Re: Gender

Tristan Alexander McLeay <anstouh@...> wrote:

> What's wrong with the generic pronoun `they'? Although I'd say `it' too...
> `Don't give your baby an abortion! Have you asked it if it wants to die?'
To turn attention back to conlangs:

In Germanech, you can neither say "it", because there is no neuter
gender
(only masciline and feminine, as in most Romance languages), nor does
the "they" trick work because the 3rd person plural pronoun has distinct
masculine and feminine forms (_ils_ vs. _las_).  The "default" gender
in Germanech is the masculine, though feminists in Germanje use the
feminine as the default gender.

Nur-ellen, in contrast, is better off (as well as its yet unborn sister
languages).  Besides the masculine (_so_) and feminine (_se_) pronouns,
there is an epicene animate pronoun _sa_, the use of which to refer to
humans of unspecified or unknown gender is perfectly normal (unlike
English "it", which carries a connotation of "thing" rather than
"person"); indeed, the "default" gender in Nur-ellen is epicene.
(There is yet a different inanimate pronoun.)  The plural has no gender
distinction other than animate/inanimate.

Jörg.

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