Post
by Machjo » Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:29 am
Really? You confidently state that you can name a few international languages with a better track-record of human rights and a less sexist culture. Consider me curious.
What international languages do you have in mind?
I'll have to break my answer up into two parts here:
1. Languages with a better track record of human rights:
Esperanto along with pretty well any other planned language. The very principle that motivates many to learn Esperanto, for instance, is in fact the 'Interna Ideo' (Internal Idea), an unwritten idea shared among many Esperanto speakers that justice demands that an international language be designed to be easy to learn so as to make the world accessible to not only the elites, but to all.
Granted some Esperanto speakers would hardheadedly hold to Esperanto specifically and would be unwilling to consider other projects, but many are. Just like in other cultures, Esperanto culture is not necessarily made up of a homogenous group, and not even all Esperanto speakers have learnt it for altruistic motives. But if we consider that only a small number of people in special niche industries can make money out of Esperanto, it would be reasonable to suppose that the majority learn it for philanthropic or otehr motives.
And I would assume this to be typical of most if not all planned languages.
2. Languages with a less sexist culture.
Culture goes much further than grammatical gender as we were discussing it in a previous thread. So to get back at a previous thread, I'll deal with gender first, and then the wider culture beyond grammatical gender.
As for gender neutral languages, Persian is 100% gender neutral (English he and she colllapse into one common animate pronoun, with the equivalent of it for the inanimate. This would mean that even God would be grammatically animate neutral as opposed to masculine as is the case in standard English.
Now as for wider culture, the Babi movement begun in 1844 was the first religious movement the sacred text of which mentionned explicitely the equality between men and women, one of its most famous martyrs, Tahirih having said "You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women". She'd even turned down a marriage proposal to the Shah himself with the following quote from the Qur'an:
"Ye worship not that which I worship, nor do I worship that which ye worship. I shall never worship that which ye worship, nor will ye ever worship that which I worship. To you be your religion, to me my religion."
Her story was made famous by the French diplomate A.L.M. Nicolas, eventually put on stage in France, and so inspired the suffragette movement, later to spread to Britain, and eventually to so influence New Zealand so as to be the first nation on earth to grant women the right to vote in 1893.
So if we are talking about religious culture, then women's equality began in Iran. If we're talking about national cultures, then it started in but was mostly rejected by iran, spread to France, but cuminated in legal equality in New Zealand in 1893. So the question of one culture being more or less sexist is a subjective one. Are we talking about a language culture, a religious culture or a national culture?
More clarification would be needed here.
As for your valiant defense of gender grammar and claims that you can't make any clear link between sexism and language, I would suggest you quickly review the laws (not even social taboos or conventions) of various language groups. One might inquire as to when women gained the right to own property in their own name, choose their husband, vote in elections, and drink in public. You might have another basic checklist, but the point remains quite clear. Language can, and often does, create additional barriers to women achieving equality under the law, in practice, and in social situations.
Strange. As mentionned above, Persian has no grammatical gender, yet Iran today can still be quite sexist, yet the first religious movement to spell out equality in its sacred texts came from Persia. So while your theory would hold true for the religious movement, it would not hold true for current Iranian laws, not to mention that most Persians rejected and even persecute the new movement, while the movement is having more success in the west.
Meanwhile, English does have masculine and feminine gender, including for God, and sometimes colloquially for vehicles (referring to a car or boat as 'she' for instance), yet an English-speaking country was the first to grant women the right to vote. So according to your theory, Iran ought to have embraced on a large scale equality of the sexes long before Englsih countries did, especially seeing that the idea had been openly and fervently discussed and defended there first, thus giving Iran a headstart. This headstart still proved worthless, and eventually an English country that refers to god in the masculine and sometimes to boats in the feminine was the first to accept it legally, despite having started the debate soon after the debate was already being persecuted in Iran.
By the way, I've enjoyed this dialogue quite a bit. I understand and appreciate your point about the thief is not a murderer, but stealing remains a bad thing. Unfortunately, in our rush to exalt various ideals, we can often fail to make vital distinctions among imperfect human societies.
I've enjoyed the exchange likewise. Of course I'm not suggesting we go out and ban English instruction altogether, but mearely that we be more aware of sensitivities non-native speakers may have towards it due to various historical, cultural, political, economic and other factors.