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Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

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Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#51

Post by tsimionescu »

animal_spirits wrote: post #5

This brings up a slightly tangential thought I occasionally have. Is there as much of a gender "confusion" (for lack of a better word) in parts of the world that use languages that have gendered nouns? Over the past 40 years at least it seems that in the USA all of these new labels and identifiers have evolved for people who perceived their gender as not "masculine" or "feminine" but are something different altogethe…

While I'd also be curious of the same, I'd like to also point out that the relationship between grammatical gender and biological sex is often strenuous, even in languages where these exist and are nominally tied.

For example, in Romanian (a Romance language), the scientific words for 'penis' and 'vagina' are both neuter (which in Romanian means that they use masculine form for the singular, and feminine form for the plural). Conversely, the vulgar words for these are both feminine. The word for 'breast/breasts' is masculine.

Basically only words that specifically refer to people and mammals&birds are guaranteed to have a meaningful relationship between grammatical gender and male/female sex. Even here it is not entirely guaranteed, as the words for 'child' and 'baby' are both masculine, even though they are used for both male and female (or intersex) babies and children - though there are of course specific words for 'boy' and 'girl' and those do have the expected gender.

On the other hand, what is clear is that gendered languages with two genders have a huge problem with the idea of gender-neutral language, as it is simply impossible to refer to someone without implying a gender. For example, if I had a non-binary colleague and I wanted to say that they are smart, I have to choose between calling them 'deștept' (masculine) or 'deșteaptă' (feminine) - there is simply no other form of the word to use. Even if I were to artificially introduce a plural like with 'they/them' in English, I would have to choose between 'deștepți' (masculine) or 'deștepte' (feminine) - there is no getting away from this.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#52

Post by animal_spirits »

alexfrydl wrote: post #47
animal_spirits wrote: post #5

This brings up a slightly tangential thought I occasionally have. Is there as much of a gender "confusion" (for lack of a better word) in parts of the world that use languages that have gendered nouns? Over the past 40 years at least it seems that in the USA all of these new labels and identifiers have evolved for people who perceived their gender as not "masculine" or "feminine" but are something different altogethe…

Old English has the same gender system as German. The reason English doesn't have gendered nouns now isn't because we are so progressive, but because language tends to lose all its excess features as it gets spoken and a LOT of people speak English. Basically, people can't be bothered to do grammar properly so eventually it just goes away (see: “whom”). Also, English is not the language of gender progressives. Many c…

I'm saying I think it might be the other way around. I'm thinking that maybe _because_ English lost it's gender system (due to the reasons you listed above) is why we see this "gender progressiveness" in our society. But I can only speak for the USA. I don't know if this same kind of gender progressiveness exists in other societies

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#53

Post by iammisc »

tshaddox wrote: post #14
iammisc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has become problematic when we use the plural. Grammatically, it's not problematic at all. Some people with new ideas completely out of line with the culture at large make a big deal of it.

Not sure what you mean. It's certainly grammar that is causing the problem. And yes, it's a problem because some people think it's a problem—that's true of all problems by definition.

Most people don't think it's a problem at all.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#54

Post by vehemenz »

alexfrydl wrote: post #44
vehemenz wrote: post #37

This was such a great read. I am not a linguist, let alone a philologist, but I had this thought. The modern use of "gender" to mean social aspects of sex (or sex) and the historical use of "gender" to mean sex are still actively used. In a very real sense, these are exclusive and oppositional categories, so any ambiguous use of "gender" in contemporary English should be interpreted as auto-antonymal use. That is, de…

I think bad faith misrepresentations like this are the primary source of the supposed “impossible discourse” on the “subject.” What “subject” by the way? Who are the specific people who use this supposedly confusing, brand-new meaning of the word “gender,” who are so impossible to talk to?

Bad faith might be part of it. I think bad faith is more conducive when neither side of an argument are able to communicate clearly enough for the other. If that's the case, then a better understanding of English is the remedy, not formulating needlessly metaphysical conceptions of gender.

But I still think there is more going on. The subject in question is gender and gender identity. To begin with, even educated folks operating in good faith do not have a particularly coherent account of either. As I suggest, part of this could be due to the particulars of the English language—the auto-antonymity of "gender"—but mainly I think it's conceptual confusion.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#55

Post by iammisc »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #22
maire wrote: post #3

I have always found gender in German confusing. This gives a little more context. Of course in English we have a tiny bit of gendered nouns where we append "man" or "woman" to some job titles based on the gender of the person holding the title (policeman, congressman, etc). This has become problematic when we use the plural. Also in English we have gendered pronouns which has become a hot topic in the last couple of…

I always liked this take on the "policeman, congressman" issue (back when that was the thing that people got upset about in newspaper columns): http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html 25 years old, and probably the most striking thing from this distance is the implicit assumption that all the readers would believe in racism, but not sexism.

> 25 years old, and probably the most striking thing from this distance is the implicit assumption that all the readers would believe in racism, but not sexism.

Sex and race are not two equivalent classes. There are material differences between the sexes. These are obvious differences in even my one year old noticed. On the other hand, it is unclear if there are any differences in ability by race, and it looks like if there are, they're mainly not material to success.

But I mean, I do wonder what percentage of income white people in the south and southwest spend on sunblock and sunscreen. Seems like a lot. (this is a joke, for those wanting to downvote me)

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#56

Post by asveikau »

culi wrote: post #25
retrac wrote: post #11

I dislike the term "gender" in linguistics. Many languages have grammatical gender that has nothing to do with masculine/feminine. "Noun class" gives the idea better. Noun classes in Indo-European and a couple other major language families happen to somewhat align with grammatical markers indicating animal/human sex. But it doesn't have to. Many languages make an animate/inanimate distinction. It is one of those myst…

It's worth pointing out that, in linguistics, grammatical gender can be seen as a specific type of noun class system. The term is mostly useful when talking about Indo-European languages where the feminine-masculine distinction is most prevalent It's also worth noting that grammatical gender evolves over time. Originally, most Indo-European languages had the three classes of feminine, masculine, and neuter. But, for…

One of my favorite stories about a neutral gender being preserved is in words like Spanish esto.

Typically in comparing Latin with modern Romance, the merger of neuter into masculine is one of the loss of distinguishing suffices. You can't distinguish between bonus and bonum if the final constant is lost and they are both bonu (or bueno in Spanish).

But some words didn't distinguish masculine from neuter by just a consonant. Take iste (m) and istud (n). Remove final consonants and you have iste and istu. So in Spanish there's este and esto. The different vowel gets preserved, so you can distinguish between masculine and neuter still, where with most words you cannot.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#57

Post by vehemenz »

kgeist wrote: post #42
vehemenz wrote: post #37

This was such a great read. I am not a linguist, let alone a philologist, but I had this thought. The modern use of "gender" to mean social aspects of sex (or sex) and the historical use of "gender" to mean sex are still actively used. In a very real sense, these are exclusive and oppositional categories, so any ambiguous use of "gender" in contemporary English should be interpreted as auto-antonymal use. That is, de…

Here in Russian, the word for gender literally means "kind" or "genus", it's not related to gender/sex.

We do have the same meaning in English, but it's been obsolete for a while.

From the Oxford English Dictionary:

†2. a. A class of things or beings distinguished by having certain characteristics in common; (as a mass noun) these regarded collectively; kind, sort. Obsolete. In earliest use: genus, as opposed to species (see note at genus n. 1).

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#58

Post by retrac »

tsimionescu wrote: post #43
bregma wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English, for example, has two pronoun genders: animate and inanimate. The animate gender is further subdivided into two subgenders: masculine and feminine. Of course, none of this has anything to do with sex, unless you prefer to attempt reproduction with inanimate objects as many have instructed me to do using the imperative mood (literally "fuck it").

Doesn't 'it' refer to both inanimate objects and animate objects (animals)? Or is 'inanimate' a kind of term of art here refering to humans and human-like beings (instead of the more common meaning of 'non-living')?

Yes, it's a linguistics term. Animate things are perceived as having human-like agency. Many languages have a grammatical category clustering things like large non-human animals, the weather, or fire, or trees, together with humans. Animate. Everything else is inanimate and presumably less alive.

In English, many animals are referred to with "he" or "she". Being a mammal, large, being domesticated, being familiar, are all more likely to be animate rather than inanimate. A pet mare is going to be "she". Insects are always "it". Livestock or a reptile might get either. Babies sometimes get treated as inanimate. ("Is it a boy or girl?")

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#59

Post by secondcoming »

mjevans wrote: post #18
allturtles wrote: post #6

I didn't read the whole article but skimmed through it and didn't see a clear answer to the question "why does grammatical gender exist"? As a native English speaker, I've never understood why it was invented in the first place.

More importantly; why hasn't it been removed? Instead of Latin, can I please have a logical language intended for thinking about scientific and engineering processes invented that's similar to the idea of the Ancients in Star Gate (the TV series)?

Have you tried Rust?

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#60

Post by superflit2 »

culi wrote: post #25
retrac wrote: post #11

I dislike the term "gender" in linguistics. Many languages have grammatical gender that has nothing to do with masculine/feminine. "Noun class" gives the idea better. Noun classes in Indo-European and a couple other major language families happen to somewhat align with grammatical markers indicating animal/human sex. But it doesn't have to. Many languages make an animate/inanimate distinction. It is one of those myst…

It's worth pointing out that, in linguistics, grammatical gender can be seen as a specific type of noun class system. The term is mostly useful when talking about Indo-European languages where the feminine-masculine distinction is most prevalent It's also worth noting that grammatical gender evolves over time. Originally, most Indo-European languages had the three classes of feminine, masculine, and neuter. But, for…

On Romantic languages "latinE" a noun ending in "e" or "ne" would express a word from French/Galic.

"Champagne", "Vitrine" as exemple.

The ""new"" gender neutral a woke fashion that has disregard for people with dyslexia or people who needs software to read (blind).

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