Patriarchy-ectomies in languages

[alice]

There are several well-known attempts to remove the supposed inbuilt sexist biases of English, such as the spelling "womyn" and the creation of gender-neutral pronouns. Is this sort of thing found in other languages too? Is there a movement in German to replace "man", for example, or to use something else in French for "Ils" when speaking of mixed genders?

For bonus points: do you have such things in your conlangs?

[Otto Kretschmer]

IIRC in Swedish (or Norwegian) a gender neutral pronoun was created.

[Creyeditor]

As for German, this is a hotly debated topic. Concerning your specific question, some people use frau (note the lack of a capital letter).

[xxx]

in French too, which is a language where the grammatical gender is disconnected from the sex, the activists of all stripes go about their reforms... from the feminization of professions to the attempt to have the pronoun "iel" approved...

yet the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is denied by all serious linguists...
and if the manipulation of the language does not make a less sexist language, the manipulation of the minds aims at creating a self-censorship...

- in the time of primitive societies of hunter-gatherers, animate and non-animate genders seem a choice of survival...

- the sexual genders became more important when the control of the environment gave way to that of lineage and property...

- nowadays, in a Malthusian world where reproduction has become THE problem, the eradication of the sexualization of language with the promotion of non-reproductive sexual practices seems to be de rigueur...

in my conlang, no gender...

[Travis B.]

As for German, this is a hotly debated topic. Concerning your specific question, some people use frau (note the lack of a capital letter).

The irony of this is that the use of gender-neutral man in German actually preserves the original gender-neutral meaning of PGmc *mannaz, which meant human.

[zompist]

yet the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is denied by all serious linguists...

No, this is an exaggeration. Suzette Haden Elgin, for instance, is a serious linguist and has written a book supporting it. Guy Deutscher has written about perhaps the best phenomenon that supports a mild version of SW: the different way speakers of direction-based languages look at the world, compared to those (like Europeans) who use relative terms. I don't think Daniel Everett talks about SW per se, but much of what he says about the Pirahã is compatible with it.

I'd say a lot of linguists feel that Whorf put things way too starkly, but that a position that languages influence culture (and vice versa) is widely accepted.

Finally, the opposing position that semantics are universal looks just as dogmatic, and has been widely criticized. Whether people "think differently" in other languages can be doubted, but it's also absurd that they all think in terms that happen to correspond to English words.

[xxx]

note that I don't give my opinion (it would be interesting to open a dedicated thread),
but in any case no serious linguist would believe to a Sapir Whorf effect
such that the manipulation in question is able to eliminate sexist uses...
or that genderless languages therefore avoid sexism...

[Travis B.]

Something to take into account about patriarchy-ectomies in different languages is the way that gender is treated. For instance, in the process of partriarchy-ectomization in English, we have largely abandoned -ess aside from in a few limited cases such as actress, yet German feminists have insisted on the opposite, i.e. the use of -in(nen) systematically, e.g. insisting on saying Politiker und Politikerinnen rather than just Politiker (pl.). (I am surprised they do not insist on Politikerinnen und Politiker...)

[Moose-tache]

note that I don't give my opinion (it would be interesting to open a dedicated thread),
but in any case no serious linguist would believe to a Sapir Whorf effect
such that the manipulation in question is able to eliminate sexist uses...
or that genderless languages therefore avoid sexism...

Well, this is a more interesting question. Certainly Turkish and Korean speakers are not innoculated against sexism by having few-to-no gender-specific pronouns. I don't think anyone would argue that changing "authoress" to "author" would eliminate sexism in the publishing industry. But then again, it might help a little. This was actually a sticking point for men in education during the mid twenieth century. I'll have to go find it, but I remember reading that a lot of men in education campaigned against the practice of refering to teachers as "she" by default in public discourse, because it affected their salary! If everyone assumed they were women, they would get paid less, a phenomenon that is by now about as well documented as the movements of the sun. Campaigning against sexist language is clearly missing the forest for the trees here since gender-based pay was the ultimate issue, but you can see the connection between gendered language and real world consequences. We can see similar shifts in salaries and demographics in other industries, like computer programming. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but some sort of causal connection between how we discuss and conceptualize work and how we reward work is happening. Addressing language could be a part of the overall strategy to address this problem.

[xxx]

as long as males are not pregnant, and breastfeeding,
I think that the remuneration linked to careers will never be balanced...

besides, manipulating thought to obtain a social change seems to me as detestable
as the worst policies of the totalitarian states of the 20th century...

finally, language is very much linked to identity,
and no one wants to lose his or her identity for completely subjective reasons...

[Linguoboy]

finally, language is very much linked to identity,
and no one wants to lose his or her identity for completely subjective reasons...

I don't see what the second statement has to do with the first. If eliminating "actress" from your active vocabulary would cause you to "lose your identity" then perhaps you need to find a firmer basis for it.

[xxx]

if, for reasons that have no purpose,
I claim to render obsolete the words you use,
I am touching your way of speaking,
and thus your identity...

[Travis B.]

One thing to consider is how much is one basically insisting that other people change their own lects to fit one's own sociopolitical goals. One case that comes to mind is people who try to deliberately replace you guys with y'all on the grounds that the former is sexist (even though women who use it natively will use it to refer to groups consisting solely of women, as I have seen reported), even though doing so is essentially negating one's native language variety and trying to import something foreign to it just to suit their own purposes. To me at least, you guys is very much part of my native lect and in turn is tied to my identity as an Upper Midwesterner, and I do not use y'all because I do not identify as a Southerner and I very much perceive y'all as a Southernism.

[zompist]

Let's can the language-change grousing. The question is about what people are trying in various languages, which is purely descriptive. You can answer without expressing disapproval of the damn hippies or whatever. Or if you can't answer, move to another topic.

[Travis B.]

Let's can the language-change grousing. The question is about what people are trying in various languages, which is purely descriptive. You can answer without expressing disapproval of the damn hippies or whatever. Or if you can't answer, move to another topic.

It is one thing for someone to change their own speech for such purposes, however thought-through they may or may not be (e.g. considering how -ess-ectomy in English and insisting on -in in German supposedly serve the same purposes, despite being direct opposites of one another); it is another thing for them to less than imply that others ought to change their speech because they see it as somehow being oppressive etc.

[xxx]

it is true that in conlang we tend to add words rather than delete them...

as I said, there is no gender in my conlang, which is not abnormal for an idiolect...

however, I once tried a differentiated pronunciation between male and female, and surprisingly I used the same incomplete and unnatural consonant sets as laàdan which I did not know...
have you seen documented the reason for this abnormal choice...

[Moose-tache]

I remember watching Elisabeth Hasselbeck break down in tears on The View over the fact that White people can't use the N-word. I guess she was upset that people were "for reasons that have no purpose, claiming to render obsolete the words [she] uses." I really don't get what's at stake for these people who wave the Gadsden Flag every time someone suggests that maybe we don't need two independent words for "landlord." What is this Parisian barricade of hypothetical outrage even defending?

[Travis B.]

I remember watching Elisabeth Hasselbeck break down in tears on The View over the fact that White people can't use the N-word. I guess she was upset that people were "for reasons that have no purpose, claiming to render obsolete the words [she] uses." I really don't get what's at stake for these people who wave the Gadsden Flag every time someone suggests that maybe we don't need two independent words for "landlord." What is this Parisian barricade of hypothetical outrage even defending?

The difference between white people using the N-word and landlady is that the former has a very long and very offensive history behind it whereas getting offended by the latter seems to be getting offended for getting offended's sake, as I bet German feminists would be offended if you dared call a Vermieterin a Vermieter.

[Linguoboy]

The difference between white people using the N-word and landlady is that the former has a very long and very offensive history behind it whereas getting offended by the latter seems to be getting offended for getting offended's sake, as I bet German feminists would be offended if you dared call a Vermieterin a Vermieter.

That’s so weird! It’s almost like German is, I dunno, a completely different language with a different system of noun gender spoken in a society distinct from ours with a different history of feminism and of feminist attempts to influence common usage or something.

[Travis B.]

That’s so weird! It’s almost like German is, I dunno, a completely different language with a different system of noun gender spoken in a society distinct from ours with a different history of feminism and of feminist attempts to influence common usage or something.

My point was that what is offensive is in many cases more a matter of politics and fashion than anything straightforward or objective. While some cases are very cut and dry, like the whole white-people-using-the-N-word matter, other cases are not, like the case of landlady.