Patriarchy and linguistics

[loopyloops]

Hi feminists

I am a languages teacher. Every time gender is explained to children (and I felt the same way) there is outrage from the girls, and a sense of one-up-man-ship from the boys with regards to the male gender taking preference over the female.

The best example if this that I can think of is:
Il est grand (he is tall)
Elle est grande (she is tall)
Ils sont grands (they are tall, all boys)
Elles sont grandes (all girls)
Ils sont grands (a billion girls and one tiny, insignificant boy)

Does that make sense? Why does the masculine always take priority?

There are many other aspects of gender in language that highlight this - obviously at some point someone decided which nouns would be masculine, which feminine (and in the case of some languages, which neuter). What I would like to know is how do feminists whose maternal language uses a gender system deal with this?

Also, from a foreign language learning point of view, my female students are automatically at a disadvantage in exams. Every time they want to express themselves using the past tense "être" formation they have to remember an extra e. Boys don't. (eg. je suis allée, je suis allé). Maybe girls should naturally have a couple of extra points when it comes to marking.

Maybe I'm just being silly and there's nothing misogynistic about this at all...?

Not really true to say that someone at some point decided what gender everything would be. Language is a much more organic phenomenon than that and there are plenty of languages without gender in grammar, eg English.

You might as well ask why ships in English are always "she" - plus points for the girls? The logic of gender in language isn't exactly reliable, eg in German the word for "girl" is neuter not feminine.

It's possible to explain other languages in a fun way to spike kids' curiosity by presenting the differences from the principles of English grammar as notable and exciting rather than as a social science experiment. Do you have to use the terms masculine and feminine at all for the early part of teaching? The real problem is that we don't start teaching foreign languages early enough in the UK when kids just accept novelty without imposing their own set ways of looking at things on them. Puting the emphasis on quirky not difficult is my approach when teaching.

PS Pick out some great abstract feminine nouns for the girls to savour, eg la verite, [sorry, using Mac and don't know keystrokes for accents] l'honnetete, la clarte, as well as some fun concrete ones, eg la boue, la viande, to PROVE that there's nothing gendered in the sense of male and female as the feminine can be abstract AND earthy. Make it a competition to do a sneaky vocab test.

No obviously they didn't sit down with a book deciding for every word! But there are rules of grammar and patterns that have been constructed at some point, there must be some reasoning behind those decisions.

The "girl" in German thing is quite odd actually, chen at the end of a noun makes it something sweet and cute, so girl is actually neuter because it has at some point evolved to Mädchen, presumably from Mäde or something similar.

You do have to use the words masculine and feminine, as they are important indicators of grammatical points, and in the curriculum these days it is expected that children have an in-depth understanding of grammar.

My questions were meant to be thought-provoking in terms of feminism, rather than for teaching strategy. I was just wondering if this is something that has come up before for anyone who is a regular on this board?

I agree with jkklpu. Around here, they still refer to an engine as 'he' but a car as 'her'. As in: "Her's going all right now, but I had a look at the motor and he ain't long for this world" [quote]

I imagine French people would refer to a stadium full of girls with one boy as "elles". I really don't feel you need to get into that while teaching the basics though! You can skip over the 'implications' of gendered nouns because there aren't any, imo. Just the way the language grew.

Nice point above, jkkplu. At my all-girls school, we were chuffed to find the abstract/conceptual nouns were mostly feminine. That includes 'business' and 'politics', remember!

Nope, not silly at all - not surprising the language reflects society, though if you think about it.

You (and your students depending on their age) might like the book Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin, which is an excellent & easy read sci-fi novel which explores loads of issues around language and gender.

jkklpu, I think you overstate your case - even in English, traditionally you use the masculine for mixed gender groups, of course.

loopyloops, one interesting example I know of where there has been a real change is in the tendency for some Spanish people to use the @ symbol in writing to express female and male groups or non-specific gender (whereas 'correctly' you would use the 'o' ending, with the 'a' for female only). I'm having a blank on a good example (have spent too much time learning Welsh, has scrambled my Spanish), but hopefully someone else who speaks Spanish on here could give one.

Not sure how widespread it is, but certainly a lot of people I knew used to do it (though to be fair they were generally left wing, feminist sympathising etc).

What do you suggest SHOULD happen to resolve this?

IseeGrace, I really don't think it can be dismissed as 'just the way the language grew' - it grew that way because society is that way.

Agree that gendered nouns are generally quite 'random', but the issue of masculine as the default certainly isn't.

I think that what tends to happen in English is that people more and more frequently use they, even where it is strictly incorrect (ie, 'they will go' referring to one person of indeterminate gender, rather than 'he will go' as it strictly should be), and s/he as an indeterminate pronoun.

I would be surprised if some French feminists haven't come up with a solution, though perhaps hard to find one as neat as the @ instead of o/a in Spanish.

I did linguistics at university and haven't ever actually seen an answer to this question - it's interesting, though!

Very hard to answer. How far back does the record go for French? In English you can go back to

"even in English, traditionally you use the masculine for mixed gender groups, of course."

No - you use 'they' because it's a group.

Sorry, Prune, of course you are completely right. Was meaning to say for a single person of indeterminate gender - as in 'he will go' above.

I think that's all a bit in the past, though, the masculine as default in English. We usually say 'He or she' or 'they', and write similar, or 's/he'. A few choices but most people of my generation I don't think would default to he.

English nicked 'they' from Old Norse if I remember rightly, I forget what came before that. I wonder if in French they just had to choose one and it made sense to go masculine, women being too lowly for consideration.

I'm not suggesting anything should be changed as such, but that (for me, at least) it poses an interesting set of questions. Takver's @ point is very interesting, and evidence of a way in which language is changing with the equality to which we're getting closer.

IseeGrace: "I really don't feel you need to get into that while teaching the basics though!". The thing is, I teach from age 7 to 18, so it's fair to say that with regard to primary pupils, but those studying for IB or A levels have a good understanding of a lot of things, including higher-level grammar and feminism! Do I just tell them to forget about it, that's just the way it is and always has been? Or should I encourage debate?

Are there feminists in say France, Spain (coutries which have all these different endings for words for females/males) campaigning for change/questioning it?

I would make a comparison to the use of Ms for example - i.e. people dislike Mrs or Miss so use Ms.

That's what I was wondering Tabouleh, but I don't know any feminists from anywhere else! I was hoping I might find one here!

I have an academic friend who is a linguist so I will ask her next time a speak to her.

Well, since language wasn't invented as such, it would be fair to suppose nouns' genders represent - in some way - the values people held at the time the object was named. Bearing in mind a lot of Latin languages use words virtually unchanged from the way ancient Romans & Greeks used them, you'd be rummaging through a fair old mountain of history to explain them; that's why I say "it's just the way it is."

We did look at this briefly in my linguistics module, which was short. I found it less intriguing than I'd expected, though there were a few fun discoveries in it. Objects which have enough documented history to allow (probable) explanation for their Latin gender tended to include those which were named for deities - or vice versa, whichever way it happened. The moon was a goddess; the sun a god, etc. I vaguely remember some good stuff about holly trees in ancient Britain, too ...

There are implications for feminism in all languages - surely, though, we adjust where it's realistic to do so (eg, chairperson) and wait to see what time & life will do to the rest?

(possible bollocks alert)

I seem to remember that in Old English (which was preeetty much German) the word "he" was used originally for he or she, and then "she" emerged later. Anyone who knows better please come and tell me off!

But if that is the case, perhaps a similar thing happend in other languages, there was originally one word that was the gender-neutral third person pronoun (???? now you see how I don't know about linguistics) - I mean a word euqivalent to the word "they" as it's used now to refer to "he or she but I odon't know which". Perhaps the words/endings now known as "feminine" were later adaptations when people realised that distinguishing between talking about a man or a woman could be useful.

I would think a lot of the extra "e" endings etc can only have come into play when writing becamse widespread, because it's a written rather than a spoken difference, isn't it? You can't actually hear the extra e on "allee"?

Article on this very subject, that you might find enlightening.

What a great article - thanks! As a non-feminist aside, I love the way Spanish & Portuguese have two separate "being" verbs - one for "the way things are right now" and one for "the way it is (effectively) all the time". And that "I'm married" uses the "just now" form

Great thread (and thanks for the link, Bonsoir) - I'd been wanting to start one on the same subject.

DD is 3 and has been learning Czech at preschool for the past year. But I feel bad for her that she has to realise that there are different endings for girls and boys (and they're clear in speaking, as well as writing). I just wish she didn't have this extra reminder at this stage that boys and girls are different.

Luckily her actual preschool is great with regard to (non-linguistic!) gender differences - they don't draw as much of a difference as is usual in Czech culture.