gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) (11/14/88)
In article <1988Nov13.202622.23562@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> woods@gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU (Greg Woods) writes: >I think we can do quite well without massive and abrupt change. We can >simply continue the gradual evolution of the language: beginning to use >'he/she' where required, or else a random mix of 'he' and 'she; eventual >dropping of the 'ess' from various words like 'steward' and 'actor'; >gradually switching to less obviously connotated words such as changing >'alderman' to 'councelor' where nearly equivalent terms exist, and >especially in new situations; as well as education about language and >its history. These changes are already well on a roll, and have been >for quite some time (at least in Canadian schools). In English as it existed before the recent politicization of the language, there were two genders, masculine and feminine. Unlike Latin and some other languages, English has no separate neutral gender. In cases where neutral gender would be appropriate, it has long been an explicit rule of the English language that the masculine form be used. It could just as well have been the feminine gender but it wasn't. Some uniform choice was needed and made so long ago as to almost be prehistory. Even female writers of English literature followed this rule without complaint. If anything, you could say that this rule discriminates against males, because in some cases it can be difficult to tell whether "he" refers to a person explicitly male or just to a generic person, whereas "she" always unambiguously indicates a female. To say that the rule in any way reflects unfavorably on females would be ludicrous were it not for the adverse effect on readability that this widespread belief is now having. If you think English is bad, I advise you to steer clear of Spanish, where even inanimate objects are either masculine or feminine. Folks, it really doesn't matter so long as the rules are consistently applied, to maximize readability. By messing around with the language in a blatant attempt to foist political ideas on the general public, a severe disservice to the English-speaking population is being done.
pierre@imag.imag.fr (Pierre LAFORGUE) (11/15/88)
In article <1988Nov13.202622.23562@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu> woods@gpu.utcs.Toronto.EDU (Greg Woods) writes: >.... There are such a lot of irrelevant stuffs in these technical groups that I may append my contribution. Why don't you use the latin language, instead of decadent ones as is the english ? Distinction between "HOMO" and "VIR" allows to avoid frustations. The french language is more subtil than english : we distinguish the "genre grammatical" from the sexual attributes. Nobody (male or female) thinks that an object (or an appointment or an art or a feeling or ...) is "viril" (male) because its grammatical mode is "masculin". Maybe is it because we do not know sexual discrimination ; maybe is it because we have not the same conceptual undergrounds ; maybe is it because we like the economy of our language : use of a neutral form for objects and creatures (men included), adjunction of a suffix or special form only to specificaly reference a feminal being (she has something MORE) or a very important thing (the sea for example, or the earth/ground -of course this last one was a goddess, Ge, in the good old greek times). By the way, when you speak of the virus or the worm, do you use "he or she" ? -- Pierre LAFORGUE pierre@imag.fr or pierre@imag.UUCP (uunet.uu.net!imag!pierre)
jpr@dasys1.UUCP (Jean-Pierre Radley) (11/17/88)
In article <3803@imag.imag.fr> pierre@imag.UUCP (Pierre LAFORGUE) writes: >Why don't you use the latin language, instead of decadent ones as is the >english ? Distinction between "HOMO" and "VIR" allows to avoid frustations. As a native speaker of both French and English, I can say that it ill behooves you to describe English as "decadent". It is, au contraire, [and we don't necessarily put a phrase like "au contraire" in quotes] extraordinarily alive. Certainly it is more tolerant than French, more adaptable, larger (just a count of the word-list), and still growing. Dieu merci, we do NOT have an Academie to protect English from useful foregn words. And most people do not object to the common adjective "dead" as applied to Latin. >The french language is more subtil than english : we distinguish the >"genre grammatical" from the sexual attributes. Nobody (male or female) >thinks that an object (or an appointment or an art or a feeling or ...) >is "viril" (male) because its grammatical mode is "masculin". >Maybe is it because we do not know sexual discrimination ; maybe is it >because we have not the same conceptual undergrounds ; maybe is it >because we like the economy of our language : use of a neutral form for >objects and creatures (men included), adjunction of a suffix or special >form only to specificaly reference a feminal being (she has something >MORE) or a very important thing (the sea for example, or the earth/ground >-of course this last one was a goddess, Ge, in the good old greek times). I do not agree that a language that has gender attributes for its nouns is therefor more "subtle" than one which does not. French is not the only example of languages with grammatical gender, but by your own reasoning, do you concede that languages with three (or even more) genders are _ipso facto_ subtler than French? Last night, at a lecture for the unigroup/newyork, Brian Kernighan spoke of "Little Languages" (small tools that you write quickly to solve a specific problem), he quoted the linguist Benjamin Whorf. I can't remember it exactly, but it was to the effect that "the kind of the language we speak affects how we think". While I think that idiotic attacks on the use of the word "history" because our past is also "herstory" are a perverse manifestation of the modern sexual revolution; while I refuse to use "Ms." in my correspondence; while the old, established convention that "he", "man", and other such words, in a given context, do NOT necessarily refer to males: I reject your claim that "[the French people] do not know sexual discrimination [because the French language affords a thought-mode that inherently rejects sexually discriminating thoughts]". >By the way, when you speak of the virus or the worm, do you use "he or she" ? I use "it". Un peu de calme, mes amis, un peu de calme. -- Jean-Pierre Radley Honi soit jpr@dasys1.UUCP New York, New York qui mal ...!hombre!jpradley!jpr CIS: 76120,1341 y pense ...!hombre!trigere!jpr
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (11/18/88)
In article <7731@dasys1.UUCP> jpr@dasys1.UUCP (Jean-Pierre Radley) writes: >...Brian Kernighan... quoted the linguist Benjamin Whorf. I can't remember >it exactly, but it was to the effect that "the kind of the language we >speak affects how we think"... It should be noted that although this idea -- the "Whorfian Hypothesis" -- tends to be taken as gospel in computer science, the linguistics folks value Whorf's work on American-Indian languages but consider the Hypothesis to be unproven and somewhat dubious. -- Sendmail is a bug, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology not a feature. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu (Alex Colvin) (11/18/88)
> There are such a lot of irrelevant stuffs in these technical groups that I > may append my contribution. who could argue with that? > Why don't you use the latin language, instead of decadent ones as is the > english ? ... > > The french language is more subtil than english : ... > Maybe is it because we do not know sexual discrimination ; From the folks that brought us that admirable word "Chauvinisme".
maffray@porthos.rutgers.edu (Frederic Maffray) (11/18/88)
In article <410@babbage.acc.virginia.edu>, Alex Colvin writes:
Pierre Laforgue wrote:
#> Why don't you use the latin language, instead of decadent
#> ones as is the english ? ...
#> The french language is more subtil than english : ...
# From the folks that brought us that admirable word "Chauvinisme".
It's funny, this newsgroup gets cluttered every month by yet
another (American) person who starts again the usual discussion
about English beign the richest language, with the most nuances,
the most words, etc. In a word "the best language in the world."
This usually does not even elicit accusations of chauvinism. But
if one person who happens to be French does just the same,
obviously with his tongue in cheek, he is immediately flamed.
[Reminds me of the case of the Dutch person who posted a month ago
and who got flamed by Americans for his spelling mistakes.]
Why don't you let "French = chauvinistic" on the same shelf with
"Jew = greedy", "Black = dirty" and "Hispanic = lazy"? (Assuming
of course that you do not subscribe to these stereotypes in the
first place, which I may doubt.)
Fredmaffray@porthos.rutgers.edu (Frederic Maffray) (11/18/88)
In article <7731@dasys1.UUCP>, Jean-Pierre Radley writes: In article <3803@imag.imag.fr> pierre@imag.UUCP (Pierre LAFORGUE) writes: #> Why don't you use the latin language, instead of decadent ones #> as is the english ? Distinction between "HOMO" and "VIR" #> allows to avoid frustations. # As a native speaker of both French and English, I can say that # it ill behooves you to describe English as "decadent". He was obviously speaking with tongue in cheek, but he was misunderstood, as it happens all the time when someone forgets to cram his text with smileys. # It is, au contraire, [and we don't necessarily put a phrase like # "au contraire" in quotes] extraordinarily alive. Probably, but, precisely, I feel that you seem to make a big fuss of this ostentatious use of a foreign phrase... # Certainly it is more tolerant than French, more adaptable, ... # ... larger (just a count of the word-list), and still growing. I believe that any serious linguist would take such statement with some salt. When I look at any English-French dictionary, it appears that each language takes up about one half of the book, and that they have pretty much the same average density of words per page. Now when I look at an all-English language dictionary, I find that the number of "words" -- more properly 'entries' -- is artificially boosted by several features which are unique to the English language. For example, after the word sodium, you find a long list of various chemicals like "sodium chlorate," "sodium chlorite", etc. The same goes concerning "potassium", etc. On the other hand, in a French dictionary (and similarly for any Romance language) you will find the one entry "chlorate", and, in the description of this entry, you will read: "Exemples: chlorate de sodium, chlorate de potassium, etc." As a consequence, the French dictionary will have only one entry ("chlorate") while the English dictionary will count one different entry for each kind of chlorate. Similarly, you have three entries: "moon", "light" and "moonlight", whereas French will have only two entries: "lune", "clair", with the phrase "clair de lune" being explained in the body of the description of the word "clair", and NOT as a separate word. English is fond of such compound words and phrases and lists each of them separately. Another example is with pairs of words like Spanish/Spaniard, Arab/Arabian/Arabic, Jewish/Jew, etc. Romance languages usually do not distinguish between noun and adjective as far as nationality is concerned. So again they have only one entry where English has several. # Dieu merci, we do NOT have an Academie to protect English from # useful foregn words. I could bet this one would be mentioned... It's funny, I have come to realize that, should I want to know what the AF is up to, I would find out much more easily by reading an American newspaper than a French one. In reality, the popular reference on the French language (as used for example by the referees in TV word-games) is definitely not the AF, but the dictionaries of the major publishing companies (Larousse, Robert, Littre'), of which new editions appear every year around September. Then is the time when the media talk the most about the state of the language. Nobody gives a flying fuck what the senile sleepwalkers of the AF say. It takes them an average 35 years to come up with a new edition of their thing, so everybody knows perfectly it's obsolete as soon as it is released. Believe me, they have about as much influence on the language as the Pope has on Gay Paree. As for foreign words, English speakers like to boast that the English language contains a great many of them, but in reality, I've always been non-plussed by this claim. I don't find that the average American newspaper uses that many foreign words and phrases, and anyway very few of them are very common words. Oftentimes, these words are of a very specific, 'exotic', use, like "ayatollah" or "cappuccino" or "sierra". And how many people outside the elite actually use words like "Weltanschauung" or "nom de plume"? On the other hand, in French there are many foreign (in particular English) words which have passed into everyday use. It's possible that in sheer numbers, English has more foreign borrowings than French, in particular as a legacy of Britain's large colonial empire. But foreign borrowings in French are much more frequent and conspicuous, from "stop" to "stock" to "jeans" to "sandwich" to "freezer" to "parking" to "week-end" to "squat" to "hamburger" to "ketchup" to "prime-time" to "zap", etc. Robert actually puts out a 1300-page Dictionary of Anglicisms (i.e., borrowings from English into French). It may be precisely because of the heavy presence of foreign words in French that the dead members of the AF get so upset. In the 18th and 19th century, when French was the dominant language of Europe, people used to say that is was the language with the most clarity, with the most nuances, etc. They did not give a hoot for the current alleged superiority of English. Seems to me that any dominant culture likes to pretend that it is so because of some kind of built-in characteristic, like because it is naturally superior, richer, subtler, etc., while in fact this dominance is essentially due to demographic, political, and economic power. Language is politics. Fred
thomson@hub.toronto.edu (Brian Thomson) (11/18/88)
In article <410@babbage.acc.virginia.edu> mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu (Alex Colvin) writes: >> There are such a lot of irrelevant stuffs in these technical groups that I >> may append my contribution. > >who could argue with that? > >> Why don't you use the latin language, instead of decadent ones as is the >> english ? ... >> >> The french language is more subtil than english : ... > >> Maybe is it because we do not know sexual discrimination ; > >From the folks that brought us that admirable word "Chauvinisme". Nice try, but 'chauvinism' comes from the character of Nicholas Chauvin, a soldier who was an overzealous and irrepressible supporter of Napolean. He was a national chauvinist, not a sexual one. -- Brian Thomson, CSRI Univ. of Toronto utcsri!uthub!thomson, thomson@hub.toronto.edu
sean@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Sean McLinden) (11/18/88)
In article <410@babbage.acc.virginia.edu> mac3n@babbage.acc.virginia.edu (Alex Colvin) writes:
:: The french language is more subtil than english : ...
:: Maybe is it because we do not know sexual discrimination ;
:
:From the folks that brought us that admirable word "Chauvinisme".
Ah, yes. But "Chauvinisme" did not refer to "sexism", but to Chauvin
who was a moroniccally loyal devotee of Napolean. (To be chauvinistic was
to cling, foolishly, to some one or some cause).
Sean McLinden
Decision Systems Laboratorybzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) (11/19/88)
You folks have me convinced, I just did a: mv /usr/ucb/man /usr/ucb/person I suggest you all do the same. -Barry Shein, ||Encore||
bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Clay M Bond) (11/19/88)
.RM79/ Frederic Maffray: >It's funny, this newsgroup gets cluttered every month by yet >another (American) person who starts again the usual discussion >about English beign the richest language, with the most nuances, >the most words, etc. In a word "the best language in the world." 1. I am an American. 2. Though debatable, Arabic probably has a larger vocabulary than English. 3. Vocabulary size is irrelevant to the relative "subtilty" of a language. 4. "The best language in the world" is a phrase I would not use. >This usually does not even elicit accusations of chauvinism. But >if one person who happens to be French does just the same, >obviously with his tongue in cheek, he is immediately flamed. Obviously? No, not at all, particularly as commonplace as that attitude is. >Why don't you let "French = chauvinistic" on the same shelf with >"Jew = greedy", "Black = dirty" and "Hispanic = lazy"? (Assuming >of course that you do not subscribe to these stereotypes in the >first place, which I may doubt.) I might say the same to you, adding of course, "American = xenophobic." Where I come from we would call this the pot calling the kettle black. And you may, or may not, doubt as you wish; you're perfectly free to be as bigoted as you accuse others of being. You'd better do something about that chip on your shoulder. Somebody may knock it off one of these days, particularly if you're living on American wages. Andreas Stolke: >Bussmann's dictionary states that the original umlaut (the initial >assimilation) is indeed an all-germanic phenomenon, i.e. occurred >independently in all germanic languages. Again, due to later No, absolutely not. One of the distinguishing hallmarks of the Eastern Germanic languages (Gothic) was that it had no umlaut. However, most Germanicists (and their articles) use the phrase "all Germanic languages" (or words to that effect), when in fact they mean, "all North and West Germanic languages." Why, I wonder, is Wulfila so ignored? :-) -- << ***************************************************************** >> << Clay Bond -- IU Department of Leath-er, er, uh, Linguistics >> << bondc@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu AKA: Le Nouveau Marquis de Sade >> << {pur-ee,rutgers,pyramid,ames}!iuvax!bondc *********************** >>
throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop) (11/22/88)
> gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) > In English as it existed before the recent politicization of the language, > there were two genders, masculine and feminine. [...] Even female > writers of English literature followed this rule without complaint. That a discriminatory practice predated the widespread consensus that the practice was, indeed, discriminatory, in no way indicates that the practice is worthy of continuation. > If anything, you could say that this rule discriminates against males, > because in some cases it can be difficult to tell whether "he" refers to > a person explicitly male or just to a generic person, whereas "she" > always unambiguously indicates a female. Nonsense. The existance of this ambiguity is no trouble to males in any way, since it is always resolved in favor of males whenever it is encountered. The fact that interesting human activities which happen to be performed by females must always be called out explicitly while those of males are included implicitly by this so-called-arbitrary rule simply means that any female abilities and activities can be conveniently ignored. > Folks, it really doesn't matter so long as the rules are consistently > applied, to maximize readability. True enough, but the rules do not maximize readability. They contain an ambiguity (or several) which is misleading at best, and blatantly discriminatory at worst. The lack of a gender-neutral pronoun forces usage that is open to misinterpretation because of ambiguity, or clumsy, or explicitly inaccurate. How many people actually say the more accurate "If a typist has no current assignment, he should go to the supervisor and request one."? The more likely (and inaccurate) usage "If a typist has no current assignment, she should go to the supervisor and request one." is nearly universal, and indicates clearly to me that people simply don't perceive the overloading of "he" as appologists for this usage claim. So, time-honored though the "sexism" of English is, I refuse to use the cop-out method of using male gender as inclusive. I have come to believe (due to my observations ofexamples of actual usage such as the above) that people will not correctly understand what I mean when I use these inclusive and ambiguous forms. I try very hard to avoid them, and would rather resort to somewhat clunky usage rather than "correct" but misleading usage. -- There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. --- John Dalbert-Acton {1881} -- Wayne Throop <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti!xyzzy!throopw
smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) (11/23/88)
>As for foreign words, English speakers like to boast that the >English language contains a great many of them, but in reality, >I've always been non-plussed by this claim. I don't find that the >average American newspaper uses that many foreign words and >phrases, and anyway very few of them are very common words. The foreign words are predominately borrowings from Old French from after 1066. Words like: foreign, language, contains, reality, non-plussed, (?) claim, average, uses, phrases, common, predominately, borrowings. They also include borrowings directly from Latin (the missionaries), like biscop; and from north german, like skirt, or skiff. Are these foreign words? They are certainly not `native' german. -- -- s m ryan --------------------------------------- _ Then Guthrun crossed the wasted lands and combed her hair with sooty hands. Alone she watched the oceans churning, and sang of heroes, fame most yearning.
ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe) (11/23/88)
In article <1966@xyzzy.UUCP> throopw@xyzzy.UUCP (Wayne A. Throop) writes: >How many people actually say the more accurate "If a typist has no >current assignment, he should go to the supervisor and request one."? >The more likely (and inaccurate) usage "If a typist has no current >assignment, she should go to the supervisor and request one." is >nearly universal, and indicates clearly to me that people simply don't >perceive the overloading of "he" as appologists for this usage claim. I have redirected followups to talk.bizarre because this really has nothing to do with comp.unix.wizards, and very little to do with sci.lang. comp.unix.wizards readers: quit now. sci.lang readers: Throop's claim that "if a typist ... she ..." is inaccurate (and the implicit corollary that this is sexist) is in error. The supposition here is that if something is "unmarked", it must be unmarked in all context. That's not how it works. But almost all typists are female. Therefore, when talking about typists, "she" is the unmarked case. (The parallel with Dyirbal, as discussed in Lakoff's "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things", is, I think, suggestive.) I claim that anyone who seriously intends to _reform_ the English language, rather than to club people around the ears with their political opinions, will look for a neutral replacement for both "he" and "she", and an astute reformer will look to related languages to see whether there is already an English-like language with such a set of pronouns, and will not overlook Pijin, where "i" (pronounced "ee") is the 3rd-person-singular-human pronoun. That people who claim to be opposed to sexist language use "she" rather than "e" makes me doubt both their sincerity and their freedom from ethnocentrism. 1/2 (:-).
jpr@dasys1.UUCP (Jean-Pierre Radley) (11/24/88)
I find it interesting to observe that this one topic --sexist language-- has drawn more comments from more net.folk than any other one in recent weeks, save perhap RTMorris' worm. -- Jean-Pierre Radley Honi soit jpr@dasys1.UUCP New York, New York qui mal ...!hombre!jpradley!jpr CIS: 76120,1341 y pense ...!hombre!trigere!jpr
lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) (11/24/88)
From article <722@quintus.UUCP>, by ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe): " ... " sci.lang readers: Throop's claim that "if a typist ... she ..." is " inaccurate (and the implicit corollary that this is sexist) is in error. " The supposition here is that if something is "unmarked", it must be " unmarked in all context. That's not how it works. Even if one could find this supposition in what Throop wrote, which one cannot, and even if one could show that a usage was correct by giving it the label unmarked, which is a silly way of reasoning, this would still be incorrect. In the way the term 'unmarked' has ordinarily been used, e.g. by Prince Trubetskoy, what is 'unmarked' is not determined by context. (Though the realization of the unmarked may be determined by context, which is a little different.) I realize there is no way to convert determined proponents of sexist language, but let's do try to distinguish reason from rationalization. Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu