Re: Traditional gender-free "he" [was: Re: "16 and 276 are 292"? No. [was: Re: Lack of vocabulary in English?]]

From: Claude Beaudouin (claude.beaudouin_at_lmco.com)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:24:43 -0800

Wow. What a discussion.

In my limited language education, my professors explained that
linguistic/grammatical gender is separate and unrelated to biological
gender. But maybe today they would not be considered PC.

Imagine if we start discussing the injustices and appropriateness of the
gender of nouns in the romance languages. Why is hand (la main) feminin
and finger (le doigt) masculin in French? Think of all the possibilites
for speculation and and analysis in newsgroups such as this one, for
this example and thousands more one could devise.

Bob Cunningham wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 14:51:10 -0500, "Maria Conlon"
> <mariaconlon001@hotmail.com> said:
>
> [...]
>
> > And: There is no "gender-free" "he" for many of us, as
> > we've discussed a few times. <smile>
>
> There may be no current widely used gender-free "he", but
> there is, as I implied, a *traditional* gender-free "he".
>
> I like to think that the feminist fever now prevailing will
> eventually subside and the traditional gender-free "he" will
> return to its rightful place in the language.

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