Re: gender in English

Marcus Smith wrote:
>
> Robert Heilman wrote:
>
> >That's an interesting idea, Marcus. I'd never thought of that. My first
> >inclination, though, is to attribute that to the Old English genders
> >still embedded in our social subconscious, surfacing with
> >personification & such, rathern than to the genders still being active
> >in Modern English.
>
> That's how I think of it too.  I just pointed out the alternative as a Conlang
> idea.  Keep the juices flowing, and all that.
Of course. That's what I like about conlanging, there are infinite ways
to do things like this, and none of them are right or wrong, and in the
grand scheme of things none are better or worse than the others, unless
you have a specific goal for them, but then the only person to pass
judgement is the creator.

>
>  For example, Death might typically be male in our
> >literature, but that's more tradition than the language. If I were to
> >write a story with Death as a female, it wouldn't be the traditional
> >personification, but it is still perfectly acceptible in our language.
>
> I did this for a Creative Writing course a few years back.  The prof. loved
> it.  Lots of comments/praise for breaking with tradition and being, well,
> creative.
>
I did something like that in English back in grade 9. We had to write an
allegory of some sort, and two of my characters were Love & Greed. I
made Love a man and Greed a woman, and that, in addition to my bizarre
writing style, got me a 90-odd percent mark on the story. Same reason.

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'm sorry if I'm not being clear, I'm still a tad jet-lagged from my
flight on Tuesday.

--
Robert