The English Language

Rahul Balaggan

Words be hard...

Tacitus

I did? Wait widower is gender specific? Huh. English is my 2nd language but I thought I had a better grasp on it.

15Redstones

@Tacitus widow is female, widower is male

TheGrimLich

@Tacitus English doesn't have many gender-specific words (they were part of the alpha release, but they've been phased out), but widow and widower are.

DaveHowe

@TheGrimLich If english were logical, a widower would be one who creates widows.

kurosov

@DaveHowe said in Bookworm Part 5 Vol. 3 Discussion!:

@TheGrimLich If english were logical, a widower would be one who creates widows.

It's one of those words from middle English that doesn't share it's structural origins with the majority of other words. It makes sense, but under different rules.

Widow and Widower were two completely different words that changed over time. While "widower" appears to be an agent noun of "widow" it is not.

"Man" and "Woman" underwent a similar change over time to form a different misconception. Two distinct words but over time the distinctive part was dropped from the male term, leading to all kinds of pointless arguments these days as "Man" still means human not a male human.

TheGrimLich

@kurosov Also, "wereman" just sounds cooler (hilariously, that's why it's a "werewolf")

kurosov

@TheGrimLich said in Bookworm Part 5 Vol. 3 Discussion!:

@kurosov Also, "wereman" just sounds cooler (hilariously, that's why it's a "werewolf")

It does. Especially as people back then were hairier.

Middle English and it's changes throughout history can be a fascinating yet weird rabbit hole to follow.

15Redstones

@kurosov all those efforts to rename professions to make them gender neutral (policeman => police officer for example) would be completely unnecessary if we just reverted to gender neutral "man" with optional male/female prefix syllables. Much more logical system tbh.

Sekki

@15Redstones But if we would do that then ppl on Twitter would not have something to fight over :)

Anyway Japanese is quite gender neutral. That is why they have extensions like -san or -sama.

kurosov

@Sekki said in Bookworm Part 5 Vol. 3 Discussion!:

@15Redstones But if we would do that then ppl on Twitter would not have something to fight over :)

Anyway Japanese is quite gender neutral. That is why they have extensions like -san or -sama.

The funny thing is the fact that the terms like "Policeman" are actually gender neutral. The loss of a male distinct word was done because the distinction wasn't seen as necessary not because it was never used to refer to women but because it wasn't seen as important to be distinct when referring to men at the time, they were an after thought.

A group would react the same to the statement "There's a person over there" as they would "there's a male person over there".
However "There's a female person over there" would change how the group plans to interact with them, lower weariness etc. So the distinction stuck.

They'd want to differentiate when shouting "save the female and underage persons". The only time they'd say save the male people is if there are only men present or they actually mean "save all the people".

A lot of languages end up with more terms to refer to females, children and the elderly because of this.

Rahul Balaggan

Hello,

Moved this out of the current Bookworm volume discussion thread, as it did not belong.

Additionally, I will take the time to say this now, if this ends up becoming a politically charged discussion I will shut it down.

Thank you

TheGrimLich

@kurosov I'd argue that's not so much gender-neutral as it is gender-assumptive, which is a similar but different thing. Kind of like how a Bosc pear and a Bartlett pear are both pears (and, in fact, are two different cultivars of the same species), but if you have a recipe that calls for a Bosc and you use a Bartlett it's not going to taste quite the same.