Gender-Neutral English
The other
day I was exchanging msgs with a fellow noder who is studying
Spanish. She made the common error of saying , thinking that the final
a in
idioma would make the word feminine. So she used
las for the
English "the" instead of the correct
los. In all the languages I know, except perhaps for artificial languages like Esperanto where language can be whipped into
consistency, there are always exceptions to rules about identifying
gender in
nouns.
Of course in English most nouns don't give much trouble in that regard. Since we don't have much of a
case system, the noun doesn't change to indicate gender, but on occasion the
pronouns can be tricky. Nouns are generally "it" unless your talking about your
girlfiend, which we assume is
feminine, or your favorite
quarterback, which we have to assume is
masculine. It's tempting to
observe that with the new morality and the move to gender-neutral language all that might change. A wife may be masculine and a quarterback feminine. Come to think of it, that's already happening.
For reasons unknown to me, automobiles and ships are feminine -- we speak of them as "she." And I think we can get away with calling most machines "she," as well. But, I can't think of any
inanimate object that we refer to has "he." There are many instances, however, of collective nouns that appear masculine, such as "man" in the generic sense. Still, feminists are beginning to point out problems in English that I never knew existed. For example, I've seen a report title that read "Development of the Uterus in Rats, Guinea Pigs, and Men" which conjures up a strange picture. It's also obvious that this writer appeared confused by linguistic gender in "As for man, he is no different from the rest. His back aches, he ruptures easily, his women have difficulties in childbirth . . . "
I personally am not very happy with the solutions presented so far, but, then, I'm a linguistic
conservative. Here is one example around a search for a gender-neutral English.
Generic 3rd person singular - Currently the standard is "each student turns in his report at the end of the period." Does that mean that female students don't have to?
Solution: "each student turns in their report..." making the 3rd person plural the generic 3rd person singular. Sting evidently prefers this solution when he sings, "If you love someone, set them free..." Or we could say, "each student turns in his or her report..." Now that is a mouthful!
Circumlocutions
Instead of "
mankind" use
humanity,
people,
human beings
Instead of "man's achievements" use
human achievements
Instead of "the best man for the job" use "the best person for the job"
Instead of "man-made" use "synthetic, manufactured"
Instead of "the
common man" use "the average person, ordinary people"
Instead of "nine man-hours" use "nine staff-hours"
There, gentlemen, I mean gentlepersons, is the problem. What is your
solution?