Re: Origin of the word 'kivismi'

YHL wrote:
>On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, Steg Belsky wrote:
>
> > Well, descriptively speaking, in many dialects now "they" is becoming
>the
> > default animate 3rd sg pronoun... it has even acquired a reflexive form
> > different than it's original plural:
> >
> > subject / object / reflexive
> > they ~ them ~ themselves  =  plural
> > they ~ them ~ themself  =  singular
>
>I use it that way unless I feel irritated/pedantic, in which case I use
>"he, she or it."  In academic writing I tend toward "he" unless the prof
>specifies otherwise (I'm female and almost never offended by it).
>
>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.

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.

                                                       Andreas
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