So in the cases you mentioned and possibly in all cases just less
visibly contentious, gender is performative rather than foundational.
Jan
Jan Coker
C3-10 Underdale
University of South Australia
+61 8 8302 6919
fax +61 8 8302 6239
Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions
of one and the same reality
Albert Einstein
Klaus said:
gendering in language is interesting, but i have found few implications
to
issues of human gender.
in german
a spoon (with forms supposed to be feminine) is linguistically
masculine.
a fork (whose form could be argued to have some masculine elements) is
linguistically feminine
a knife is linguistically neutral (one can speculate it to be an
instrument
of dividing)
Eduardo said:
For nouns, English possesses the rare quality of neutral or indefinite
gender. In Portuguese and in most of the neo Latin languages that is a
rare
situation so here it goes:
Objecto (object) is masculine.
Coisa (thing) is feminine.
You never say "objecta" as a feminine noun but you can say it as a verb
form like when someone is "objecting your honour".
You can say coiso (masculine of coisa), which normally refers to the
male's
sex or to an object that you don't know the name (that "coiso" between
the
carburettor and the sparkplugs).
Designing things, in neo Latin is equivalent to populate the earth with
males and females while in the Saxon world is equivalent to populate the
world with "its" (the word that the Knights of Ni couldn't hear)
The trouble is even bigger when you notice that gender is not stable
among
the neo Latin languages. A tree is masculine in Italy and feminine in
Portugal and Spain. An orange is masculine in Italy and feminine in
Portugal. A car (machina) is feminine in Italy and masculine in Portugal
(carro). While in Portugal streets are flooded with people inside coarse
chaps, in Italy people move inside crazy galls.
Maybe that's why we never achieve the power of total abstraction. We
always
have sex (gender) on our minds.
Best,
Eduardo
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