Ο συντάκτης, της συντάκτριας

[Costas]

χαν, χουν, και τώρα χεν:

Sweden Adopts a Gender-Neutral Pronoun (care2)
Swedes are shaking up their language with a new gender-neutral pronoun. The pronoun, “hen,” allows speakers and writers to refer to a person without including reference to a person’s gender. This month, the pronoun made a big leap toward mainstream usage when it was added to the country’s National Encyclopedia.

Ωστόσο το έδαφος ήταν προετοιμασμένο από την ίδια τη γραμματική της γλώσσας:

(Wikipedia)
Nouns have two grammatical genders: common (utrum) and neuter (neutrum), which determine their definite forms as well as the form of any adjectives used to describe them. Noun gender is largely arbitrary and must be memorized; however, around three quarters of all Swedish nouns are common gender. Living beings are often common nouns, like in en katt, en häst, en fluga, etc.
Swedish once had three genders—masculine, feminine and neuter. Though traces of the three-gender system still exist in archaic expressions and certain dialects, masculine and feminine nouns have today merged into the common gender. A remnant of the masculine gender can still be expressed in the singular definite form of adjectives according to natural gender (male humans), in the same way as personal pronouns, han/hon, are chosen for representing nouns in Contemporary Swedish (male/female humans and optionally animals).

Personal pronouns
Singular
Person.....Nominative......Objective..Possessive: com./neut./pl.
3 Masc.....han...............honom.....hans
3 Fem......hon...............henne.....hennes
3 Com.....den................den........dess
3 Neu......det................det........dess
3 Indef....man...............en.........ens

 

[Costas]

1) Στο A review of A “Different Economy of Bodies and Pleasures”? Gender, Power, and Sexuality in BDSM Interactions, by Brandy Simula Dissertation Reviews, διαβάζω:

(in keeping with contemporary queer-feminist theory, I use the gender-neutral pronouns “ze” for “she” and “he,” and “zir” for “her” and “his”)

Γιατί zir και όχι zis?

2) Προχτές διάβασα σ' ένα σχόλιο στο μπλογκ του Σαραντάκου την είδηση ότι το Πανεπιστήμιο της Λειψίας θα χρησιμοποιεί στο εξής το θηλυκό ως κοινό γένος για τους ακαδημαϊκούς τίτλους του: Herr Professorin, για παράδειγμα, ακόμα και για τους άντρες.

 

[Costas]

Αντιγράφω από το άρθρο της Wikipedia, Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns:

Written Chinese has gone in the opposite direction, from non-gendered to gendered pronouns, though this hasn't affected the spoken language.

In spoken standard Mandarin, there is no gender distinction in personal pronouns: the pronoun tā (他) can mean "he", "she", "ze", or "it". However, when the antecedent of the spoken pronoun tā is unclear, native speakers will assume it is a male person. In 1917, the Old Chinese graph tā (她, from nǚ 女, "woman") was borrowed into the written language to specifically represent "she" by Liu Bannong. As a result, the old character tā (他), which previously also meant "she" in written texts, is sometimes restricted to meaning "he" only. In contrast to most Chinese characters coined to represent specifically male concepts, the character tā is formed with the ungendered character for person rén (人), rather than the character for male nán (男)."

The creation of gendered pronouns in Chinese was part of the May Fourth Movement to modernize Chinese culture, and specifically an attempt to assert sameness between Chinese and the European languages, which generally have gendered pronouns. Of all the contemporary neologisms from the period, the only ones to remain in common use are tā (它) for objects, tā (牠, from niú 牛, "cow") for animals, and tā (祂 from shì 示, "revelation") for gods. Although Liu and other writers tried to popularize a different pronunciation for the feminine tā, including yi from the Wu dialect and tuo from a literary reading, these efforts failed, and all forms of the pronoun tā retain identical pronunciation. This identical pronunciation of the split characters holds true not only for Mandarin but also for many of the varieties of Chinese. There is a recent trend on the Internet for people to write "TA" in Latin script, derived from the pinyin romanization of Chinese, as a gender-neutral pronoun.

Σε διάστημα δηλαδή λιγότερο από ενός αιώνα διαγράφηκε ένας πλήρης κύκλος με επιστροφή στην αφετηρία, μόνο που τώρα αντί για το επίκοινο 他 υπάρχει το λατινικό ta! Και η επιστροφή αυτή στην αφετηρία δεν είναι επιστροφή στην προτέρα κατάσταση· κάθε άλλο.
[Το ta αυτό μπορείτε να το δείτε σε εφαρμογή εδώ]

 

[Costas]

Στην Αυστραλία άρχισαν να δέχονται και τρίτο φύλο ("γένος"), το ουδέτερο, στα επίσημα χαρτιά τους:
(Slate)
Jusqu'à présent les formulaires australiens proposaient deux options sous la case «genre»: homme ou femme. Il faut désormais ajouter une troisième possibilité, le neutre. Une décision de la cour d'appel de la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud a en effet reconnu officiellement l'existence de ce genre –ou non-genre– dans cet Etat d'Australie. Plus précisement, la décision annule l'obligation d'enregistrer un citoyen uniquement comme homme ou comme femme sur les certificats de naissance, de décès, et de mariage, comme l'explique le Sydney Morning Herald.

A l'origine de cette procédure, Norrie May-Welby, un homme devenu femme qui se considère désormais comme «neutre» ou «sexless», en anglais.

Άμα δε προσθέσουμε και τη διαφυλικότητα...(και σ' εμάς συζήτηση εδώ)

Μήπως σαν Λεξιλογία να γίνουμε οι πρώτοι (ή απ' τους πρώτους) που θα δώσουμε και τρίτο κουτάκι για το φύλο;

 

[nickel]

Μήπως σαν Λεξιλογία να γίνουμε οι πρώτοι (ή απ' τους πρώτους) που θα δώσουμε και τρίτο κουτάκι για το φύλο;

Και να θεσπίσουμε κι αυτό το σύμβολο. Που θα είναι το σύμβολο του Αραφρόδιτου ή του Αφροδιτάρη;

 

[Hellegennes]

Μπορούμε να θεσπίσουμε τον απλό κύκλο.

 

[Earion]

Και να θεσπίσουμε ... το σύμβολο ... του Αραφρόδιτου ή του Αφροδιτάρη;

Δεν χρειάζεται. Είναι ήδη το σύμβολο του Ερμαφρόδιτου.

Εδώ έχει πολλά σύμβολα για όλες τις προτιμήσεις.

 

[nickel]

Α, μάλιστα. Αδιαφορούν για το ότι το σύμβολο του Ερμή είναι διαφορετικό.

Στη βιολογία:

But Linnaeus was also the one to appropriate the planet symbols to biology. In his notes, he used the Venus symbol as shorthand for female and the Mars symbol as shorthand for male. He also used Saturn to denote woody plants, the Sun for annual plants and Jupiter for perennials. As for gender, the Mercury symbol was used by Linnaeus for hermaphrodite plants. However, that symbol’s meaning has changed over the years, at least in scientific shorthand, and is now used to denote virgin female (e.g. in genetic analysis). Mars was also used by Linnaeus, somewhat confusingly, for biennial plants.
http://bytesizebio.net/2012/03/08/the-origin-of-gender-symbols-in-biology/

 

[Costas]

Εδώ έχουμε πελαγώσει με τις λέξεις, τα σύμβολα μας μάραναν...

 

[Earion]

Για σύμβολα έχει χυθεί αίμα στην ανθρώπινη ιστορία.

 

[Costas]

Ωχ! αν υποψιαστώ ότι θα πλακωθούν μεταξύ τους όλα τα σύμβολα που είναι στο κάτω μέρος της σελίδας του λινκ σου, από τα πιο απλά ως τα πιο σύνθετα, θα πάω να αυτοκτονήσω! Αλλά γιατί να μην προσθέσουμε και τα διάφορα σύμβολα των σεξ. ιδιαιτεροτήτων; Εκεί να δεις τι αίμα θα χυθεί...

 

[Alexandra]

Από το skai.gr, πλούσια η συγκομιδή, αλλά το βάζω εδώ γιατί το πρώτο που μου έκανε εντύπωση ήταν "η ατζέντης" και μετά πρόσεξα τα άλλα δύο:

Σύμφωνα με την ατζέντη ο Γούντι Άλεν θα αντιδράσει «πολύ γρήγορα». Η Νταρτ είπε επίσης ότι καμία δίωξη είχε κινηθεί κατά του σκηνοθέτη και καμία ένδειξη της σεξουαλικής επίθεσης είχε αναπτυχθεί από ανεξάρτητους εμπειρογνώμονες που διορίζονται από δικαστήριο.

 

[Hellegennes]

Ιησούς!

 

[SBE]

Aυτό το "καμία ένδειξη της σεξουαλικής επίθεσης [δεν] είχε αναπτυχθεί", ποιά λέξη μεταφράζει;
Στις ειδήσεις με τις δηλώσεις της ατζέντισσας βλέπω concluded, "At the time, a thorough investigation was conducted by court appointed independent experts. The experts concluded there was no credible evidence of molestation".

 

[Costas]

Μου τη σπάει όταν μια γλώσσα, εν προκειμένω η αγγλική, αναγορεύεται σε νόρμα, στη συγκεκριμένη περίπτωση για την κατάργηση του γένους:

Germans try to get their tongues around gender-neutral language
Justice ministry's edict that state institutions must use 'gender-neutral' language is forcing the country to confront change
(The Guardian)

Der, die or das? For centuries, the seemingly arbitrary allocation of masculine, feminine and neutral gender articles in German has driven non-native speakers to despair. "In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has," the American writer Mark Twain once complained. "Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl."

But hope may finally be in sight. Changing attitudes to gender are increasingly transforming the German language, and some theorists argue that scrapping the gendered articles altogether may be the most logical outcome.

Predictions vary: one suggestion is that Angela Merkel will eventually no longer be die Bundeskanzlerin but a neutral das Bundeskanzler, as she would be in English. Others believe that the feminine gender, already the most common fallback form used by non-native speakers, will become the default article: a policeman would no longer be der Polizist but die Polizist.

The changing nature of German is particularly noticeable at university campuses. Addressing groups of students in German has been problematic ever since universities stopped being bastions of male privilege. Should they be sehr geehrte Studenten or sehr geehrte Studentinnen?

In official documents, such as job advertisements, administrators used to get around the problem with typographical hybrid forms such as Student(inn)en or StudentInnen – an unfair compromise, some say, which still treats the archetype of any profession as masculine.

Now, with the federal justice ministry emphasising that all state bodies should stick to "gender-neutral" formulations in their paperwork, things are changing again. Increasingly, job ads use the feminine form as the root of a noun, so that even a male professor may be referred to as der Professorin. Lecturers are advised to address their students not as Studenten but Studierende ("those that study"), thus sidestepping the gender question altogether.

In the long run, such solutions would prove too complicated, linguists such as Luise Pusch argue. She told the Guardian that men would eventually get so frustrated with the current compromises that they would clock on to the fundamental problem, and the German language would gradually simplify its gender articles, just as English has managed to do since the Middle Ages.

"Language should be comfortable and fair," said Pusch. "At the moment, German is a very comfortable language, but a very unfair one."

Many linguists question whether language can be changed through human will. "It's hard to transform grammar through legislation, and even if so, such changes often happen over centuries," said Anatol Stefanowitsch, a linguist at Berlin's Free University.

But he also points out that some dialects, such as Niederdeutsch (Low German), have lost the cumbersome distinction between der and die already: in Low German, for example, both men and women are simply referred to as de.

Πόσο πιο γελοίος μπορεί να γίνει ο συντάκτης του άρθρου Philip Oltermann, όταν γράφει το ανθρωπομορφικό just as English has managed to do since the Middle Ages ;

 

[daeman]

...
Συμφωνώ, Κώστα. Από την άλλη, κάτι που έβλεπα προχτές και γέλασα:

Eddie Izzard - Force Majeure - English Language

English as a force majeure...

 

[Costas]

Πρόσεξα ότι έχει βαμμένα τα νύχια του.

 

[Zazula]

Πρόσεξα ότι έχει βαμμένα τα νύχια του.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/nov/20/zoe-williams-eddie-izzard-saturday-interview

 

[Costas]

Α, μάλιστα· ευχαριστώ!

 

[SBE]

Κώστα, έχεις μείνει πίσω (άσχετα από τον Ίζαρντ)