Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 September 27

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September 27

Chinese language and gender-neutrality

In written and spoken Chinese, there is gender-neutrality, and yet, the Chinese family has long been patriarchal, patrilineal, patrifocal, and patrilocal, even before the he/she pronouns were introduced in the modern period. It seems that there is no relationship between gendered language and patriarchy, as some linguistic prescriptivists point out. Yet, there appears to be a correlation between gendered language and patriarchy in the English language. Why? Is the relationship due to culture than grammar? Could it be that, by default, the English word "he" is assumed to carry a masculine meaning, while the Chinese word "ta" is assumed to carry a gender-neutral meaning? How can the English word carry a masculine meaning, when English speakers did use it for all of mankind? How did the English "she" pronoun come about? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 00:42, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Spoken Chinese is indeed completely gender neutral, but written Chinese is only slightly more gender-neutral than English. In any case, why do you say there is a "correlation between gendered language and patriarchy in the English language"? What is "gendered language"?

You can check up the etymology of words with the Online Etymology Dictionary. The entries on he and she are particularly interesting. Apparently, "he" has been the masculine singular pronoun since Old English. The Old English feminine singular pronoun was heo/hio, and the feminine demonstrative pronoun was seo/sio. Due to changes in pronunciation, heo/hio gradually merged with he, and the feminine demonstrative became the feminine singular. That's how the pronoun "she" arose. --Bowlhover (talk) 00:56, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Because some people say that non-gender-neutral language in English is "sexist". When I used "gendered language", I really meant non-gender-neutral language. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 02:11, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Please note that not only are the currently used pronouns of Mandarin relatively recent in the scheme of the history of the major Chinese topolects, but also the distinction between masculine and feminine "ta" is even more recent in writing. It appears the masculine form was used to encompass both male and female referents original, which could give rise to the argument that implicit sexism or non-gender-neutral perspectives were at play.--67.244.27.1 (talk) 03:26, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

What you just said assumes that the 他 was originally masculine, even though it never was. The Chinese word for human is "人". It's not man or woman; it means human. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 04:03, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know what "correlation between gendered language and patriarchy in the English language" could even mean. You can't have a correlation if one of your variables only takes on one value. You need to look at a lot more languages if you want to show a trend (or lack of one). -- BenRG (talk) 05:26, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

The OP's proposed correlation isn't proven--but his/her concept isn't hard to understand. Purely for example purposes, imagine that in pre-21st century English speaking countries, we identify a greater gender imbalance of power (i.e., inequality) in given societies and time periods occurs more prevalently in places/periods which display a greater use (relative to today's usage patterns) of gender-marked words like "huntress," "school mistress" (instead of school teacher), "sculptress," etc. Note languages like Italian and German (especially the latter) style heavily feature such marked forms. But query whether gender imbalance is greater in German speaking societies. --67.244.27.1 (talk) 09:03, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I never proposed a scientific correlation. Maybe I used the wrong word there. But what I meant was that the English language's gendered language is perceived by some people to be sexist or biased, so they prefer and tell others to use gender-neutral wording. 71.79.234.132 (talk) 12:00, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

71.79.234.132 -- Occasionally there can be some interesting connections between linguistic constructions and social attitudes, but I really don't think that there's any simplistic inverse correlation between basic linguistic sex-differentiation and enlightened social attitudes of the type that you are proposing. For that matter, sometimes social attitudes can change a lot faster than linguistic typology. Both the Persian and Finnish languages lack any differentiation of grammatical gender in pronouns and agreement forms, yet relevant social customs and laws are quite a bit different in Finland and Iran. Arabic has a differentiation of grammatical gender not only in 3rd person pronouns, but also in 2nd person pronouns and most 2nd and 3rd person finite inflected verbs (in addition to adjectives and participles), yet there's no radical dichotomy of social customs in Arab vs. Iranian societies (and in fact, there is a significant variation in attitudes across different Arab countries). For that matter, if you compare Finnish and English, Finnish has no gender-differentiation in pronouns (and so no pseudo-generic "he" problem), but on the other hand, until fairly recently Finnish was somewhat rigid in attaching a suffix to many nouns referring to women -- so where in English most "-er" type nouns can refer indifferently to either men or women, in Finnish the corresponding nouns often had to have a suffix attached to refer to specifically to a woman. So which language was then more "sexist"?? P.S. In writing this comment, I stumbled across the Gender neutrality in genderless languages article... AnonMoos (talk) 17:42, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

• THis topic's been beaten to death in the archives, I suggest searching them at the top of the page. English is an Indo-european language, and pre-Indo-European distinguished between active and stative verbs and animate and inanimate nouns. Terms corresponding to he and it existed and applied to living or active objects like fire and water and the sun versus inanimate objects. In the later proto-Indo-European stage, after Hittite, which has no feminine gender, had already become a separate entity, PIE developed a feminine form, distinct from the default animate he form. This basically happened when words ending in -a came to be seen as a class, such as *gwena ("woman, wife, queen) and abstractions in -a. New feminine concord endings for some adjectives (usually those ending in -us and -um in Latin) arose, but many languages still have adjectives and pronouns that differentiate between animate and inanimate, and this explains why the what/who distinction but not a sex distinction in who is almost universal in living Indo-European languages. Hence, it is not that English is patriarchal, "he" is simply the default animate pronoun. It is that somewhere along the line PIE started giving the feminine gender special treatment. μηδείς (talk) 17:08, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Medeis -- Even if the modern English system goes back to early Indo-European in some respects, a new situation came into existence when arbitrary grammatical gender assigned to nouns, and agreements involving such arbitrary grammatical genders, were abolished in early middle English. From that time forward, English had a so-called "natural gender" system, in which in the great majority of cases the pronouns "he", "she", and "it" were used according to the biological sex (or lack thereof) of what they referred to. This new situation meant that the cases in which "he", "she", and "it" were not used according to biological sex now stood out, and were considered problematic by some even before the rise of modern feminism (see "thon"). By contrast, in early Indo-European, proto-Germanic, proto-West-Germanic, Anglo-Frisian, and Old English, there were a lot of cases constantly occurring all the time in which the use of grammatical gender was discrepant from biological sex, and presumably most people were never bothered by it... AnonMoos (talk) 09:26, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

That development has nothing to do with the fact that he had always been the default animate pronoun, and things like curses were always written in the form "let him who disturbs this grave..." without implying females were immune. Nor was he "chosen" at some point to replace a prior default neutral animate. Nor does its continued use in modern English indicate some sort of misogyny. Discussions like this always begin with the premise that writers are sexist, and then latch on to he-as-the-default-animate as a sign of sexism, regardless of the historical truth, or complain about terms like history being sexist in some sort of bizarre pseudoscientific etymologizing.

I am not sure what you meant by thon, User:AnonMoos, is this some pronominal form? Can you give a link? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 19:07, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's generally true that in older and/or heavily inflected Indo-European languages, the masculine is the default animate gender in the singular (not always in the plural). However, in such languages, there are many discrepancies between grammatical gender and biological sex of what is referred to, which are constantly occurring in speech, so that default masculine doesn't really stand out too much against that background. However, in Middle and modern English, the pronouns "he", "she", and "it" are used according to the biological sex of what is referred to in the great majority of cases -- which calls attention to the few cases in which the pronouns are not used according to the biological sex of what they refer to. This includes "she" used for ships and countries etc., as well as the generic masculine.

"Thon" was a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun proposal which was publicized by one Charles Crozat Converse in 1884 (a year not known for the prevalence of feminist political correctness). It was fairly well-known in the United States in the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (though not widely used), and worked its way into some mainstream reputable dictionaries of the period (a fairly comprehensive wiktionary entry at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thon )... AnonMoos (talk) 09:27, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

P.S. It's also very interesting that the 1907 proposal for the Ido language carefully fixed all the "sexist" features of Esperanto, under the guidance of Otto Jespersen, though again 1907 was not particularly a year of pervasive feminist influences, and Jespersen himself does not seem to have been very feminist (at least to judge from "Chapter XIII: The Woman" of his 1921 book Language: Its Nature Development and Origin)... AnonMoos (talk) 08:43, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

• Note that although children receive the surname from their fathers, married Chinese women don't adopt the husband's surname. Given names in Chinese are all unisex, though some characters are rather associated with females. In Chinese writing, there is the female radical 女, but no radical for males. I don't think "he, she, it" are sexist. My Chinese grandpa doesn't know any foreign language. When I explained the concept of other languages to him, he said it was useful. You would know better who someone refers to because Chinese 他, 她, 它 all sound the same. On the other side, naming Chinese family members is very precise. You differentiate between older/younger siblings, paternal/maternal aunts/uncles/grandparents/cousins/grand-aunts/granduncles, fraternal/sororal nephews/nieces and many more. You would automatically know if an aunt is an aunt due to marriage or if she's your parent's sibling and people even go further and call someone first aunt (oldest aunt), second aunt,... --2.246.23.249 (talk) 18:00, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

2.246.23.249 -- To clarify for people who are not familiar with Chinese, Chinese of course has characters for both woman,female 女 and man,male 男. However, only 女 is commonly used as a visual component in deriving more complex characters... AnonMoos (talk) 09:45, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Surrey accent?

I was listening to a BBC World Service The Why Factor podcast called "Trees of Life", and at about 1:20 Tony Kirkham, the head of the Arboretum at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, starts speaking with an interesting accent. He pronounces his name as "tonny", curate (verb form of curation) as "kew-raaayt", daily as "deh-li", and tends to drop the final g from words like planting ("plaantin"). From which part of the UK does this accent originate? I note from his Wikipedia article that he studied in Frensham which is in Surrey, but the article does not say where he grew up, nor am I familiar with what a Surrey accent sounds like. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:29, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Sounds more Lancastrian to me. DuncanHill (talk) 09:48, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Ah, here we are - he grew up in Darwen in Lancs. See this article from the Lancashire Telegraph. DuncanHill (talk) 09:51, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! It's a lovely-sounding accent, though I suppose that statement may be subjective ... — SMUconlaw (talk) 10:01, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Depends who's using it, too. Here's Dynamite Kid at the peak of his enunciation career. Sort of cool, but not so lovely. Then later, neither cool nor lovely. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:19, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

People from Frensham are generally speakers of RP or something posher, but there is a Surrey accent which is rhotic and rather like a Portsmouth accent. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:02, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Latin book names

How should old Latin names for books be presented? Should the names of the works here be abbreviated, or like this? (old revision). Thanks in advance. James^x12345 16:22, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I would go with what the cited source(s) use. Or, if they are commonly known by the shorter title, than that should be okay. I came across something similar concerning German publication titles. I used the short titles in the list with an explanatory footnote {{efn}} for each, and the full title in the footnote, with the citation in the footnote. Anyway, that was my solution, and probably not a proper Wikipedia MoS guideline one, as the following post(s) will explain. —71.20.250.51 (talk) 22:42, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Old Prussian language

Old Prussian gods Potrimpo, Peckols and Perkūnas

There is a drawing of an Old Prussian flag exhibiting a sample of script. The sources for the images on Wikimedia Commons are somewhat unclear (compare File:Prussenfürst.JPG). Are these obvious fakes by Simon Grunau or others, or is this a Cyrillic inscription in Old Prussian language? Thunmann suggested the reading Dew Kork supyk s pustitiais ystuk ssus. Is this ancient Cyrillic? --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 16:52, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't really look like anything that I'm familiar with, but might have been intended to be in a form of Glagolitic... AnonMoos (talk) 17:19, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

• No, assuming it has any actual transcription it does not look like Cyrillic or Glagolitic, which is highly symmetrical. The area was Catholic. Before the Christians came they would likely have used some sort of Runic. This appears to me to be a mixture of unlikely symbols meant to appear exotic--but that's OR, so will see if someone can disprove the null hypothesis. μηδείς (talk) 17:30, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

This was discussed in detail here [1], it would seem that the script is a hoax invented by Grunau, based loosely on Cyrillic and Greek. Akerbeltz (talk) 01:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The letters appear to be alchemical symbols and apothecary's units for the most part. --Amble (talk) 01:41, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I'll have to disgree with that. Alchemical symbols almost always show a very obvious symmetry. I see an "A" and an "a" and a lowercase greek ξ here, maybe. There are Runic thetas with handles and pseudo-phis. But there really is nothing Alchemical or Glagolitic, and whit does exist that might be called Cyrillic overlaps with Greek or Latin. There's certainly not a single symbol diagnostic of just one script. One might as well equally call this Old Turkic. μηδείς (talk) 02:52, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Compare with the symbols in this table File:Alchemytable.jpg and with the ounce and dram symbols in apothecaries' system. Not sure where you get such an idea about symmetry; alchemical symbols are usually based on variations and combinations of letters or symbols for constellations and planets. Some of them are symmetric, others aren't. Jupiter/tin and Saturn/lead don't have any particular symmetry, for exampl.e --Amble (talk) 03:10, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Mc and Mac names

Still, to this day, I regularly come across surnames starting with Mc and Mac that I've never heard before. The most recent one is McClumph. I assumed that was someone's idea of a joke (no offence to any McClumphs out there), but a search reveals it's legit. Each time I become aware of a new one, I wonder how many others are out there lurking in wait to spring a surprise on me.

So that I can be fully prepared for whatever life throws at me, is there a comprehensive list of all known such names, showing all their variants (e.g. McDonald, MacDonald, Mcdonald, Macdonald, Mc Donald, Mac Donald, M'Donald .....) ? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:58, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

McClumph (as well as M'Clumph, MacClumph, etc) is not in the OUP A Dictionary of Surnames, which has pages of Mcs Macs and Mucks. No Lumph or Lump either, nor O'Lumph, nor Clumph nor Clump. So, in answer to your question, probably not. DuncanHill (talk) 23:48, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

This doesn't answer Jack's question (because it's obviously not comprehensive in its variants), yet for anyone who's interested: List of Scottish Gaelic surnames features MacClumpha and MacLumpha derived from Scottish Gaelic MacIllIomchadha. (Perhaps the helpful people who responded to the question on Alexander Carmichael's Gaelic notes will have something to add ...) ---Sluzzelin talk 00:13, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Don't think there's anything comprehensive. What bloats Gaelic surnames beyond the reatively small pool of patronymics are the MacGilleX names, i.e. son of the servant of followed by a saint. Which means that many obscure saint's have left behind surnames even if they're barely known as saints. In this case we're talking St Iomchadh, whoever he may have been. Akerbeltz (talk) 01:43, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

According to this site, Iomchadh Uallach was the grandson (or possibly great-great-grandson - I'm not sure what the referent of the various "his son" entries on the list is) of Ailill Aulom, King of Munster. Tevildo (talk) 09:16, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

The 2000 US census records surnames borne by more than 100 people; of those, 1896 being with "Mc" and 405 with "Mac" (none with M' FWIW). This includes some false positives, e.g. "Macias", and false negatives, e.g. "Magee"; and by definition less common names missing. jnestorius^(talk) 16:52, 30 September 2014 (UTC)