=hotmail.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1EIrOB-0003XN-1C for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:31:13 -0700 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:31:09 -0700 Message-ID: Received: from 64.4.61.208 by by102fd.bay102.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:31:09 GMT X-Originating-IP: [64.4.61.208] X-Originating-Email: [mugglesnsquibs@msn.com] X-Sender: mugglesnsquibs@msn.com In-Reply-To: <2d3df92a050923080645081cb@mail.gmail.com> From: "Robert Griffin" To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: gendered and gender-neutral language Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 10:31:09 -0700 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed X-OriginalArrivalTime: 23 Sep 2005 17:31:09.0491 (UTC) FILETIME=[95F2D830:01C5C064] X-Spam-Score: -1.3 (-) X-archive-position: 2283 X-Approved-By: mugglesnsquibs@msn.com X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: mugglesnsquibs@msn.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners coi doi I don't know how important this issue is in other cultures. I haven't heard about anything of the sort with regards to languages with gender more firmly entrenched than English, such as Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi (which only avoids gender in the pronouns). As far as I know, the Finno-Ugric languages (like Hungarian), the Ural-Altaic languages (like Turkish), Georgian, Basque, and the Malayo-Polynesian languages make no grammatical gender distinctions.(Japanese is an exception, using 'konohito' for 'he' and 'kanoja' for 'she', but the basic word 'kore' '[s]he' has no gender). It is an issue derived not from cultural genderism or the lack of the same, but from how the ancestral language community mapped their linquistic universe. Modern languages which maintain grammatical gender distinctions all derive from languages which divided the entire linguistic universe into masculine/feminine or masculine/feminine/neuter. The Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic...) and the Hamitic languages (Egyptian, Berber...) maintain a masculine/feminine division, so everything is either masculine or feminine. The most ancient Indo-European languages tend to either classify everything as masculine/feminine (Sanskrt) or masculine/feminine/neuter (Greek). [note:grammatical gender may not be consistent between two languages deriving from the same parent language. For the Spanish, a hand is feminine, but for the French it is masculine.] Other linguistic classifications have occurred. If I recall correctly, Sumerian had a grammatical distinction between living and non-living, while Swahili and some of the Caucasian languages have highly complex grammatical classifications. It is in the lexical choices that we see how the culture handles gender. For instance, while Sumerian had no GRAMMATICAL distinction like he/she, there were different words for cultural roles, such as 'king'/'lugal' and 'queen'/'gashan'. mu'o mi'e bobgrif. >From: HeliodoR >Reply-To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org >To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org >Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: gendered and gender-neutral language >Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 17:06:34 +0200 > >Um... I really don't know much about the issue, but is this really such an >important >and serious question? Is it in other countries? Maybe I don't really >encounter it as >we only have "(s)he" and "it", without any distinction between the two >genders. >And after all here in my country mysogynism is not a great problem, here >REMNA >live and not FEMALE and MALE ones (or just that's how I C it). Maybe that's >because >Hungarian people are part of the 'minority' of the world (which may sound >silly) and >know how it feels to be categorized as "other countries". > >mi'e xili,odor.