aristoteliancomplacency:

terpsikeraunos:

carminapossunt:

terpsikeraunos:

rottenbrainstuff:

terpsikeraunos:

bombusperplexus:

my dad keeps asking why grammatical gender isn’t sexist and I just

idk what to say to this, like words directly relating to people should be able to be made gender neutral, I can see wanting that, but like…grammatical gender is usually just a tool for declensions and word agreement

am I wrong like reply what you think too so I can get a coherent argument

I hate when my parents try to start political arguments with me it’s so stressful and they always expect me to respond and debate immediately? I don’t want to debate my parents

because it has nothing to do with systemic oppression of women, except in some instances when it applies to people, but that also exists in a mostly non gendered language like english. come to think of it, do native speakers of languages with grammatical gender think of these words as gendered? or is it more a tool for non native speakers trying to learn them? even in latin you can’t really divide the declensions based on gender alone since there are always exceptions, like agricola, nauta, etc. in 1st and the feminine 2nd declension tree nouns. it’s about the common inflections more than gender.

I’m sorry, I don’t have sources and I’m too busy to google.

But I have read in the past that cultures with gendered languages are generally more sexist than countries with gender neutral languages. I don’t know. It makes sense to me. The languages we learn have an incredible impact on the way we think. I’ve read some fascinating articles about the way language affects how we think. And to have the entire world broken down in male and female (and sometimes neither) I don’t know, it makes sense to me.

I had also read a think talking about how gendered language affects how people view and describe objects. I think they compared Italian and German? In one language, the word “bridge” is feminine, and in the other, it is masculine. When people were asked to describe the qualities of a bridge, they used different kinds of words. People for whom the word “bridge” was masculine would use traditionally “masculine” traits to describe it, like powerful, strong, etc, and people for whom is was feminine would use traditionally feminine traits, like supportive, etc.

That kind of thing.

Language shapes our thoughts. It’s so incredibly important. I think things like gendered grammar absolutely have an effect.

idk, those studies can get a bit over-simplified though…i mean, in latin, the word for manliness, “virtus,” is a feminine noun. actually, same thing with ancient greek “andreia.” it’s because abstract nouns happen to have that ending. sailor, farmer, and poet are feminine in latin. farmer was one of the highest lauded professions by conservative romans like cato the elder. demokratia and respublica are feminine, yet no women were full citizens.

Actually, nauta, agricola, and poeta (along with incola, auriga, pirata, or even Catilina, and a host of other 1st declension nouns that refer to people/professions the Romans regarded as male) are absolutely not feminine; they’re masculine.  (The mnemonic is that they are PAIN nouns, because it’s a pain to remember that they take masculine agreement).  bonus agricola, ‘the good farmer’, not *bona agricola.

Anthony Corbeill just published a book (Sexing the World) on how Latin’s grammatical gender affected Romans’ thinking etc. that I am DYING to get my hands on.  (Maybe today is the day to give in and buy it on Amazon…)

oh, whoops, i meant that they are in 1st declension, which is primarily feminine. facepalm.

The ‘bridge’ study is probably this one. For what it’s worth, last time I read it, I did not sit there thinking ‘meh, this feels like over-simplified bullshit’. But the idea that language isn’t sexist because sometimes there are ‘good’ concepts with feminine nouns seems, with all due respect, to be possibly a bit simplistic. It’s not the case that sexist language requires all ‘feminine’ words to be negative, and all ‘male’ words to be positive. The Boroditsky, Schmidt & Phillips chapter certainly isn’t arguing that; it’s to do with what other concepts which we traditionally gender we then bring to bear on a gendered word: if it’s feminine it’s small, dainty, pretty; if it’s masculine it’s big, strong, durable. In and of itself this would probably just be an interesting quirk of language, but given that these are also concepts we apply to people, it’s easy to see how such usage is part of a far larger, more problematic system. Whether it’s just one more visible sign of that system, or whether it actively contributes to it might be another matter (I would argue that it would probably be dependent on the word – it’s easy to see how words relating to certain professions being heavily gendered one way or another might be problematic…)