Re: Homosexuality and gender identity

En réponse à Mark J. Reed :


>To bring this back on-topic: many natlangs have syntax which varies
>depending on the sex of the speaker (or the addressed, or both).
>Has anyone developed a conlang which has such variance based on
>self-selected gender identity or sexuality?  I know that in the
>continued struggle in the real world for equal treatment of all
>groups, we are trying to eradicate such required distinctions
>from language, not introduce them, but it might be interesting to
>develop a language where your choice of words directly conveyed
>your sexual identity.
This is not exactly what you meant, but as I often said, Maggel's gender is
purely grammatical, and unconnected to natural gender, so that referring to
a male person with a female pronoun is perfectly normal, when the noun
which would be used to refer to that person would be of feminine gender
(such a noun is "captain", whose form I still don't know :(((( . But I know
that it originally meant "ship's wife" - ships are masculine in Maggel -
which explains why it is a feminine word and why men, when referred to by
their quality of captain, are referred to with the female pronoun ;))) ).

And since Maggel pronouns distinguish gender even at the first person, they
always convey more than the corresponding English pronouns (a man can refer
to himself as |eu|, |ma|, |bebg|, |lu|, |lebg| or |sba| depending on gender
and proximacy, which makes for a lot more distinctions than "I" can ever
bring :)) ).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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