The use of gender-neutral pronouns in English

[Edric O]

It's strange to suddenly find that so many people here know Russian (ok, "many" in this case means "three," but still). I should try learning it one of these days...

[MrFlibble]

Would you <b>ever</b> refer to a <i>sudno</i> or <i>lodka</i> using <i>on</i>?

Absolutely not. It is worth mentioning, though, that if the name of a vessel has a different gender than the word for its generic term, the gender forms corresponding to the name may be used. But technically that's not the use of one gender to refer to antecedents of another gender, which would be a violation of grammaticity.

[Kiyouta]

I always thought the singular use of 'they' sounded odd... Especially if you had already introduced the subject as a particular gender.

[veK]

The gender issue is so annoying. I often see contracts with a side note that the whole text will be speaking of the male gender but refers to both. This "political correctness" annoys me me. If anybody really has a problem, then why don't we just invent a neutral form instead of starting to use both forms for both genders and make things even more complicated? Then funny thing is: we already have a neutral article in the german language (der, die, das - first one is male, second female, third is neutral). So "the sun" is female (die Sonne), "the moon" is male (der mond), and "the universe" is neutral (das universum).

[Dunenewt]

...and the girl is neutral.

[veK]

yes she is. besides the often complicated german grammar those articles often don't make any sense. but I just wanted to point out that we do have the possibility to use 3 different articles.

[Wolf]

I think I heard the rule before that, in Russian, the gender of a vessel's name may supersede the gender of whatever word is normally used to describe the vessel. Though I'm loathe to admit it, I'm fairly certain I read it in "The Hunt for Red October" (Красный Октябрь or Krasniy Oktyabr having a different gender, I suspect male, from whatever gender is typically assigned to a ballistic missile submarine) though I cannot recall if there was mention of any other Russian grammatical rules on this subject.

Oh, and no offense to you, veK, but I stopped taking German classes for largely that reason.

[veK]

I wouldn't want to learn the language either if it wasn't my native language  ;)

There are far easier, more important and/or better sounding languages one can learn.

[Edric O]

So "the sun" is female (die Sonne), "the moon" is male (der mond), and "the universe" is neutral (das universum).

Now that is interesting, because it may give us some insight into the mythology of the early Germans. I suppose there must have been a Sun goddess and a Moon god. That's a bit unusual, isn't it? In Egyptian, Greek, Latin and even Mayan, Aztec and Inca mythology, the Sun was male. I'm fairly certain the Sun was also male in Mesopotamian mythology.

It is logical that patriarchal societies with a male priesthood would assign a male gender to the most impressive object in the sky. Now I'm really curious to know why the early Germans thought the Sun was female. Maybe they were not a male-dominated society? That seems unlikely for an Indo-European tribe...

I wouldn't want to learn the language either if it wasn't my native language  ;)

There are far easier, more important and/or better sounding languages one can learn.

Well, I'm sure there are many important historical documents written in German that haven't been translated into other languages. And German is the most widely spoken native language in the European Union.

[MrFlibble]

I think I heard the rule before that, in Russian, the gender of a vessel's name may supersede the gender of whatever word is normally used to describe the vessel. Though I'm loathe to admit it, I'm fairly certain I read it in "The Hunt for Red October" (Красный Октябрь or Krasniy Oktyabr having a different gender, I suspect male, from whatever gender is typically assigned to a ballistic missile submarine) though I cannot recall if there was mention of any other Russian grammatical rules on this subject.

That is correct. Подводная лодка 'submarine' is feminine, while октябрь is masculine.

Now that is interesting, because it may give us some insight into the mythology of the early Germans. I suppose there must have been a Sun goddess and a Moon god. That's a bit unusual, isn't it? In Egyptian, Greek, Latin and even Mayan, Aztec and Inca mythology, the Sun was male. I'm fairly certain the Sun was also male in Mesopotamian mythology.

I'm afraid this is a lot more complicated than that. There is no telling whether personification affected the choice of grammatical gender. As stated above, "M

[SandChigger]

Absolutely not. It is worth mentioning, though, that if the name of a vessel has a different gender than the word for its generic term, the gender forms corresponding to the name may be used. But technically that's not the use of one gender to refer to antecedents of another gender, which would be a violation of grammaticity.

Спасибо. :)

Interesting point about the influence of the name.