Re: gender in English

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:
>
> On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Robert Hailman wrote:
>
> > In Ajuk, one can have a lot of fun with this. Inanimite nouns have no
> > gender on their own, but they need to take one when being personified.
> > The lazy way is to make it neuter, but if I have Death, for example, I
> > can make it male to give the traditional English view, or I can make it
> > female, to show it, in this indirect way, as being much more
> > compassionate than the traditional view dictates. Neither is "right", or
> > "traditional", and you can even switch between the two in one story, as
> > a hint to the behavior of the noun in question.
>
> I like this feature. It is somewhat similar to how I used to use Gender in
> Telek, but I have since changed my mind.  It didn't seem to fit the
> language right.

I'll have to see whether it works out as well as I'd like it to. Right
now Ajuk is still rather embryonic, I only have 300-odd words. I add
more every time I have the time to sit down and work on it, but that's
not too often, and I expect it will become less often, as I just started
the 11th grade yesterday. Oi.

I decided Ajuk would give speakers a lot of freedom in certain areas,
and gender is one of them. There is an inanimate gender, but one can
give a gender to anything at any time if they so choose.

> Telek has no word for "death" and the speakers (the Telen) do not
> personify it at all.  The only personifications are Lajhosa 'life' (which
> also covers Nature and Love) and Jedolen 'fire' (which also covers Hatred
> and Destruction).  Both words are usually inanimate, but become
> animate in these contexts.
I haven't decided things like this yet, as I said, Ajuk is still fairly
young and undeveloped.

--
Robert