Man, I Think About Things Too Much
May. 16th, 2006 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythOkay, so language nerd hat on now. One of the interesting things about English, at least the way me and people I know use it, is plurals. See, in most other languages, everything has sex. Not the naked sweaty kind, just everything counts as "male" or "female", which matters for all sorts of grammar bits. English doesn't, and has the word "it", which also isn't very common. But English also has some problems with gender, like how you talk about somebody when you'd on't know if they're a guy or a girl. The most common way to do is is "they", like I just used, though I've seen people arguing for s/he, or hir, or other various made up things. Or just alternating between "him" and "her". But their seems to be the most common. And usage trumps grammarian rules.
But that's not the original point I was going for, I got sidetracked. Well, kind of. The plural I meant specifically was for groups of either mixed or unknown gender. With people I know, we almost always say "guys". Like "Hey, guys!" or "those guys" or whatever. Sometimes even to groups of just women. (Though i've personally been using "Ladies" lately for women, I dunno why.) Even though guys is technically male, it's becoming gender neutral. Things seem to mostly go from male to gender neutral, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that's started out as female and become gender neutral. Not just in language, but in clothing, names, and other things.
And to tie this back in to my side-ramble up at the top, some of the same kind of thing seems to be going on in other languages. Even, for example, Arabic. My teacher for last semester mentioned how there used to be separate plurals words for groups of men and women, but now the masculine form gets used for men and mixed groups, as more of a default. But because I'm a bad student, I don't remember what it was, or what the female one was. There even were male and female versions of "we", but again, the female one seems to have died out.
I imagine the reason behind all this is some kind of implicit superiority supposed, or just that women are more accepting of being called by male-related things than men are of female-related things, or something along those lines. But I just thought it was interesting to point out the same kind of thing happening in languages besides English.
But that's not the original point I was going for, I got sidetracked. Well, kind of. The plural I meant specifically was for groups of either mixed or unknown gender. With people I know, we almost always say "guys". Like "Hey, guys!" or "those guys" or whatever. Sometimes even to groups of just women. (Though i've personally been using "Ladies" lately for women, I dunno why.) Even though guys is technically male, it's becoming gender neutral. Things seem to mostly go from male to gender neutral, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that's started out as female and become gender neutral. Not just in language, but in clothing, names, and other things.
And to tie this back in to my side-ramble up at the top, some of the same kind of thing seems to be going on in other languages. Even, for example, Arabic. My teacher for last semester mentioned how there used to be separate plurals words for groups of men and women, but now the masculine form gets used for men and mixed groups, as more of a default. But because I'm a bad student, I don't remember what it was, or what the female one was. There even were male and female versions of "we", but again, the female one seems to have died out.
I imagine the reason behind all this is some kind of implicit superiority supposed, or just that women are more accepting of being called by male-related things than men are of female-related things, or something along those lines. But I just thought it was interesting to point out the same kind of thing happening in languages besides English.
