Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 November 26

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November 26

Is "god" a gender-neutral noun?

Yes, I know that "deity" certainly is. But I am a bit iffy about "god". It feels just so awkward to write "female gods", while fine to write "female deities" or "goddesses". I am just wondering if it's perfectly rational to use "god" as a gender-neutral noun or if it's just my irrational feeling. Maybe the word is both male and gender-neutral like "man". "Man" can be used for men, but it may be used for all of humanity. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 05:57, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

In the plural it's certainly somewhat generic -- an expression such as "the gods of ancient Greece" doesn't necessarily exclude goddesses. However, when capitalized and used without preceding article in the singular to refer to monotheistic divinity, it's intended to refer to a being without human sexual attributes, but conventionally referred to by masculine pronouns. AnonMoos (talk) 06:12, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Not only "when capitalized etc. to refer to monotheistic divinity". If you write "the god of war..." no one will think of Athena. You'd have to write "the goddess of war (and many other things)" Contact Basemetal here 06:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

But the same is true of many nouns which are roughly gender neutral in common usage, especially those which have an explicitly female variant. E.g. thinking of a generic actor, waiter, doctor, or soldier and most people will think of a male first. There's certainly nothing wrong with using "the god of war" to refer to Athena, unlike, for example, referring to a woman as a widower or a batchelor. MChesterMC (talk) 10:15, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Off-topic nitpick: what would be wrong about saying that Athena is a god of war is that her symbolism in war is only through strategy/tactics - she is much more solidly associated with cunning, wisdom, and intelligence. In the Greek pantheon, "god of war" would surely refer to Ares. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:14, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd picked Athena precisely because she and Ares "share" war to some extent and so we could test how gender-neutral "god" really is. Similarly we could say that Artemis and Apollo share archery. If so who of the two would be "the god of the bow"? (cf. however MChesterMC's point that this is not conclusive and he's probably right). You're of course right that Ares is a god of "mindless war" while Athena is a goddess of "clever war" (who in general, when confronted to Ares, will run circles around him in terms of sheer military prowess, as somewhere in the Iliad) and has many more attributes besides (cf. "and many other things"). Contact Basemetal here 18:43, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I have searched Google, I have searched Google Ngrams: I could not find not one single occurrence of "god" in the feminine (as in "Aphrodite god of love" etc.) Can someone point out such an occurrence in writing, cause if you can't, I fail to see what your assumption "god" is gender neutral is based on. Contact Basemetal here 22:38, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Being unable to find not one single occurrence would imply that you have been able to find multiple occurrences. 'Cause' is a verb (usually transitive, and you have no object). Also, in your final clause 'your assumption of "god" being gender neutral' would be better. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 08:31, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Was sure teached wrong, man, but thnx to you gonna learn it good. Contact Basemetal here 12:26, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Used by itself, "god" is masculine and "goddess" is feminine. The expression "gods" by itself can refer to all the male gods, or all of them, be they male or female. The alternate expression "gods and goddesses" covers that ground a bit more specifically. Yes, it's "sexist", but it's the way it is in English. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:01, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Which neatly demonstrates why both pairs of words (male and female, masculine and feminine) are alive and well in our language. They are not pairwise synonymous, nor is either of them equivalent to the adjectival use of man and woman. (Interesting that male, masculine and man all start with "ma" - oddly, a name for a mother; maybe we should change them to pale, pasculine and pan - but at least they're consistent; while female, feminine and woman have nothing in common to all three. Which proves that women are fickle and flighty while men are sturdy and dependable. It's all there for those with eyes to see.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:27, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Now I've got one of Henry Higgins' songs running through my head. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:49, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

• God is a neutral gender noun, from ghu-to-m (see EO) that either referred to a libation, or the earth of a fresh grave. The modern form is quasi-masculine in contrast to goddess, which is a mixture of a Germanic stem with a French suffix. μηδείς (talk) 23:24, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Which Scandinavian language is imitated by this Israeli actor?

This Israeli actor (with his friend - a well-known Israeli singer), is trying to imitate an unidentified Scandinavian language, at 1:33 (to 2:23).

Btw, this bit should not be taken too seriously: it's an (old) comic film, so the imitated speech (involving a couple of words in Biblical Hebrew) is not intended to be supposed to be a professional imitation of an authentic speech. 77.125.111.11 (talk) 12:36, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I am from Norway. I don't think the actor has the intonation or sound of any of the Scandinavian languages; his speech more resembled Dutch or German (allthough of course wouldn't have been a good imition of these languages either) . Regards Iselilja (talk) 13:40, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Being Dutch myself and understanding German reasonably well, I did not at first recognize such a resemblance, but after reading your comment I listened again, and one can make out the German "also" and "und" several times (though for the most part it is gibberish of course). They did use the ⟨y⟩ vowel sound quite a lot, which is of course present in German, Dutch and also Danish etc. - Lindert (talk) 16:25, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

To me the reason it sounded more Dutch/German to me was primarily because of the -ach sound which we don't have so much of in Scandinavian languages. But that is a sound he has from Hebrew, I think. Btw. here is a Norwegian interpretation of a Dutchman; that's more like it, I believe ;) Iselilja (talk) 17:11, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

My mom always told me not to play with my food. Contact Basemetal here 17:24, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

He has no discernible accent, sounds like a native speaker. And he's funny too. - Lindert (talk) 18:33, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

If you listen to Kristopher Schau's Norwegian clips (here) it's not the same voice. He's obviously lipsyncing. Here he's lipsyncing to the same Dutch recording but with a fish. Must be a running joke of his about the Dutch. (And still playing with food. Poor fish.) The voice is that of Dutch comedian Wim Sonneveld (here). No wonder he sounded like a native speaker. The skit is about a Dutch snob who thinks food tastes better in French. (But it's not "buste de veau" but "poitrine de veau". Maybe that's part of the joke.) The song at the end is a well known Dutch children song whose title "Schipper mag ik overvaren?" translates as "Skipper may I cross over?". The Norwegian audience has absolutely no clue what he's saying. Not entirely clear to me what it is they're laughing about. Maybe they find the sound of Dutch funny. Or they think it is hysterically funny to see someone "dance" wearing clogs made out of bread or headgear made out of a big fish. Contact Basemetal here 01:29, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

And another one: Kristopher Schau lipsyncing to the same old Wim Sonneveld skit while taking a shower while wearing a suit. Norwegian humor. They never get tired, do they? Hysterical. Contact Basemetal here 12:02, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

And here: Doing it in Amsterdam while all the while trying to confuse the natives. Contact Basemetal here 12:07, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

If you're saying yourself it's not supposed to reflect an authentic speech then what are you asking? You're right, it sounds like nothing. He's pretending trying to imitate Swedish probably (I would guess from the sign "Gustav Erikson Shvedia" (Hebrew)/"G. Erikson Sweden" (English)), but if he's really trying to imitate anything I can tell you this is the worst imitation of Swedish I've heard in my life. Swedish especially is notorious for its pitch contour. Any European kindergartner knows that's the first thing you try to get right if you try to do Swedish. This actor has probably never even heard Swedish in his life. It sounds at most like Yiddish to me. BTW, did you know you didn't need to say "at 1:33". You could include the time offset in the link itself: same link with time offset. Contact Basemetal here 13:40, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

For me, that still starts at the start, Basemetal. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:14, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Really? And how about the second link the OP provided, the one here below? This time he did use a time offset (of 266 seconds; my link used a time offset of 87 seconds). I tried my and his link in two browsers (Chrome and Firefox) and it worked. If it really doesn't work after you've tried a coupla times you could try asking at the Computing RD. Contact Basemetal here 19:39, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Seems to be OK now, thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:26, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all. Btw, when dressed in another costume (in the same film), he also pretends to imitate an unidentified Sudanese language - at 4:26 (to 5:06). 77.125.111.11 (talk) 16:35, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Is this really from this movie ("Lool") (Hebrew WP article). The clip looks way older than 1988. Contact Basemetal here 16:59, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

From what I gather from Google translate, the 1988 movie was actually made up of clips from the TV series of the same name from 1970-1973. - Lindert (talk) 17:19, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

And here you've got them pretending to do Russian! That comedy show seemed to have specialized in lousy imitations of accents. Contact Basemetal here 17:40, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Sic semper tyrannis

Could someone flesh out what is/was actually meant by "sic semper tyrannis"? Our article is good to point out that it doesn't actually translate to "death to tyrants" or the like but it doesn't really flesh out what is actually meant by "thus always to tyrants". Is it something like "tyrants get their just deserts"? Dismas|^(talk) 13:21, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think anybody can really answer this with any authority. I've always understood it more hortatively: not "tyrants get their just deserts", but "this is what we must always do to tyrants". But that is no more authoritative than any other interpretation. --ColinFine (talk) 14:18, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

It's all about context. Though Brutus likely didn't say that after Caesar's death, if he did the context would be clear. It seems from our article sic semper tyrannis that JWB did say it when he assassinated Lincoln, and again death is the context. Presumably if someone said it after giving a tyrant a big hug, the meaning would be different. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:50, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Also, Sic_transit_gloria_mundi has similar ambiguity -- what exactly is marking the passing of the glory? We can't say without context. We also have some analogs from modern TV quotes featuring demonstrative pronouns. "That's how you get ants" [1] or "That's why you always leave a note" [2]. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:08, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Let's leave Gloria Mundy out of this, shall we. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:10, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Indeed (see Novels section). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 14:57, 27 November 2014 (UTC)