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Re: Origin of the word 'kivismi'

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Thursday, April 26, 2001, 20:21
Hi!

Daniel44 <Daniel44@...> writes:
> As for soika/soike, the ending 'soika' is common and though it literally > translates as man, no sexist offence should be taken from it.
Intension is not what counts. In German `man' (impersonal pronoun, something like `one', oftern translated as `you') has no gender, but because it is derived from `Mann', it is assumed to be sexist by many women. So is `Mensch' (human), because it comes from `Mann+<umlaut>+sch'. Because it is unnecessary to do this in an auxlang, it should be avoided, I think. E.g. have one form that's underspecified and two additional ones that specify male and female. **Henrik

Replies

D Tse <exponent@...>
SuomenkieliMaa <suomenkieli@...>