If you have an accepted and acknowledged truth is it of nature, or of man? If of man is it not based upon his knowledge of that truth he perceives to be true in nature?
I stumbled over the author's habit to use a generic femininum instead of a generic masculinum. This is not the established use of the language and therefore not a preferable decision. It also cannot be seen why a generic femininum is better than a generic masculinum. It just turns the situation on its head. But even worse: While the generic masculinum is established and therefore automatically known to be gender-neutral, though there is a small bias in favour of men, this automtic effect falls apart with the non-established generic femininum, so that it is not read as a generic femininum, which is certainly a loss and not a gain of gender-neutrality. Last but not least, the method was not applied consequently. "Midwife" was not turned on its head to "midhusband", although necessary, if you want to stay true to the principle. I hope I could bring some sun into the cave of weird language usage.
To be clear, I didn’t edit this article- so can’t speak to the intentions of either the author or editor - however, I think your observation is ripe for discussion and we should most definitely take it to task in an upcoming mailbag. Language can be powerful - but how powerful? Who decides the rules? Should it be descriptive or prescriptive? As pronouns in particular have been so political (so bizarre when you think about it), can we have an objective discussion on their best practice? Let’s test it out!
Perhaps it was the author's intention to make you stumble? It clearly made you think beyond the article in ways you didn't expect when you started it, even if the exercise made you mildly uncomfortable.
It most certainly was the intention to make me stumble, which is just another proof of the concept of generic femininum not working. Unfortunately, the uncomforting feelings are not mild, but very strong, since there is so much hypocrisy in it. This is anti-Platonic, for sure.
-- Please be aware that we Germans are even more annoyed about these language alterations, since we have grammatical genders in our language, so that the alterations are much more visible and disturbing than in English. The numbers of opponents are increasing. Currently, 80% of the German population are against these alterations, numbers increasing. We are just fed up with this nonsense.
Fascinating! And I think you correctly point out another interesting factor which is the type of native language of the reader and the inherent flexibility vs structure of some languages over others. I feel strongly that language shapes so much of who we are and how we think that it would be interesting to see which native speakers found the issue more or less frustrating.
If you have an accepted and acknowledged truth is it of nature, or of man? If of man is it not based upon his knowledge of that truth he perceives to be true in nature?
I stumbled over the author's habit to use a generic femininum instead of a generic masculinum. This is not the established use of the language and therefore not a preferable decision. It also cannot be seen why a generic femininum is better than a generic masculinum. It just turns the situation on its head. But even worse: While the generic masculinum is established and therefore automatically known to be gender-neutral, though there is a small bias in favour of men, this automtic effect falls apart with the non-established generic femininum, so that it is not read as a generic femininum, which is certainly a loss and not a gain of gender-neutrality. Last but not least, the method was not applied consequently. "Midwife" was not turned on its head to "midhusband", although necessary, if you want to stay true to the principle. I hope I could bring some sun into the cave of weird language usage.
To be clear, I didn’t edit this article- so can’t speak to the intentions of either the author or editor - however, I think your observation is ripe for discussion and we should most definitely take it to task in an upcoming mailbag. Language can be powerful - but how powerful? Who decides the rules? Should it be descriptive or prescriptive? As pronouns in particular have been so political (so bizarre when you think about it), can we have an objective discussion on their best practice? Let’s test it out!
Perhaps it was the author's intention to make you stumble? It clearly made you think beyond the article in ways you didn't expect when you started it, even if the exercise made you mildly uncomfortable.
It most certainly was the intention to make me stumble, which is just another proof of the concept of generic femininum not working. Unfortunately, the uncomforting feelings are not mild, but very strong, since there is so much hypocrisy in it. This is anti-Platonic, for sure.
-- Please be aware that we Germans are even more annoyed about these language alterations, since we have grammatical genders in our language, so that the alterations are much more visible and disturbing than in English. The numbers of opponents are increasing. Currently, 80% of the German population are against these alterations, numbers increasing. We are just fed up with this nonsense.
-- Please find here my (ironic) suggestion how to alter the English language the same way as the German language (read at least until "Irony off".). http://www.thorwalds-internetseiten.de/masculinity-english-language-engl.htm
Fascinating! And I think you correctly point out another interesting factor which is the type of native language of the reader and the inherent flexibility vs structure of some languages over others. I feel strongly that language shapes so much of who we are and how we think that it would be interesting to see which native speakers found the issue more or less frustrating.
Ha ha! That would be SO like Plato! I love it…
Great post!