OT: Re: gender-neutral English usage

Atilla Filiz atilla.filiz at gmail.com
Tue Jan 19 16:38:39 CET 2010


Something I love about Turkish language, almost nothing is gender specific,
and it is hard to be so. The only common gender specific words are the ones
describing family relations. We have very precise words for "sister of
father" or so but as I said, gender is irrelevant for the rest.
In German, not only words related to people, but words themselves have
genders, which I find annoying. The most funny example I remember is Das
Meer(sea, neutral), Die See(sea, feminine), Der See(lake masculine).

"Doktor" is normally male, but can be used as ("implicitly") female, and the
> use is widely accepted. However, most words can be made "explicitly" female
> - "doktor" would become "doktorka".
> The most famous example of the latter is "psycholog" and "psycholożka"
> (psychologist), which are accepted by the Polish Language Board, but sound
> extremely cheesy in my opinion.
>
This is similar in Bulgarian, as all professions are male by default, and
have female counterparts.  Objects also have genders, and they are made
plural etc. depending on their gender.

Oops, I think this thread is drifting away, sorry.

-- 
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Atilla Filiz
Eindhoven University of Technology
Embedded Systems, Master's Programme
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