European Languages sexist? [Archive]

Hexen

28th March 2009, 18:10

Devrim

28th March 2009, 18:17

Turkish is in many ways a gender neutral language, certainly much more so than English. It doesn't have different pronouns for he/she/it, but instead it has one 'o'. It fact it doesn't even have different words for brother or sister (if they are younger). It uses an equivilant of the English sibling.

Of course all of this has led to Turkey becoming a society in which sexism is virtually unknown.

Devrim

hammer and sickle

28th March 2009, 18:24

There is a diffrence between opposing sexism and pretending genders dont exist! Sure you shouldnt treat peple diffrently based of their gender but the argument that gender dosnt exist is foolish!

Invincible Summer

28th March 2009, 20:01

I don't think that having gendered language is sexist. Yes, is makes one differentiate between male and female (and in some cases, as in German, neutral), but it's not like the language puts more weight/importance to one or the other.

It's the way we use the language that makes it sexist, not the language itself.

The article gives very tenuous evidence that these languages are inherently "sexist." For example, there is a German word for pub, bar, etc that is feminine - "die Kneipe." As for "Trinker" being "drunkard," almost every sort of noun that refers to a type of person can be made feminine by adding "in" to it. Therefore, drunkard can either be masculine (Trinker) or feminine (Trinkerin).

LeninBalls

28th March 2009, 20:35

A dick in french is "une bitte" (feminine), so yeah. I don't think the languages themselves are sexist, having genders just makes things that bit easier.

Sean

28th March 2009, 22:04

So the question is, can the English language (including European languages like German, Spanish, Italian, etc) be altered so not only will be gender neutralYes. Hop on the Lojban (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban) train and make up your own language.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/lojban.png

I don't think I can add anything more to this other than to point out that spoken language is something that evolves, its not just written down for a single purpose and learned. Good luck getting anyone to speak your new language!

but also genderless aswell thus creating a non-sexist society in the process?No. That's just fucking stupid. Political correctness is useful to make people think twice about the language they use and to that end its successful. It is not a means of world domination and complete thought control. Funny enough this is the second such discussion in discrimination that involved the destruction of language as some kind of magic bullet today.

Protip: Academic bullshit is what it is, and if this is the best people can come up with as a solution it explains the helpless victim mentality that seems to run through most of the threads in this forum.

Sarah Palin

28th March 2009, 22:06

Mr could me any type of man, but there is Mrs. (hands off) Ms, and Miss.

Glorious Union

28th March 2009, 22:11

Why does this matter? I'm not learning Turkish or Lojban. I like English, thanks.

But then again, if we were to get rid of one word and replace it with another already existing that would be easy and understandable ie: replace the word 'sister' with 'brother', therefor meaning all siblings are to be called 'brothers'. Or vice versa.

Sean

28th March 2009, 22:19

But then again, if we were to get rid of one word and replace it with another already existing that would be easy and understandable ie: replace the word 'sister' with 'brother', therefor meaning all siblings are to be called 'brothers'. Or vice versa.
"Hello man, My brother is in the men's changing room." Yeah, destroying any indication of gender in the language wouldn't cause any problem at all.:laugh: We're humans, not fucking smurfs!:rolleyes:

Revy

28th March 2009, 22:56

Does anyone think that European languages such as German, Spanish, French,etc are sexist? Since I found a interesting article proving they are...

http://specgram.com/Babel.I.1/05.files.gender.html

Another thing I also discovered that the English language is also sexist since it also uses gender based nouns such as "he" "she" "her" "him" "son" "father" "mother" "daughter" due to the existence of Genderless Language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutrality_in_genderless_languages) where such words I listed above are unified to mean the same thing (like "oo" means both "he" and "she" and such)

So the question is, can the English language (including European languages like German, Spanish, Italian, etc) be altered so not only will be gender neutral but also genderless aswell thus creating a non-sexist society in the process?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutrality_in_genderless_languages)

No, I do not find them sexist. Nor should we assume that genderless languages create non-patriarchal societies, as there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

There are no rules in Spanish as to what word is feminine or masculine.

Certain words associated with either gender are given a different grammatical gender than you would expect.

If it's so sexist, why is "person" (la persona) feminine? Even when both people are male, you still say "las personas". Grammatical gender is a linguistic thing, not societal.

Gender neutrality =/= gender equality.

Hexen

28th March 2009, 23:49

Mr could me any type of man, but there is Mrs. (hands off) Ms, and Miss.

Speaking of "Ms" "Mrs" and such I heard the European Union recently banned those words because they said it was sexist

article here

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1162384/EU-bans-use-Miss-Mrs-sportsmen-statesmen-claims-sexist.html#comments

Sean

29th March 2009, 00:52

No, I do not find them sexist. Nor should we assume that genderless languages create non-patriarchal societies, as there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

There are no rules in Spanish as to what word is feminine or masculine.

Certain words associated with either gender are given a different grammatical gender than you would expect.

If it's so sexist, why is "person" (la persona) feminine? Even when both people are male, you still say "las personas". Grammatical gender is a linguistic thing, not societal.

Gender neutrality =/= gender equality.
Precisely, Stancel. If anything, this whole argument (and Hexen isn't to blame, I've heard this crap before a few times) is an embarrassment to any kind of discussion about gender equality. So while the type of people that bring this nonsense to the fore are busying themselves deciding if they should renovate their sexist house into something gender-neutral by pulling off all their fucking skirting boards, I'm sure there are plenty more serious people fighting for equal rights and pay. And if you think I'm reducing this argument to absurdity, scroll up and read it all again!

Revy

29th March 2009, 01:33

Precisely, Stancel. If anything, this whole argument (and Hexen isn't to blame, I've heard this crap before a few times) is an embarrassment to any kind of discussion about gender equality. So while the type of people that bring this nonsense to the fore are busying themselves deciding if they should renovate their sexist house into something gender-neutral by pulling off all their fucking skirting boards, I'm sure there are plenty more serious people fighting for equal rights and pay. And if you think I'm reducing this argument to absurdity, scroll up and read it all again!

I think it has to do with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has been largely discredited.

Basically, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the grammar of a language has an effect on how the speaker sees the world.

For example, let's say that a language uses the same word for "grandmother" as it does for "mother". Are we to assume that the speaker would not know the difference between a grandmother and a mother?

The relation this has to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is, the idea that if a language is not gender neutral, that its speaker will not be able to think of the sexes in equal terms, and that if a language is gender neutral, the problem of sexism will disappear because its speakers will see women just as people and be more concerned about their rights.

Well, Persian is a completely gender neutral language, but yet Iran and other Persian speaking nations are certainly not egalitarian on gender. "Oo labash raa boosid" can mean "He kissed her lips", "She kissed his lips", "He kissed his lips", "she kissed her lips". From a Sapir-Whorf perspective, this would seem to eliminate the problem of heterosexist thought as well, but it doesn't.

Sean

29th March 2009, 01:51

I think it has to do with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has been largely discredited.
Oh! When I wikied that hypothesis for an expansion, I noticed that E-Prime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime) was listed as one of the topics. I actually tried E-Prime about 3 years ago for over a week just to see if it changed my outlook on life in some deep and meaningful way. It didn't. The only thing it made me do was pause before talking and paraphrase something without the dreaded verb, to be! Much like political correctness in fact...wow I'm a dork.

al8

29th March 2009, 05:02

To stop using grammatical gender will not automatically usher in gender equality. But eliminating the use of grammatical gender will certainly avoid a lot of confusion of it to actual gender. So I fully support attemts to construct logically structured languages devoid of gramatical gender.

To give an example, in icelandic the word mann is gramatically masculine but means 'human', however because it is gramatically masculine people often confuse it and think that the word only refers to males. So, somtimes, when people want to be aware of gender equality, they say "...many humans (pause) and women..." implying that women are not human... ouch.
People are lead to this kind of confusion because often grammatical gender and actual gender mach fx. maðurinn 'the man' is gramatically masculine, konan 'the woman' is grammatically feminine. But often they simply do not.

I can think of countless examples of the confusion grammatical gender brings. It's totally unnescissary. And dumping it won't hinder one to refer to somones gender. Do chairs have to have 'gender' in order for one to be able to refer to men or women? I don't think so.

Lynx

29th March 2009, 06:39

Mr could me any type of man, but there is Mrs. (hands off) Ms, and Miss.
Yes sir! Yes ma'am! Yes, comrade...

Devrim

29th March 2009, 07:42

Why does this matter? I'm not learning Turkish or Lojban. I like English, thanks.

I think that you misunderstood what I was saying:

Turkish is in many ways a gender neutral language,...

Of course all of this has led to Turkey becoming a society in which sexism is virtually unknown.

I was being sarcastic. I don't think that Turkey is a society without sexism at all, and I don't think that the absence of gender in a language is in any way related to the level of sexism within a society that speaks that language. I gave Turkey as an example of the opposite.

I think it has to do with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has been largely discredited.

Well, yes it has, but I think that it is still an idea which has some influence within society despite having been discredited.

Devrim

Wanted Man

29th March 2009, 10:47

The article gives very tenuous evidence that these languages are inherently "sexist." For example, there is a German word for pub, bar, etc that is feminine - "die Kneipe." As for "Trinker" being "drunkard," almost every sort of noun that refers to a type of person can be made feminine by adding "in" to it. Therefore, drunkard can either be masculine (Trinker) or feminine (Trinkerin).
Indeed. If the author omits such things (either deliberately, because it undermines his argument, or out of ignorance), then how can his conclusion be taken seriously? He takes nine words and from them, he says: "The words listed show conclusively that all nouns in Western European languages are inherently sexist." :confused:

Besides, my German is a little dusty, but from what I recall, almost all singular nouns that end in "-e" are feminine in German. I'm not sure if it's a specific rule with a few exceptions, or just something that developed as such. But even a cursory understanding of one of these languages completely undermines this guy's arguments!

Also, in the Dutch language, the masculine and feminine gender have merged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Dutch) into the pronoun "de", leaving only "het" for gender-neutral words, while the word for "his" and "its" are the same. Does that mean Dutch language is sexist against men, because men are equated with objects? :rolleyes: In any case, the author omits it here, while he does strangely lump Spanish and French together with English and German under "traditional European languages".

Sasha

29th March 2009, 13:43

Sean

29th March 2009, 15:02

i do know that when i was in finland i had the feeling that although social-conservative it was a way less sexist/more gender neutral society than the netherlands.
i also know that finish is a almost "gender neutral" language.
so the articel could hold some ground, although with finish i dont know what came first a gender neutral attitude or a gender nuetral language and i also dont know wheter or not one is the consequence of the other.
but its intresting.
I've never been to Finland, but I'm gonna go right ahead and say no. Even if we say that the Finnish language didn't develop into a proper gender neutral form until say the middle ages (an era admittedly I'm pulling out of my ass as a guestimate based on about 2 minutes of research into its history) in the grand historical scheme of things Finland's womens suffrage happened around the same time as everyone else's, whether they be the first European country by a few years or not.

Seriously, this whole thread is ridiculous, and to attribute the women's rights that were fought for in the last century to the way that men said brother or sister or whatever is frankly a slap in the face. Its an interesting subject but lets not get carried away and think it actually did anything. Women's rights movements got women's rights, not the way the men in power happened to pronounce woman.

RaÃºl Duke

30th March 2009, 20:34

Another thing I also discovered that the English language is also sexist since it also uses gender based nouns such as "he" "she" "her" "him" "son" "father" "mother" "daughter"

can the English language (including European languages like German, Spanish, Italian, etc) be altered so not only will be gender neutral but also genderless aswell thus creating a non-sexist society in the process?
(http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutrality_in_genderless_languages) (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutrality_in_genderless_languages)

This is pretty interesting because something similar was discussed in my sociology class. Basically, the professor discussed a visit to the doctor. He then asked the class what came to mind when he said the word "[the] doctor." He then said that very likely most people assumed a old white male but the doctor was really a woman. We've been socialized to assume that most doctors are like this, etc, etc.

However, this incorrect assumption is difficult to make in a Romance language. In a language like Spanish you have gendered "the" (el/la) plus the nouns (like "doctor:) have different gendered-based versions (el doctor/la doctora) and you must (normally) use the correct one.

What happens is that in a Romance language arguably the subject's gender is less likely ambiguous then in a language like English. The question is: Does a language that makes gender ambiguous is less sexist then a language that makes gender explicit/unambiguous? Why does explicitly stating the subject's gender in general speech make a language more sexist?

Lynx

30th March 2009, 21:13

What happens is that in a Romance language arguably the subject's gender is less likely ambiguous then in a language like English. The question is: Does a language that makes gender ambiguous is less sexist then a language that makes gender explicit/unambiguous? Why does explicitly stating the subject's gender in general speech make a language more sexist?
Beats me. Should I say actor or actress?

Invincible Summer

30th March 2009, 22:56

Beats me. Should I say actor or actress?

Is it a man or a woman?

LOLseph Stalin

31st March 2009, 00:18

Invincible Summer

31st March 2009, 01:50

German has genders attached to nouns, but I don't think it's sexist because there's usually both female and male versions of words for things such as occupations(doctor, teacher, etc.). This could be indicating that a doctor is NOT only a male job and that a teacher is NOT only a female job.

Precisely. I gave examples earlier as well (eg. male teacher = Profesor, female = Profesorin usw.) and other languages such as Spanish have this characteristic as well in order to distinguish b/w sexes.

I think the guy who wrote this article to "prove" how these languages are sexist must have been pressed to submit some work or something, because he took maybe 7 words and showed the gender of them and came to some very tenuous conclusion that wouldn't suffice for a first year university assignment, IMO.

Seriously, his case was like.. maybe 10 sentences in total? Pretty weak.

MarxSchmarx

31st March 2009, 04:26

Does anybody here know what precisely is the link between grammatical gender and "real" gender?

Grammatical gender from what I understand is more of a convention than anything else. For instance Wolof, spoken in West Africa, has 16 genders. Does that make West Africans attune to 16 real genders?

I mean, what would change if we called grammatical genders "grammatical categories" or some such? Anything?

Of course all of this has led to Turkey becoming a society in which sexism is virtually unknown.

Ditto with the languages of such famously un-sexist cultures as Japan, Korea and China.

Rosa Lichtenstein

31st March 2009, 13:26

Sure, sexists can use language to push their foul ideas, but they can also use computers to do that. Does that make computers sexist?

Language as such cannot be sexist, since, for every sexist claim made in language, there exists its negation.

That is why we can say things like "Women are not inferior", "Men are not superior", as well as things like "Stop using the male pronoun all the time", and such like.