The English Language Needs a Neutral Gender

[SleepyWitch]

Ultimately this lack of correlation between natural and grammatical gender is what led to the total break-down of grammitcal gender in the English language in the later Old English period, but that is another story. It is interesting to note that modern German has a similiar dissonance between natural and grammatical gender, but their gender system is here to stay.

.... 'women, fire, and dangerous things' (the source of the title of a popular book on linguistics).

Have you come across any explanations why grammatical gender vanished in English but is still there in German? If this break-down happened in the later Old English period then it can't have been due to the Norman Conquest and the loss of English as a written language, can it?

Heehee, if you want a good laugh, read Mark Twain's "The Aweful German Language" It's soooo true!

would that be the book by George Lakoff? Can you recommend it?

[SheykAbdullah]

Have you come across any explanations why grammatical gender vanished in English but is still there in German? If this break-down happened in the later Old English period then it can't have been due to the Norman Conquest and the loss of English as a written language, can it?

Well, there are a multitude of reasons why German maintained a gender system and English didn't, part of the reason is that German maintained an inflexional system where English lost it. Some of this may be due to the German use of printing before English, a need to maintain an artificially unified German language so that the various independant baronys and fiefdoms could maintain a lingua franca, and other reasons that cause a language to become ossified in one particular state of development over another.

Additioanlly, though I am not one hundred percent sure on this, I believe an academy for German grammar was established fairly early on. English has never had an Academy for controlling its grammar, and therefore (despite what English teachers may preach) English has no 'official' grammar. Of course, it has grammaratical particulars that are better in certain situations. It has a rather democratically accepted 'right' way of being spoken, but there is no book that contains 'the rules' for English, as it were, thus English has been allowed more free room to grow and lose certain items out than German, French, Spanish, Arabic or even Sanskrit, the last whose rules were codified several thousands of years ago and has since resulted in no change of the language despite its near-contemporary use for generating Vedic commentary. The closest thing English has ever had to an academt is important only to the British, and that is the king. Often in English history (and the current pronounciation of the 't' in 'often' by some may be related to the royal influence of one of the early twentieth century monarchs), the royal family has been the most efficient arbiter of the language. Of course, the king's opinion of how English should be spoken matters little to Americans (often said to speak a 'President's English,' though the president's opinion of language carries much less currency with us, which is probably for the best as Andrew Jackson once said 'I don't trust a man who knows only one way to spell a word; our only president to have had no formal education.), who are, ironically enough, traditionally more pedagogical in English grammar instruction than their English counterparts and rely on dictionaries to fix pronunciation and spelling but nothing else. All of this is why English appears as a hap-hazard, disorganized language until the nineteenth century and the English dictionary movement. Before then isolated scholars, mathematicians, and any one who felt like it created competing schools of English linguistic thought, mostly based on the inflexional characteristics of Latin which as the mother of Romance languages relies heavily one things like mood (which is also present in German as the sunbjunctive) but it totally absent in English as it is spoken now, which made a Latin interpretation of English grammar messy, useless, overly complicated and regressive (even today you can find a thousand different opinions of the word 'shall' almost none of which take into accounts its true origins as the future tense of the defective 'should' and mark it as an obsolete subjunctive mood verb).

The loss of gender in the English language predates the Conquest. In the writings of the Venerable Beade there is some confusion of gender references, particularly with words whose natural and grammatical gender was dissimiliar, such as 'wife' which he sometimes used 'it' to refer to the word and sometimes used 'her.' In fact, if anything the Conquest should have maintained a gender system as it was present in the French at the time as it reamins today.

In any case, gender and inflexions in general were already in decay by the time of the Norman invasion and only became less and less relevant as time went on, however an inflexional tradition still remains in English today, which is how we got such ridiculous grammar rules about 'who' and 'whom', 'will' and 'shall', nominal forms after linking verbs, etc etc.

As far as the loss of English as a written language, English was never lost as a written language. The use of French as an official language of the court, and therefore court supported arts, at the time of the Conquest was brief and lasted only as long as the courtiers in England actually spoke French actively in preference to English, however poetry and ballads still continued to be produced in English through out the period of a French dominated court, but they were not given official patronage by the king and were relegated to the enjoyment of the minor Saxon lords and their serfs who were totally unimportant as far as the whole society in general went.

If you are referring to the use of runic symbols as a means of writing English, the runes never produced a literature or true literary tradition. They were the central aspects of pagan mystery cults practiced by the Germans, and with Ogham, the Celts, and their use was strictly limited to burail totems and magic spells.

[Redzeppelin]

cuppajoe's question is of course one of the big topics that English teachers have to deal with in teaching writing. I suppose the question points to the issue of audience: to whom is the writing directed? In other words, in informal writing, you (oops - 2nd person reference!) can use any pronoun you like. In formal writing (like college papers and such) you really can't use "they" because that word is inaccurate if you are talking about one person and any sentence using it becomes a grammatic "lie." Yes - the "he or she/him or her" (and e.e. cummings-ish "s/he" - which I tend to use in referring to posters here) is ugly and awkward - but what is one to do?

I have noticed in reading contemporary books a number of trends. One is for a writer to flip back and forth between the genders within a chapter or from chapter to chapter (often with a disclaimer in the beginning to explain this usage). Other writers (usually female because they can get away with this I think, in our PC culture more easily than men can) will simply stick to the gender they are - i.e. male writers use "he" and female use "she." And, some take the opposite tack - male writers use "she" (to appear PC or whatever) and female use "he" (though I don't recall having seen that usage very often).

I think at this point, the second option is fine. 50 years ago, a woman writer - by convention - would have had to use "he" - but since the convention has changed, she can use "she" - so why the fuss anymore? Does it really indicate non-PC writing to use "he" when discussing an implied individual?

[Jolly McJollyso]

As far as I'm concerned, I use the traditional "he" neutrally. If the reader wishes to associate that particular use of "he" with a male, that's his doing.

[zanna]

There is also the context to consider. We usually say "he" for unknown people . . . "He just cut me off!" even though it could have been a female driver. But then there is the debate about countries, ships, etc. Countries are almost always "she," except for Germany, which is "he," and ships are almost always "she"s. So, sometimes we assign genders to things that don't have them, like the ships and countries. That still doesn't fix the problem with people, tho.

Here is another wrench to throw in: what if the person is of, say, male gender, but feels like a female? I have a friend, Richard/Rachel, who complicates the matter even more. Do I say him, because's he's physically a male, or say she, because she feels psycologically female? It is just not cool. Sorry for the can of worms, but something to think about.

I think the hir concept is interesting. A pronunciation tip: maybe think of it like pen and pin. We say her almost with a "u" sometimes; hur. But hir would be between "ee" and "i." Not quite "deer," but close.

Anyhoo, weigh in, peoples. What do y'all think?

[Redzeppelin]

Here is another wrench to throw in: what if the person is of, say, male gender, but feels like a female? I have a friend, Richard/Rachel, who complicates the matter even more. Do I say him, because's he's physically a male, or say she, because she feels psycologically female? It is just not cool. Sorry for the can of worms, but something to think about.

Well, I personally don't think we're required to operate on the principle of what people "feel" like. Are we obligated to address people by that which they internally "feel"? I don't think so. Your friend's "gender confusion" doesn't obligate you to accomodate the dissonance between who is appears to be and "feels" he is.

I think the hir concept is interesting. A pronunciation tip: maybe think of it like pen and pin. We say her almost with a "u" sometimes; hur. But hir would be between "ee" and "i." Not quite "deer," but close.

Anyhoo, weigh in, peoples. What do y'all think?

I already dislike the de-gendering of our language. I liked "waiter" and "waitress," "steward" and "stewardess," "actor and actress." Since when did calling things by gender imply an inequality? I still think that writers should be able to write as they wish - why do I have to use any specific pronoun at all? If I wrote and used the feminine "she" consistently, who'd have a problem with that? Probably no one, and I'd be deemed some "sensitive" modern politically correct (or whatever) male writer; but if I decide to use "he" I'm a chauvanist? Nah - the switchover has occurred. Writers, both male and female are not required to use the masculine pronoun anymore - so why do we need to blend them together?

[#57]

Try: "It."

[brainstrain]

Theres always the tasteful "shman" as a poor girl in my World History class has been dubbed...

"It" works too, but it is rather impersonal. We should invent one...how bout..."Mhe"? I like it =P

[zanna]

Well said, Redzeppelin! I personally don't find it offensive at all to just stick with "he," and think it should be the prefrence of the writer. It shouldn't matter to anyone else; if the reader is going to be offended, then they probably shouldn't read it. Personally not a fan of everything PC, either, although I think it has its good points. I also like the titles that differenciate, but there are some I don't know of. Is there are feminine word for "doctor?" That might be handy to have.

[SheykAbdullah]

There is also the context to consider. We usually say "he" for unknown people . . . "He just cut me off!" even though it could have been a female driver. But then there is the debate about countries, ships, etc. Countries are almost always "she," except for Germany, which is "he," and ships are almost always "she"s. So, sometimes we assign genders to things that don't have them, like the ships and countries. That still doesn't fix the problem with people, tho.

The assignment of gender to countries and ships is directly related to what grammatcial gender they possesed before English lost gender in the language.

A neutral third person pronoun (not the same as gender) exists in English as in almost every other language in the impersonal 'one' ('on' in French, 'se' in Spanish, etc), which is used more often in other languages than English.

[certiorari]

I usually use they, one, them, our... etc. On one of my notes for Economics class we were reading an excerpt of "The Wealth of Nations," I wrote to the side "Why did people just use him, his, he, and man?" It's just kind of not right that women are excluded in older documents.

As for german, it gets confusing with all those der, die, das, dem, den, denen... etc. Though, just to add to what Thorwench said on the first page (I didn't realize until my reply was posted that there was more than one page), Mädchen is basically "it" but meaning young girls, and it's really not that fair that girls are called "it's".

[Niamh]

it's acceptable to use 'they' and 'one' instead of (s)he etc over here. You dont get marked downn for it. I always use they as it's less complicated.

[SheykAbdullah]

I usually use they, one, them, our... etc. On one of my notes for Economics class we were reading an excerpt of "The Wealth of Nations," I wrote to the side "Why did people just use him, his, he, and man?" It's just kind of not right that women are excluded in older documents.

As for german, it gets confusing with all those der, die, das, dem, den, denen... etc. Though, just to add to what Thorwench said on the first page (I didn't realize until my reply was posted that there was more than one page), Mädchen is basically "it" but meaning young girls, and it's really not that fair that girls are called "it's".

Calling a girl 'it' has nothing to do with gender discrimination. It also has nothing to do with any kind of actual gender. In language gramatical gender is totally different than natural gender. In fact, the only reason we dscuss words as having 'gender' is to give a convenient term for catagorizing linguistic phenomenon from a Euro-centric viewpoint. The catalogs of language are rife with conflicts of actual gender and grammatical gender and grammatical gender can cover many more catagories than natural gender. For example, Swahili has fifteen seperate genders.

As for the use of 'man,' I throughly approve of it. In English the term need not be discriminatory as the word 'woman' comes from the word 'wyfman' in Middle English, meaning a female person. In any case, 'man' in Old English was a neuter which referred to people in general and the actual word for woman and man were totally different ('wer' and 'wyf' respectively). Man had a seperate existence denoting the entire human race for a very long time, nearly until modern English, as such it is not an improper or discriminatory term to employ in language to describe the human race.

[SummerSolstice]

Is that what they're calling it nowadays? "Grammatical Gender" and "Actual Gender"? Hogwash! It's "gender" and "sex." That's what it's always been until people got this bizarre deal going on and got all squeamish over saying the word "sex" when there is absolutely nothing about such a sense that any sane person could be squeamish over! Ugh!

[Niamh]

Is that what they're calling it nowadays? "Grammatical Gender" and "Actual Gender"? Hogwash! It's "gender" and "sex." That's what it's always been until people got this bizarre deal going on and got all squeamish over saying the word "sex" when there is absolutely nothing about such a sense that any sane person could be squeamish over! Ugh!

Hear Hear! i completely agree!