Gender Studies

A discussion of the peculiarities of languages and the differences between them.
bnjtokyo
Lexiterian
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Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2016 7:16 pm

Gender Studies

Postby bnjtokyo » Fri Nov 17, 2017 1:54 am

Someone writing for the New York Times has got their knickers in a twist about gender in language in general and French in particular.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/16/opin ... ctionfront
The Times (perhaps wisely) has not enabled comments for this piece, but I would have liked to direct people's attention to Dr. Goodword's comments on grammatical gender and how it should not be (dare I say it) politicised. See "He, She, It and They" in Dr Goodword's Office
https://www.alphadictionary.com/article ... gular.html

Although masculine, feminine and neuter are widely used terms for a system of noun categories in Indo-European languages, there are in fact other ways to split things up. Although no one actually knows, Wikipedia says expert opinion holds that Proto-Indo-European probably had two genders: animate and neuter. On the other hand, Bantu languages (e.g. Swahili) have 20 noun classes that function as gender classes do in European languages.

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Slava
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Re: Gender Studies

Postby Slava » Fri Jul 28, 2023 5:30 pm

Here's a new addition to the question of gender in language: https://theweek.com/articles/740076/how ... der-issues

I seem to remember from high school days thinking it odd that in French shirt is feminine while blouse is masculine.
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