Re: Genders & Re: Elvish-Based Conlangs

On Thu, Aug 10, 2000 at 12:10:04PM -0400, Steg Belsky wrote:
[snip]
> Rokbeigalmki has a similar system, except with only 4 genders: male,
> female, common, and neuter.  The neuter gender is only used for inanimate
> objects, while the common (formerly called "neutral" but someone
> suggested i change it so it doesn't get confused with "neuter") gender is
> used when you either don't know or don't care about the person/thing
> you're referring to's gender, or it's a mixed group, or the thing is not
> inanimate but doesn't have gender.
>
> I like your idea of the "ambivalent" gender!
[snip]

Hehe, thanks :-)

I came up with that idea mainly because the culture behind the language
has something about the number five. The usual masculine, feminine, neuter
are already three (three also happens to be special in that culture) but I
recall that when I first learned English, I thought it was odd that
traditionally (this was before the political correctness debates started)
the masculine gender often includes the females as well, especially in
collective nouns. The alternative solution is to make collective nouns
neuter, but this also struck me as odd because what is referred to isn't
exactly neuter.

Then one day, I struck upon the beautiful solution: masc., fem., both,
neither, either. (I like the way the last two rhymed, too :-). Of course,
having that many genders got me into this mess of finding the correct
words to describe them, but hey, that's what this mailing list is for,
right? :-)

> PS- everyone seems to be supporting the term "epicine"....should i change
> my _common_ to that, or is there a difference?
[snip]

AFAIK, "epicene" and "common" seem to mean the same thing. As least as far
as my Classical Greek textbook is concerned... perhaps somebody more
qualified than me can help with this one.


T