Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by inkyoto » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

packet_nerd wrote: post #28

The Sgaw Karen language from Thailand and Burma has a system of what I've always called classifiers, but reading this, it sounds like they might be properly called genders too? Everything is classified into one of a bunch of classifiers, where a bunch might be a few dozen? Maybe hundreds, I'm not sure. Some really common ones: Rational beings like people, God, angles, etc. = "gha" (but not spirits, demons, ghosts, et…

> classifiers, but reading this, it sounds like they might be properly called genders too?

No, not quite, classifiers do not introduce a notion of the noun class/gender, and the East/South East Asian languages that make an extensive use them (notably, Sino-Burmese and Tai-Kradai languages) remain being fully analytical languages.

A more apt comparison for classifiers would be collective nouns, of which English (and other Indo-European languages) has plenty, e.g.

– a pandemonium of enterprise architects;

– a tuxedo of Linux kernel developers;

– a dazzle of birds of paradise;

– a shiver of IT consultants;

– etc.

where the implicitly associated noun class/gender of the noun that is the focal point of the expression is «debased» into a collective one and can be applied across the noun class/gender boundaries. Pandemonium, dazzle, tuxedo and shiver are, effectively, classifiers.

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

#162

Post by canjobear » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #94

retrac wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing with verb agreement. While noun classes/gender are relatively rare and many language families do not have them, verbal agreement is much more common. Most though not all languages have verbs that agree with the subject, and quite a few with the object, too. Even English (which lost its Latin-style morphology long ago) retains a trace of this with its single verb inflection: "I run." vs "He runs." So in a p…

For what it’s worth, English still has some remnants of a case system, too. We still distinguish the genitive case of nouns (with a case ending usually written “‘s”), and personal pronouns have four cases (I, me, my, mine).

You're right although the English 's technically isn't a case marker. You can see this because 's doesn't mark nouns, it marks whole phrases, in things like "the Queen of England's hat." Since it modifies phrases and not single words, while not being a word in its own right, it's a clitic and not a case marker. It does descend from the Germanic genitive case, though.

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

#163

Post by dhosek » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

graeme wrote: post #121

filiphorvat wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? As someone who speaks a Slavic language with masculine, feminine and neuter genders (Croatian), I've never heard of anyone identifying as non-binary in my language. It'd be extremely difficult because all adjectives and verbs in some tenses change based on the gender of the person i…

> It REALLY doesn't matter and it only bothers people who don't speak gendered languages. May depend on place and culture. I recall my French teacher in 4th grade got snide about this while explaining that even a single man in a group will turn the group masculine. She was francophone. This certainly bothers anglos much much more though.

I remember when I realized this learning Spanish that it made me a little sad that I could only ever be part of ellos and not ellas.

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

#164

Post by ravishi » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

filiphorvat wrote: post #119

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…

>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? As someone who speaks a Slavic language with masculine, feminine and neuter genders (Croatian), I've never heard of anyone identifying as non-binary in my language. It'd be extremely difficult because all adjectives and verbs in some tenses change based on the gender of the person i…

That resonates a lot with my observations as a native brazilian portuguese speaker. The gender of a thing has to do with how the word ends (o for male, a for female, e and r are a bit more tricky).

Yet we have imported the whole gender neutral language agenda. I find it interesting, because the changes to the language would be way more drastic.

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

#165

Post by denton-scratch » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #154

denton-scratch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why "instead of Latin"? Your requirement seems to be orthogonal to the existence of Latin. Latin's a dead language; we can't submit pull-requests. English (etc.) are living languages; people are committing changes to them all the time, with no maintainer to oversee the project. Sure, I'd be happy not having had to spend schooldays learning French and Latin irregular verbs. But these languages weren't developed for de…

Latin's a dead language; we can't submit pull-requests. We sort of can: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/57/what-is-the-pro...

OK, I suppose I should have guessed that Contemporary Latin is a thing.

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

#166

Post by huma » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

kgeist wrote: post #115

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…

In Russian, gender confusion is mostly about professions (the rest of the gender system makes no sense, like a car is "she" but the plane is "he" -- so no one bothers with it). For example, the word for "doctor" is, well, "doktor". But the word is masculine. There's a feminine derivation, "doctorsha" - "female doctor" -- but it sounds somewhat condenscending to me, like you doubt her competence. "Oh this doktorsha pr…

> the rest of the gender system makes no sense, like a car is "she" but the plane is "he" -- so no one bothers with it

It's actually pretty straightforward. Generally, nouns ending with an "a" are feminine, with an "o" are neuter, the rest are masculine.

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

#167

Post by FreakLegion » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:25 AM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #102

telotortium wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dislike the term "gender" in linguistics. Many languages have grammatical gender that has nothing to do with masculine/feminine. You realize that the use of gender for grammatical noun class is the original meaning of the word, correct? Gender comes from the Latin genus, generis (via Old French), which means type, kind, sort. The genders in Latin were called masculine, feminine, and neuter because one of the noun…

Um... From TFA: When the Romans started to get interested in grammar, genus came to mean “kind” of noun or “gender”, but because genus could also refer to biological sex, male and female, these concepts were occasionally conflated.

This is overstated. They used genus contextually, in an abstract sense, for biological sex, in the same way we might use kind for a brand of soda ("what kind of soda do you want?"), but genus didn't have the concrete meaning of biological sex for them any more than kind has the concrete meaning of soda brand for us.

It's the same for Greek γένος, e.g. in Plato's Symposium:

> πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ τρία ἦν τὰ γένη τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, οὐχ ὥσπερ νῦν δύο, ἄρρεν καὶ θῆλυ --189d

It's fair to translate that into modern English as "Originally there were three genders [or sexes] of human being, not two like now, male and female", but the specific meaning of sex or gender isn't there, just kind. It's a general word being used in a general way (literally, in fact: genus -> general).

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

#168

Post by leephillips » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:28 AM UTC

dwmbt wrote: post #159

leephillips wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two different descriptors of what?

i've found that there are arguments being had between people my age that sex is a biological descriptor (M/F) and that gender is a looser, more amorphous descriptor. for instance, you can be born a man (your biological sex) and identify as non-binary (your gender). i'm interested to see how the origin of the words could contribute to that discussion.

Various philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, have pointed out that much of what sounds like discussion only exists because one can arrange words into grammatically sensible sentences. That doesn't mean the discussion is actually about anything. People who know the words “Earth” and “flat” can theorize about whether the Earth is flat, but it’s a waste of time to pay any attention to them. A “non-binary” “gender” is just a noise with no idea attached to it.

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

#169

Post by names_are_hard » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

filiphorvat wrote: post #119

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…

>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? As someone who speaks a Slavic language with masculine, feminine and neuter genders (Croatian), I've never heard of anyone identifying as non-binary in my language. It'd be extremely difficult because all adjectives and verbs in some tenses change based on the gender of the person i…

> One other thing is, when referring to a mixed group of people, you use a masculine form of plural, same as "latinos". It REALLY doesn't matter and it only bothers people who don't speak gendered languages.

This is the traditional rule in Hebrew as well and it most certainly bothers people. Lately I've seen a lot of writing and occasionally even speech that attempts to be gender neutral by using the Hebrew equivalent of "he/she" or "he or she" and sometimes "she or he". Hebrew has a lot more gender than English, so it's pervasive.

For example, at work I might get an email that starts: Dear employees (female suffix) and employees (male suffix)...

P.S. This trend is often associated with a certain popular feminist politician and has been the subject of jokes in political comedy, eg: https://youtu.be/cu3E9Nf_Z6w

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

#170

Post by culi » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

kkoncevicius wrote: post #34

culi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter You're just making up hypothetical reactions by a group of people you clearly have some preconceived notions about... The fact that the word "woman" is etymologically derived from the root word "man" can be, and has been, scientifically validated.

> The fact that the word "woman" is etymologically derived from the root word "man" can be, and has been, scientifically validated. But this doesn't disagree with anything I've said.

It provides a basis to argue about the sexism of the words we use for the two genders. What's the basis for arguing that "word is short. that's sexist". There is none and I don't think feminist scholars are stupid so I doubt they'd try to make such a baseless argument. And I'm really struggling to see why you would just assume they would...