Xref: utzoo news.admin:3088 misc.legal:5365 soc.women:12076 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!mailrus!cornell!rochester!bbn!gatech!dcatla!holos0!lbr From: lbr@holos0.UUCP (Len Reed) Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal,soc.women Subject: Re: Proposed lawsuit Message-ID: <1195@holos0.UUCP> Date: 21 Jul 88 18:47:31 GMT References: <23951@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> Organization: Holos Software, Atlanta, GA Lines: 37 From article <23951@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>, by wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (William Lieberman): > > In our English language, it is fairly easy to neutralize words, giving > new constructions which are easy to adopt, such as 'letter carrier', > 'fire fighter', 'ombudsperson??', etc. > > What I would like to know is, does anybody have any information on > suggested gender neutralizing in those languages where every noun > has a gender? For example, every single noun in the French language > (am I not correct, oh Academie Francaise?), when singular, is > either and only masculine or feminine (le or la) - NO EXCEPTIONS! Le mot <> c'est masculin ou feminin. Cet enfant (this [male] child) and cette enfant [female] are both correct. Many terms have male and female forms (le president and la presidente) and some don't (le professeur, last I heard, was masculine even of a woman). It might be easier in French, since you could simply provide an inflected form for everything (cette enfante, with an e). This gets around the English problem of "mailman" and "chairman." As long as the discintions are viewed merely grammitical and no judgemental there's no problem. French, like old- fashioned English, uses the masculine forms when the sex is indeterminate. BTW, if you're look for male chauvinism in French, how about the fact that a group of n (any number, perhaps quite large) feminine nouns and one masuline noun is masculine plural? I don't agree that it's easy in English. Flight attendant is okay, but chairperson sounds dumb to me. Ombudsperson is an abomination. "Does everyone have their...." sound unschooled, and can't always be recast fully into the plural. Terms like actress seem dated (why not actor for everyone) but aren't likely to disappear. Some woman might advocate this while others are insulted at be called actors. What a mess. It seems to me that natural language evolves pretty much on it's own, and that attempts to fix things by fiat generally fail. -- - Len Reed