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[nomad soul]

(This is an opinion piece.)

When language becomes a victim
By Ibrahem Alammar, Arab News | 30 March 2015
Source: http://www.arabnews.com/columns/news/725171

Enjoy reading books, whether Arabic or English. And while reading books in both languages, one thing that always stands out to me is how both languages address the sexes.

In Arabic writing, the masculine form is always used, even when both sexes are addressed. If a subject addresses men only, the context informs the reader. If women are addressed, then almost everything is switched to the feminine. Not just pronouns and adjectives, but verbs and nouns as well.

Grammatical gender is a somewhat difficult part of Arabic, but it is part of its extraordinary precision, even if new speakers might think it a cumbersome chore. In English, people today commonly view the use of the masculine tone as politically incorrect. They frown upon sentences like “Man can be anything he wants to be if he puts his mind to it.” Unacceptable! Offensive! Outrageous!

But is it? Interestingly, using the masculine pronoun to address a general audience is a sound and old practice in English, and only in recent times did it change due to social pressure.
It may be politically correct not to use the masculine form in English anymore, but it makes the language a lot clumsier in my opinion. The above sentence becomes “One can be anything he or she wants to be if he or she puts his or her mind to it.” You can hear the clunk of this plodding beast miles away. A sentence such as, “One can be anything one wants to be if one puts one’s mind to it” is painfully repetitive and obviously unusable. And something like, “A person can be anything they want to be if they put their mind to it” feels weak and bland.

It’s confusing and clumsy, when reading an English book, to see the adjectives and pronouns vacillating between masculine and feminine. An author might write a sentence, “If solution X does not solve the customer’s problem, she should try solution Y.” And then a few paragraphs later, “The customer who could not resolve his problem using solution Y is advised to try solution Z.” And so it goes, throughout the book. I feel as if authors are writing in a worried state, walking on eggshells, counting the number of times she/her were used against he/his, afraid of offending anyone.

Social movements affect many aspects of society: Politics, culture, education, even everyday etiquette. But when a movement (like feminism) affects language itself; language that predates the social movement by hundreds or even thousands of years, there’s something wrong — either the language is too weak to withstand such an unnecessary assault, or the movement’s proponents are so sensitive that they are willing to deform their own culture, their own language, just so they would not be “offended.” And currently in the West (and the US especially), protection from “offense” is now a sacred right. What are the parameters of “offense”? What is offensive and what is acceptable? No one knows, the definition changes regularly.

And the victim, among others, is this once-great institution, now a victim to bullying and pressure: The English language.

(End of opinion)

[veiledsentiments]

Obviously written by a male who feels that the original sexist forms include him and are thus just fine...

VS

[scot47]

Going back to Latin grammarians, the rule was that "The Male embraces the Female"

Now looking for a source for my outrageous sexist and Latinist assertion but can find no ammunition.

I did find this

The rule was formulated by Anne Fisher a FEMALE Grammarian in a book of 1745.

http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/rodriguez-gil.htm

[veiledsentiments]

As if that makes the sexist exclusion all just fine and dandy... she too was a product of her time.

VS

[returnee2014]

[nomad soul]

[returnee2014]

Doh!

[veiledsentiments]

[RustyShackleford]

I somewhat sympathize with the views, given that I am prone to using the masculine as a general catch-all because it just has a more arachaic and "poetic" weight, but his little anti-feminist screed at the end just came off as more whiny than anything. I agree with returnee that I just like to use "they" are a catch-all nowadays because "He or she" DOES make the language more clunky.

In any case, gender in language and moaning about thereof is a superficial bandaid on a much deeper problem. Japanese, Vietnamese and Koreans are all pretty much languages without linguistic gender but no one would say they have surpassed sexism.

[hash]

This article is so badly written and full of holes and platitudes, it can’t be taken seriously. Here are just a few examples of what I mean:

“Grammatical gender is a somewhat difficult part of Arabic, but it is part of its extraordinary precision,…”

No more difficult than it is in the many languages that exhibit noun gender differentiation, like French. In this regard, German is much more difficult with 3 gender classifications, not to mention its clumsy article forms. I don’t see how this differentiation makes Arabic “extraordinarily” precise. What it does is make it more difficult, just like German. In contrast, the article in Arabic never changes…it’s always AL- whether the noun is masc. or fem. (conf. the Romance languages).


“If women are addressed, then almost everything is switched to the feminine. Not just pronouns and adjectives, but verbs and nouns as well.” Ditto in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan and countless other languages. Nothing exceptional here.

“It’s confusing and clumsy, when reading an English book, to see the adjectives and pronouns vacillating between masculine and feminine.” Sorry, Ibrahem, adjectives in English never “vacillate”. There’s only one form for them regardless of anything else (unlike Arabic). This is one aspect of English that simplifies things. In addition, Arabic pronouns "vacillate" as much as they do in English. So your statement here is incorrect and misleading on at least these two counts

And so on.

Finally (and most importantly), “But when a movement (like feminism) affects language itself; language that predates the social movement by hundreds or even thousands of years, there’s something wrong…”

Balderdash.

It is precisely the fact that English is willing to and is able to change and readily admits outside elements that has propelled her (English) into its (English) preeminent position in the world today. English is probably the only world language that does not have an “academy” “protecting” her from outside influence (like the laughable French).

It is precisely the fact that Arabic refuses to change that has kept Middle Eastern countries in an underdeveloped state. Language and culture is a two-way street. Each element is a reflection of the other and they both influence each other. In fact, Arabic is so extreme in this regard that the people have actually developed various “dialects” of Arabic to overcome this unmoving element of (written/classical) Arabic with the result that a foreigner must learn two related but quite separate languages to be able to say “I know Arabic”.

It is Arabic, not English that should be pitied.

[Muhammed Abbas Khan]

It is interesting to note non-standard English, despite widely held derision, can be more precise than its 'standard' counterpart. An example would be that of 'you' in Br.SE to refer to a group of people whilst the equivalent in a non-standard regional variety, spoken in Liverpool for example, would be 'youse'.

[veiledsentiments]

Parts of the US also use "youse" and SE US uses "ya'll" which is actually "you-all". But these are spoken terms and not used in writing.

VS