[ExI] language question

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Oct 29, 2016, at 8:35 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> 
> Americans are struggling to de-gender our language to make it more inclusive.  I am all in favor of it; have been doing that for years in various ways, such as using she and her as the gender-nonspecific form rather than the more traditional he and his.  This works even if we actually do know the gender of the person, even if it introduces awkwardness (…the rapist left a semen-stained undergarment when she fled the scene…)
>  
> We are hearing another awkward compromise where we use the traditionally genderless term “they” in place of the clumsy “he or she” and “their” in place of “his or her.”  We pretend that “they” and “their” can be singular as well as plural, even while recognizing we are throwing away the specificity between singular vs plural in order to be gender-neutral.  OK, fair deal.  I can embrace that with all our heart.
>  
> My question please is for hipster Spanish speakers, with the gender-specific articles la and el.  If the English-speaking counterparts are doing this, how does a Latin-based language de-gender-ify itself?  We might end up in a situation where objects can still keep genders but people cannot.  How weird is that?  I like weird.
>  
> OK then, if we agree objects can keep their gender but humans cannot, what about beasts, which wear their gender right out in the open?  If Spain figures out a way around la and el for humans, such as making every human title al or le for instance, what about el toro?  In that deplorable “sport” (don’t eeeeven get me going on that) everyone knows the gender of al tor….  Tor what?  Tore?  Tori?  Toru?
>  
> And since I am on that topic, let us think about people.  Surely the Spanish have some things that just always have been and likely always will be male, such as al matador.  Has there ever been a woman doing that?  Wait, don’t tell us, we retract the question, we don’t even want to know.  Leave us to assume not.
>  
> Since plenty of us here anticipate some kind of VR existence where we can change genders with a line of code (how cool will that be?  And so useful for so many situations!) we can give credence to the currently popular notion that a person is whatever gender they say they is.
>  
> OK if that is true now, can we make it retroactively true?  If so, what about our current references to people in the past for whom we have always assumed a gender, such as the virgin Mary?  Do we know she identified as a woman?  Didn’t think so.  What do we do with any historical figure, for whom we now do not know what their gender is?
>  
> Spanish speakers among us, what are you doing with your language?

I'm not fluent in Spanish, but languages with genders for nouns... well, this doesn't seem to directly map onto ideas of gender in humans. For instance, German has three genders and the word 'Mädchen' is neuter -- not feminine. (The word is usually translated as 'girl.') Germans seem to have no problem understanding that 'das Mädchen' refers to a female.

By the way, using 'they' as a genderless pronoun goes back centuries. It's actually later grammarians who inveighed against it. Losing specificity didn't seem to bother folks back then. In fact, every language has ambiguities and these are often dealt with by just adding more info or relying on context.

For instance, if I say 'we went to the party,' does that mean 'you and I went to the party' or 'some other people (not including you) and I went to the party' or 'you, some other people, and I went to the party'? In many situations, that's ambiguous and the listener has to ask for more information if 'they';) are unsure. 

Regards,

Dan
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