Re: Optimum number of symbols, though mostly talking about french now

En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:

>
> Funny. I know more than one feminist who claims that even having
> gender-specific forms for ANY profession, let alone using, is sexist.
> Some
> of them think that all the plentiful Swedish profession words ending
> in
> "-man" should abolished, and in extreme cases also the impersonal
> pronoun
> "man" too, while others take the more workable approach that "man" in
> these
> cases should be seen as gender-neutral.
>
Doesn't Swedish have a 'common' and 'neuter' gender, with the common gender
making no difference between masculine and feminine, except with pronouns? If
so it's then like Dutch, where feminists hold the same view. In my opinion,
it's one of the examples where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis may apply: in a
language where the distinction between masculine and feminine is grammatical,
having to refer to one sex using the opposite gender is considered sexist, and
thus feminists will tend to hold the view that all nouns of profession should
be given two forms, so that it cannot be implied that one profession would be
reserved for one sex. In languages where the opposition between male and female
is nearly absent of the grammar on the other hand, using common forms
applicable for everyone sounds better than adding distinctions that the
language woudn't naturally make anyway. In short, if your feminists hold this
view, it's in part because it is possible in your language to make gender-
neutral words. It's something impossible in French, which doesn't even have a
neuter gender! In French, a common form is mandatorily masculine or feminine,
and thus by essence sexist (at least according to feminists). The only way to
get rid of that, and of the usual assumption of the language that the "basic"
gender is masculine, is to double all nouns applicable to people with masculine
and feminine forms.

Different languages bring to different strategies for feminists :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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