Re: Láadan and woman's speak

Ed Heil wrote:

>I'm currently reading a book called _Gender_ by Corbett.
>Highly recommended.
I'll add my recommendation to yours.  A truly remarkable book.

>There are gender systems out there already in the real world which are
>like just about anything you can imagine.
>
>Gender systems in which one gender includes men-and-animals, another
>women; and others in which one gender includes women-and-animals, and
>another men; gender systems in which women are neuter until they're your
>mother's age, all kinds of crazy, wonderful stuff.
My favorite system was the one used by the Algonkian languages, where the
gender system is intimately tied with mythology in ways that don't make sense
to foreigners.  Like, why should "blackberry" be animate, but "stawberry"
inanimate?  (That is the system I partially ripped off for my language Telek.)

>And of course gender systems which have nothing to do with sex.  Many many
>of those.  (And yes, it's still correct to call them "gender" systems,
>since etymologically "gender" merely means "kind.")
Most interesting is the chapter that deals with the phonetic basis of
gender in
French and German.  The, to my mind, amazing fact that native speakers will
assign the same gender to a newly coined word.  I don't remember details about
French, but he claims Germans will almost always give a monosyllabic word
"Masculine" case.

>I suppose it probably wasn't in print yet when Elgin began Laadan, else it
>might have given her a few more things to think about.
Perhaps not, though.  He does treat English is rather sexist at times.

Marcus