jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) (08/15/83)
The last time we had this discussion, someone posted an article pointing
out (I believe) that Turkish and Finnish were two languages without
gendered nouns (or possibly just pronouns). This person went on to say that
Finnish women that he knew certainly would not say theirs was a non-sexist
society. That is, no matter who might like it or think it's a good idea,
"non-sexist" language does not make or indicate a non-sexist society. Are
there any natives/speakers of these two languages on the net who would
like to comment about this?
trying to remember -
Jeff Winslowstanwyck@ihuxr.UUCP (08/16/83)
With regard to the request for speakers, I do not speak any of the mentioned languages, but I am somewhat familiar with manderin chinese. Chinese is about as genderless a language as can be imagined, yet in spite of years of effort in mainland china the society is still very sexist. Thus I see no tie here between a non-sexist language and a non-sexist society. While I am on the subject (I generally try to stay out of this groups discussions) I will add my comments on teis whole topic: I think the whole attempt to change the english language to be "non-sexist" by changing words like chairman to chairperson and manhours to personhours has done more to damage the women's movement in my eyes than any other single area of concern. If anything, I would rather see a new term invented for the male of the species than to see miserable aberrations brought upon the whole of society. d. stanwyck : ..!ihnp4!ihuxr!stanwyck : (312) 979-6667 : btl @ naperville, il
debray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray) (08/18/83)
I don't know about Turkish or Finnish, but I *can* answer for an Indian language descended from Sanskrit: There are *no* gendered pronouns in Bengali: there is only one third person singular pronoun, applicable to either sex. Bengali society couldn't be called "non-sexist" by any stretch of the imagination. I agree with Jeff Winslow: it's not the language that makes a society sexist. Or racist. Or prejudiced in any of a hundred other ways. It's the people, and that's what you'll want to change. Saumya Debray SUNY at Stony Brook
mason@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Mason) (08/20/83)
"...not the language..it's the people you need to change."
If we could change the people we wouldn't need to worry about the language
but we can't change the people, soooo... we change the language.
We can't make people accept people of other races, soooo... we bus the
children together.
It seems to me that in the process of changing the language (a very public
undertaking) we may manage to change the people, just as (I think although
from here it's hard to tell) racial tension *SEEMS* to be decreased and
racial equality *SEEMS* to be making some headway perhaps as a result of
the awareness created by the bussing issue even though no children bussed
have yet made it to positions of importance.
On the other hand, rather than wholesale changing every word in the language
that has the syllable 'man' in it we should make a counterpart to woman, perhaps
loman (just went thru the alphabet & it sounded OK).
-- Gandalf's flunky Hobbit -- Dave Mason, U. Toronto CSRG,
{cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!mason
or {cwruecmp,duke,linus,lsuc,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!mason (UUCP)laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (08/20/83)
What happens if changing the language is irrelavant to the real problem of sexism and the real problem is ignored in a mad rush to change the language? laura creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura