4 ms·

Thanks a lot for shedding some light on this mystery! I was unaware of the fact that "Dear Sir" was meant to be gender neutral at some point. While this convent

Thanks a lot for shedding some light on this mystery! I was unaware of the fact that "Dear Sir" was meant to be gender neutral at some point. While this convention seems strange to me (not a native speaker, you are right) and I assume it feels strange to women to be addressed with "Dear Sir", there seems to be more to it than my assumption of stereo-types on the sender side.

isostatic 9y ago
Still is neutral, and will be in the future if Star Trek is anything to go by: KIM: Thank you, sir. JANEWAY: Mister Kim, at ease before you sprain something. Ensign, despite Starfleet protocol, I don't like being addressed as sir. KIM: I'm sorry, ma'am. JANEWAY: Ma'am is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer Captain. We're getting ready to leave. Let me show you to the bridge.
- edoceo 9y ago
  Star Trek copied the Navy (US&UK style) of addressing all senior officers as Sir, regardless of gender.
  - derefr 9y ago
    A tangent: I've always wondered why the feminist movement didn't push language more toward this direction, rather than the one we got. "Man" was originally a gender-neutral Old English word for human beings (the gendered prefix for males being "wer", as appears in e.g. werewolf.) So why not just expand on that: demand that "man", "sir", "he", "him", "Mr"—and common nouns like "mailman", "fireman", "steward", "host", "master"—be used when referring to both men and women, and thus retroactively de-gender all previously written implicit-male-subject texts for future generations? Instead, we got "he/she", "they", "mail carrier" and "fireperson", which seems like a terrible thing to do to a previously-concise language.
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      Yeah, that Shakespeare guy screwed up everything when he used "they" as a singular pronoun.
      - derefr 9y ago
        The early-Modern "they" means "one or more people"—as in, it can be singular or plural, as you wish. Shakespeare still would use "he" or "she" as appropriate when trying to make it explicit that there was exactly one person being referred to. But now, we are told to use "they" or "he/she" even in that situation, because singular-generic "he" is offensive to some people, and because human-referential "it" is offensive to rather more people.
    - adsfqwop 9y ago
      The current witch hunters on words seem to fail to understand that language is designed for communication between humans. It's a communication protocol. Taking offence to a communication protocol, is like saying TCP/IP is offensive because there aren't enough of the number 7 used in the TCP/IP protocol, and it's discriminating against the equality of all numbers. No. It's a protocol optimized for communication, not some sort of emotional playground. To try to alter the communication protocol based on personal emotions degrades its usefulness and diminishes the ability to communicate effectively. So now the TCP/IP packet header needs to be extended 25%, and the driver needs to ensure equal distribution of all numbers during communication, further increasing overhead by another 75%. This is where we are headed with our language, when we allow PC politics to dictate how words should be used.
      - HolyHaddock 9y ago
        > language is designed for communication between humans. Unlike machines, humans do not always just want to exchange factual information about the world, and often use communication for additional purposes - jockeying for status, claiming membership in groups, and yes, playing games. This can even be quite enjoyable for the humans in question, for example, mutual flirtation. In this example, one of the bits of information that can conveyed by being a bit more thoughtful about the use of pronouns is where the human in question might fall on a scale between "I am aware that there is pervasive and systematic discrimination against one class of human, and do not wish to take even small part in it." and "I believe all relevant systematic discrimination is in the past."
TallGuyShort 9y ago
Spanish is similar, so I'd imagine it's common in other languages, at least those related to English and Spanish. If gender is uncertain, for instance in the case of a mixed gender group, you just fall back to masculine adjectives, etc. I'd imagine for such practical purposes most languages would have some "default" and there are surely feminine-defaulting languages out there.

isostatic 9y ago

Still is neutral, and will be in the future if Star Trek is anything to go by: KIM: Thank you, sir. JANEWAY: Mister Kim, at ease before you sprain something. Ensign, despite Starfleet protocol, I don't like being addressed as sir. KIM: I'm sorry, ma'am. JANEWAY: Ma'am is acceptable in a crunch, but I prefer Captain. We're getting ready to leave. Let me show you to the bridge.

edoceo 9y ago
Star Trek copied the Navy (US&UK style) of addressing all senior officers as Sir, regardless of gender.
- derefr 9y ago
  A tangent: I've always wondered why the feminist movement didn't push language more toward this direction, rather than the one we got. "Man" was originally a gender-neutral Old English word for human beings (the gendered prefix for males being "wer", as appears in e.g. werewolf.) So why not just expand on that: demand that "man", "sir", "he", "him", "Mr"—and common nouns like "mailman", "fireman", "steward", "host", "master"—be used when referring to both men and women, and thus retroactively de-gender all previously written implicit-male-subject texts for future generations? Instead, we got "he/she", "they", "mail carrier" and "fireperson", which seems like a terrible thing to do to a previously-concise language.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Yeah, that Shakespeare guy screwed up everything when he used "they" as a singular pronoun.
    - derefr 9y ago
      The early-Modern "they" means "one or more people"—as in, it can be singular or plural, as you wish. Shakespeare still would use "he" or "she" as appropriate when trying to make it explicit that there was exactly one person being referred to. But now, we are told to use "they" or "he/she" even in that situation, because singular-generic "he" is offensive to some people, and because human-referential "it" is offensive to rather more people.
  - adsfqwop 9y ago
    The current witch hunters on words seem to fail to understand that language is designed for communication between humans. It's a communication protocol. Taking offence to a communication protocol, is like saying TCP/IP is offensive because there aren't enough of the number 7 used in the TCP/IP protocol, and it's discriminating against the equality of all numbers. No. It's a protocol optimized for communication, not some sort of emotional playground. To try to alter the communication protocol based on personal emotions degrades its usefulness and diminishes the ability to communicate effectively. So now the TCP/IP packet header needs to be extended 25%, and the driver needs to ensure equal distribution of all numbers during communication, further increasing overhead by another 75%. This is where we are headed with our language, when we allow PC politics to dictate how words should be used.
    - HolyHaddock 9y ago
      > language is designed for communication between humans. Unlike machines, humans do not always just want to exchange factual information about the world, and often use communication for additional purposes - jockeying for status, claiming membership in groups, and yes, playing games. This can even be quite enjoyable for the humans in question, for example, mutual flirtation. In this example, one of the bits of information that can conveyed by being a bit more thoughtful about the use of pronouns is where the human in question might fall on a scale between "I am aware that there is pervasive and systematic discrimination against one class of human, and do not wish to take even small part in it." and "I believe all relevant systematic discrimination is in the past."

TallGuyShort 9y ago

Spanish is similar, so I'd imagine it's common in other languages, at least those related to English and Spanish. If gender is uncertain, for instance in the case of a mixed gender group, you just fall back to masculine adjectives, etc. I'd imagine for such practical purposes most languages would have some "default" and there are surely feminine-defaulting languages out there.