Xref: utzoo news.admin:3090 misc.legal:5371 soc.women:12078
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!killer!dcs!wnp
From: wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul)
Newsgroups: news.admin,misc.legal,soc.women
Subject: Re: Proposed lawsuit
Keywords: Sexual, gender, discrimination,pronouns,language
Message-ID: <147@dcs.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jul 88 12:05:50 GMT
References: <12165@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <6278@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <12180@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1040@unccvax.UUCP> <23898@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> <792@isieng.UUCP> <23951@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA>
Reply-To: wnp@dcs.UUCP (Wolf N. Paul)
Organization: DCS, Dallas, Texas
Lines: 49

In article <23951@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> wlieberm@teknowledge-vaxc.UUCP
(William Lieberman) writes:
>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.
>
>So, for example, even if they tried to make up a new construction, such
>as 'letter carrier', it would come out something like " macho-man
>letter carrier", assuming it would be the masculine form. Or
>rough transliteration: " le letter carrier ".

I won't attempt to comment on French, since my French is rather rusty
these days.

In German, which recognizes three genders (and corresponding articles,
"er"=he, "sie"=she, "es"=it), the problem is not all that grave since
most nouns describing people can simply be turned into the feminine form
by changing the ending and the article. Some examples:

                |         Masculine        |        Feminine
----------------+--------------------------+--------------------------
teacher         |       der Lehrer         |      die Lehrerin
letter carrier  |    der Brieftraeger      |    die Brieftraegerin
chairman        |     der Vorsitzende      |     die Vorsitzende

All of these situations, and any others which I can think of, are traditional
German -- they are not recent inventions in response to women's rights
struggles. Even the last one, "chairman", the fact that only the article
changes is easily explained from the grammatical context.

German uses hardly any constructs like English "something-man", thus
the problem of having to change these to "something-person" doesn't
arise.

Further, German uses different words to refer to members of the class
"males" (Mann) and members of the class "humans" (Mensch).

The only peculiarity relative to women's rights and the German language
is a bit strained and artificial.  German uses a general pronoun
"man" to refer to either female or male persons in a sentence such as
"What is one to do with frivolous lawsuits" -- "Was tut man mit leichtfertigen
Anklagen". Some people, wishing to make a point and noticing the similarity
of looks (and probably etymology) of "Mann" and "man", have taken to use
"frau", the German word for woman, but without the capitalization reserved
for nouns, in such situations.
-- 
Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101
UUCP:     killer!dcs!wnp                 ESL: 62832882
DOMAIN:   wnp@dcs.UUCP                   TLX: 910-380-0585 EES PLANO UD