Talk:Gender-neutral language/Archive 1

message: I had been waiting for one of the authors of this page to either respond to the NPOV issue (perhaps defend the article as it is) and/or start editing the article.  But since it's been about a week now and nobody's responded, I've begun the proccess of modifying the article so as to make it more NPOV.  As of right now, I've started with the intro paragraph.  I've replaced "sexist language" with "more traditional language," and I've made "gender neutral language" the first term used, as it is both a more neutral descriptive term (no so much embodied allegation or argument) and, at least judging from the number of Google hits, it appears to be the more common term.
--Blackcats 19:46, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: In my view this article is still far from a NPOV, and I think it requires a section proper to itself wherein gender inclusive language is critiqued at length.  Perhaps I will do so soon.  Lostcaesar 00:43, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Never mind the existence of sexist presuppositions, how about the fact that no such program exists in the Norwegian language? It is true that there was (and is) a program of gradually reforming Norwegian, dating from about 1850, but it had nothing to do with sexist language. Instead it was intended to bring the written language, which was very heavily influenced by Danish, into conformity with the spoken, particularly the spoken language of the working class. This is certainly an example of trying to use language reforms for political ends, but the ends are class-political and nationalistic, rather than feminist. Accordingly, I've removed the sentence. --King of Men 01:37, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry to butt in here, but this comment was obviously written by a non-native speaker of English, presumably a Serbian speaker. They don't mean "problem" as you are reading it (something to do with "political correctness") but simply that as a highly gender-inflected language the issue of creating "gender balance" comes up far more often in Serbian grammar than in English (where it's largely down to the use of third-person singular pronouns and a few job titles) and is trickier to solve, with no one obvious solution (an experience common to "most other Slavic languages"). We should be grateful that native speakers of languages like Serbian are sharing their knowledge with us, and go easy on them a little! ProhibitOnions 23:57:32, 2005-09-08 (UTC)
Also, the authors sometimes engage in what is essentially name-calling - when they refer to language that does not conform to their standards as "sexist language."  That's equivalent to when "pro-life" people refer to "pro-choice" people as "pro-death."  So much for sensitivity - LOL!
Feb 3rd, 2005
I've continued the process of editing for NPOV.  As of now, I've made it as far as the "Enforcement, persuasion, or evolution?" section.  I think that ultimately this page will have to be moved, as one of the biggest NPOV issues is the use of the term "non-sexist language," which implicity states that traditional use of gender in English (or other languages) is sexist.  And of course there's no concensus, among scholors or the general public, that this is true.  Also, as I pointed out earlier - "gender neutral language" is also the more commonly used term. --Blackcats 08:12, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: True or false: there are still a great many Americans who don't think it is important to use non-sexist language, including many who are aware that they are using sexist language. 66.32.244.119 19:03, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  True or false?? 

message: The Turkish bit seems wrong to me, since it talks about using morphemes "Adam" and "KadIn", yet uses -adam- in the complete word in both cases.
I don't know enough Turkish to know whether the second example in each case should use -kadIn- or whether that morpheme is modified in the compound word. -- pne 07:10, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turkish 

message: Why does sexist language appear to continue to be in common use?? Please explain using whatever detail you can. 66.245.7.254 21:21, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sexist language continues to be in common use 

message: Is there a point in referring to the name of a satirical show (such as Spitting Image) without including the satire itself? Bobblewik  (talk) 15:39, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spitting Image 

message: I can easily tell that there have recently been a few Wikipedians who want Wikipedia to use sexist language (Vapier and Smrits) by saying "The correct gender-neutral form is he". Somewhere at Wikipedia, perhaps at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, we need a poll on what pronoun Wikipedia should adopt the use of as a gender-neutral pronoun. Please try to include at least 4 choices. 66.245.100.121 19:27, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Before that happens see Wikipedia:Survey guidelines. Hyacinth 21:15, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

text: Your link seems to be broken... what are you referring to? Axlrosen 02:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poll on Wikipedia's adopted gender-neutral pronoun 

message: I have a proposal that I not only think everyone can agree on, but it's actually more accurate too. Let's look at the list of supposedly sexist language constructs: 
*Use of what they consider to be exclusively gender-specific pronouns like "he". 
*Use of "man" to refer to all people. 
*Use of gender-specific job titles. 
*Use of Miss and Mrs. (see Ms.). 
*non-parallel usage, such as "man and wife". 
*Stereotypical words such as virile and ladylike 
Only the first 3 of these have to do with "gender-specific language". The last 3 do not. Therefore, "gender-neutral language" and "non-sexist language" cannot be synonyms, and one should not redirect to the other. Instead, I think that most of this article should go under "gender-neutral language". The "non-sexist language" article should remain, and it should: (1) list these 6 constructs that some people object to (2) link to all of them, as well as "gender-neutral language" and (3) make clear that not everyone agrees that such language is sexist. How about that?
Axlrosen 22:42, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that it may be a good idea to spin off some of the content as you discussed.  But I don't think that "non-sexist language" would be the best title for the contents or whatever page either.  A more NPOV title like "allegations of sexism in language" or "language often seen as sexist" would be more appropriate.  --Blackcats 05:57, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sexism in language is a common subject heading amonst my local libraries. Hyacinth 08:08, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: I would be down with "alleged sexism in language."  That may still be just a tad akward, but I still think that's trumped by its NPOV value.  For now I'm gonna focus on moving the main article, and wait and see a bit later about any category or contents page.  --Blackcats 23:44, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Compromise proposal 

message: As of 2005, what percentage of Americans are opponents of non-sexist language?? Georgia guy 23:36, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that question is a perfect example of how loaded a term "non-sexist language" is.  I oppose sexist language, I simply don't feel that there's anything sexist about using the male gramatical gender as a common gender in cases where the gender is unknown.  If you did a survey and phrased the question like that - you'd probably get a lot of people saying they support "non-sexist language," (though I think a significant percentage would still say they didn't).  But among the group which said yes, I think a majority would soon get pissed off if someone started correcting them every time they didn't rephrase their speech or writing with something akward like "he/she," the "singular they" in a case where it clearly doesn't sound right, or change their sentence to the plural when it was easier and more natural for them to have it in the singular. I think the better question would be what percentage of English speakers use "he," "him," "himself," "his," etc. in cases where the gender is unknown and would be upset if they were forced to quit doing so.--Blackcats 23:59, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, what is the percentage?? Georgia guy 16:41, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: GG, since you're so fancinated by that question, maybe you should do some research and see if any such surveys have been done.  All I know is that it continues to be a controversial issue, and my concern is making sure to make sure that the opinions of people on both sides are fairly represented here.  --Blackcats 05:26, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure such surveys have been done, but I agree with Blackcats that those numbers would hardly be useful.  What if I wanted to know what percentage of Americans really care about the environment?  "Everyone cares about the environment in a phone survey" (name that movie :).  I wouldn't rely on a survey.  There have been literally hundreds of studies to show that how a question is worded, in what order questions are asked, what kind of survey (random phone survey, magazine mail survey, internet survey, etc.), and many other factors create such a large variance in any survey about people's opinions or beliefs that the results of such surveys are useless.  I'm talking tens of percentage points of variance.  So the best we can probably do is "less than 100% and more than 0% of Americans are opponents of non-sexist language". CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 06:08, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Percentage 

message: Although gender is used colloquially as a synonym for sex, such usage renders a page like this nearly incomprehensible. Better to say sex when you mean sex ! Ailanto 05:30, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)
:I agree. Chamaeleon 10:59, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gender vs. Sex 

message: There needs to be a simple yes or no vote on the proposed move. Otherwise, list article's listing will lanquish on the move-request page with no conclusion. How about we have a vote for five days on the proposed move, then when that's over, if the vote is to not move the page, the discussion can continue as to what the title of the article should be, and when a really good idea is suggested, another move request can be made. Please vote support or oppose below. Lachatdelarue (talk) 01:50, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Actual vote

message: #Maurreen 16:09, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Support

message: #Ambarish 04:46, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose

message: Just want to point out to anyone else who's going to vote that 'gender-neutral' is the first term used in the article, and is subsequently used about 50 times, while non-sexist only appears about 15 times. Lachatdelarue (talk) 01:17, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: I was the one who had orginially put them up there.  Then I fixed all the major issues excpet for moving the page (which apparently happened about a month ago, but I had gotten busy with other stuff).  Anyhow - I don't have any major POV concerns here at this point, but of course if someone else does they're more than welcome to post the tags again.  Blackcats 03:29, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed NPOV tags

message: I did a fair amount of editing of the Chinese section, because I felt it implied things about grammatical case that weren't correct.  A language without case could still have gender (both sex-related and non-sex-related).  Spanish has only traces of the Latin case system left in its pronouns, but it has 2 grammatical genders.  Heck, English is a great example.  We not only lost virtually all of the Proto-Germanic case system, but we lost grammatical gender and ended up just with third person singular pronouns that indicate sexual gender.
I still have some concern because Chinese is really (at least from an objective linguistic standpoint) multiple languages (because most of the "dialects" are mutually unintelligible to each other).  I only know about Mandarin, and I think whoever wrote that section also only knew about Mandarin.  The issue with the Chinese characters applies to all Chinese, since they pretty much all write with the same characters (and usually in Mandarin, too).  But statements about grammar and spoken words may be incorrect for some dialects.  In particular, I do *not* know whether the other dialects also have only one spoken form of the third person singular pronoun.  This is a tough issue, because although linguists pretty much agree Chinese is not one language, most Chinese laymen don't agree with them.Anybody have any thoughts on how to handle what is essentially spillover of a controversy from a different article?
My other issue is with the following:
For example, the word for doctor is yīshēng (醫生) and can only be made gender-specific by adding the root for male or female to the front of it.  Thus to specify a male doctor, one would need to say nányīshēng (男醫生).  This particular construction would admittedly be rarely used due to the stereotypical perception in Chinese society that doctors tend to be male, but that is not a feature of the language itself.
I'm deleting the last sentence.  It makes a number of speculative leaps with no evidence:
1) That a doctor is as prestigious a position in China as in America (and/or the rest of the Western world, if it's the same as America).  But, I don't know if that's true.  Proffesional jobs have in the past not been paid very well and not been held in high esteem in Communist countries by the establishment.  I have personal experience with this in the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.  China is in transition, so who knows how it works now?  Besides, what about traditional Chinese medicine versus Western medicine?  How does that factor in?
2) That most doctors in China are either male, or that is the common perception.  Who knows?  Again, I know there are a lot of women doctors in the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union.  I'd want more proof before leaving what otherwise sounds like biased opinion in.
3) Even if Chinese society is totally sexist, etc, that's the reason why the construction is rare.  Although the other 2 give me great pause, I know less about the answers to them.  I am not an expert on Mandarin, and my abilities in it are limited and very rusty, so I can't say for sure, but I do not think it is common to specify the gender for professions or any other type of noun referring to a kind of person (except for words like boy and girl, etc.).  That's just not the kind of thing the language tends to require at all.  And I don't see why rarely using that construction would indicate sexist language anyway without making the other leaps that sentence does.  It seems to be more inline with what feminists want to see in English.
I have yet to look through the other language sections, but if there are other statements of that nature, especially if I know anything about the language, I will delete or change them.  It is important to be careful in making assumptions about the structure of foreign languages (or even your native language) unless you know something about linguistics and that language.
If someone has some sound reasons for putting that sentence back in, I'd be glad to listen to them, but otherwise . . .
--Tox 19:53, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Chinese

message: Would anyone be interested in joining  a discussion regarding whether the female Chinese monarch Wu Zetian should be refered as an Empress or Emperor?  I know that in Chinese the term Emperor does not strictly imply gender and that Wu Zetian forced all her subjects to call her the Chinese term for Emperor rather than Empress.  I am advocating Emperor for historic accuracy and Chinese linguistic accuracy even though one user has suggested that using the term Emperor for Wu Zetian would be gramatically incorrect in English.
Allentchang 10:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Chinese Female Emperor Wu Zetian 

message: I pushed the sub section (6.10.1) on Japanese speech styles up one level, so now it is simply the third paragraph of 6.10, and removed the stub notice. Personally, I find that it is detailed enough to fit in with the rest of the entry, doesn't really need a seperate section, and the entire page flows better without only one sub-sub-sub category. Koweja 03:00, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slight change to the Japanese section (6.10) 

message: I am loath to remove an entire language section, especially in the case of a minority language (one of WP's purposes, IMO, should be to document minority/endangered languages.) However, the Yup'iaq/Yup'ik section has almost nothing to do with the subject of the article; stripped of the off-topic material, this section really just amounts to
* Yugstun (the Yup'iaq language) is a gender neutral language.
which by itself (with neither explanation nor example) is pretty much valueless.
With regret, then, I am removing it. Perhaps someone out there who knows something about this subject could incorporate the relevant material into the Yupik article. Vilcxjo 16:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yup'iaq/Yup'ik 

message: However there is a way to distinguish between male and female persons having a certain profession by adding "nő"-"woman" to the end of the word. This though does not work with all the professions as quite many would sound very awkward (as "postás" meaning "letter carrier", lit. "someone associated with the post", where there is no such thing as "postásnő" "mailwoman").
Google may tell you that a "postásnő" may exist, though it's quite rare and is only used if someone wants to emphasize that the person in question is female (& I don't think that it sounds "very awkward"). Other examples like "légiutaskísérő" (flight attendant) would be better. (If someone wants to emphasize that the flight attendant is female, he:) has to use an English word /stewardess/). --194.152.154.2 01:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hungarian 

message: Is using sister more appropriate than using brother as an adjective? A sister site instead of a brother one? I think it should be Brother site, because site (project etc.) is of male gender, whether a sister car is more appropriate than a brother car, because the noun car is female.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stanton BG (talk • contribs) 15:05, 4 April 2006 UTC.
:Nouns that aren't people's names don't have gender in English. Hrimfaxi 13:23, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Brother vs. Sister