Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC830713); site tut.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!mcvax!enea!tut!hmj From: hmj@tut.UUCP (Hannu-Matti Jarvinen) Newsgroups: net.lang,net.women Subject: Re: Pronouns devoid of gender connotations. Message-ID: <208@tut.UUCP> Date: Mon, 22-Jul-85 09:19:09 EDT Article-I.D.: tut.208 Posted: Mon Jul 22 09:19:09 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 30-Jul-85 06:22:02 EDT References: <520@leadsv.UUCP> <359@ucdavis.UUCP> Reply-To: hmj@tut.UUCP (Hannu-Matti Jarvinen) Organization: Tampere Univ. of Technology, Finland Lines: 21 Xref: linus net.lang:1448 net.women:6257 In article dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady) writes: >I don't know if someone else has pointed this out or not, but for what >it's worth several languages make do with no pronoun gender at all (that >is, not an alternative gender-neutral pronoun that means "he or she but >not it" but rather a pronoun system that does not distinguish between >gender or between human and non-human). Some languages I believe this >is true of (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) are Chinese and the >Finno-Ugric group, which included Hungarian (Magyar), Estonian, and >Finnish. Finnish does distinguish between human and non-human. Human is always "haen", which means both female and male, non-human is "se", but "se" is sometimes (or quite often) used to refer also humans in spoken language. Non-humans are always "se" and no pronouns to distinguish female and male exist. -- Hannu-Matti Jarvinen ASENTO - Ada Software ENgineering TOols -project Tampere University of Technology, Computer Systems Laboratory, Finland hmj@tut.UUCP, ...!mcvax!tut!hmj