Re: Origin of the word 'kivismi'

On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> YHL wrote:
> >I applaud the attempt at gender neutrality, but Korean *doesn't*
> >distinguish *at all* between male and female in pronouns (though there
> >*is* a significant male-side bias in kinhip terminology), and I don't
> >know *anyone* who thinks Korea has an egalitarian society vis-a-vis
> >male-female relationships.
>
> We should all adopt the Tairezazh system! ;-)
> The basic root is 'sen', meaning little more than "3rd sg pronoun". Then
> there are gender speciffic forms 'seno' "he" and 'seno' "she". All three
> inflect can be pluralized and inflect for all four cases.
Er...Is that "seno" and something else?  Otherwise it'd be hard to tell
the difference, unless I'm missing a character or something....

> In practice, sg 'sen' ís mostly used where English would have "it", and when
> we'd have "he/she/it" or similar. In the plural, gender-unmarked 'senen' is
> the most common form, but if I'd refer to a group of girls as 'senan' and a
> group of boyz as 'senon'. Using the unmarked forms is never wrong - native
> speaker wouldn't take offence at being refered to as 'sen', unless perhaps
> sen was  actively seeking for a reason to feel offended.
<G>  I like the system.

Chevraqis has a "personal" 3rd person, which you use (usually) for
people, but also for inanimate/non-person things/creatures of personal
significance.  It also has an "impersonal" 3rd person, which is only used
insultingly for people, and generally for inaminate/non-person
things/creatures without much personal significance (to the speaker or
perhaps listener, I should add).  I didn't want to take out *all*
possibility of insults.  =^)

YHL