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Subject:Changing our language From:Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG> Date:Mon, 18 Dec 1995 14:09:00 +0100
Hello Mark,
* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von Mark Levinson an All am 18.12.95
ML> From: Mark Levinson <mark -at- sd -dot- co -dot- il>
ML> But I have talked about this topic to several women in our
ML> profession and they saw no reason to object the common usage
ML> of "he" and
ML> comparable words. ( - Alexander )
ML>
ML> ** And they're in Germany too?
Shurely.
ML> I have a feeling that the sex-neutral "he"
ML> draws less opprobrium in countries where all nouns have
ML> genders anyway
ML> and the genders are often obviously unrelated to sex.
This is an interesting idea. In German the grammatical gender is very obvious
from the way German is constructed and there are *many* strange examples:
Fluss (river) is male
Burg (castle) is female
Haus (house) is neutrum
Rechner (Computer) is male
Buch (book) is neutrum
Wolke (cloud) is female
Geschmack (taste) is male
Sprache (language) is female
More examples needed? :-)
Greetings from Germany,
Alexander
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