Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)

Staving Andreas Johansson:

>Hm, I should find a fanatic feminist and ask her (for some reason, fanatic
>feminists are almost unfailingly female ...) what are her views on 'lects
>(like
>mine) that keep the fem~masc distinction on adjectives vs those who do not.
>There could be an interesting clash between different species of political
>correctness - downplaying gender differences vs allowing everyone to keep
>his/her native way of speaking. The way out would probably be that "standard"
>usage keeps the distinction (altho less consistently than do I), and that
>anything that's standard or prescriptionist is necessarily bad. :)
>
>

At the risk of causing offence to people who are probably far too easily
offended anyway, I'd like to point out that fanatical feminists are bad
linguists in failing to realise that grammatical gender has nothing to do
with sex (except possibly in some of Herman Miller's rodent languages,
where practically everything seems to have something to do with sex).

Pete
(posting under the influence of alcohol).

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