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It's the same in german, even to the point where obvious female words do not have a female gender. People have tried for the last 40 years to make the language
by the_mitsuhiko 13y ago
It's the same in german, even to the point where obvious female words do not have a female gender. People have tried for the last 40 years to make the language gender neutral with absolute appalling results. Some gender neutral versions are almost entirely being used for satiric purposes only.
As an example "This is the girl, she is beautiful" in german is "Das ist das Mädchen, es ist wunderschön" usually uses a neutrum pronoun (object). "es" == it because Mädchen is neutrum. That's just how the language works and forcefully changing it results in terrible sentences.
- thaumasiotes 13y agoA lot of people have not the slightest idea how languages work, but they FEEL very strongly about the subject. I think the all-time stupidest such idea I've heard is that it's morally wrong for a man to refer to "my wife" because "my" denotes ownership. If you take more than a second to think about that claim (it's not even necessary to look at other languages...), you'll quickly notice that "my" does nothing of the kind; it denotes some sort of relationship (of almost any kind) between you and the specified noun. In the case of "my wife", the relationship is a marriage; in the case of "my picture", it could be ownership... or it could be the fact that you appear in the picture, regardless of who owns it.