🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug5.152702.2433@math.ucla.edu> Alex Langley,
alex@lindbrook.math.ucla.edu writes:
>In article <1992Aug5.133214.26926@bnr.ca> Peter Marko
<pmarko@bnr.ca> writes:
>>...  Surely, the history of any
>>particular nation would have a great influence on the development
of
>>its language.
>
>I would agree.  Please see below.
>
>>What do these differences regarding pronouns indicate then?  Could
>>it be that our attitudes towards other human beings are hidden in
>>our languages?
>
>Maybe.  Maybe not.
>--
>
>What about grammatical gender of nouns?  Pick a language--Gaelic, 
>English, German, Spanish.  One might all-too-quickly conclude that
all
>Indo-European languages have this property.  Could it be that back
>in Proto-Indo-European times, the patriarchal societies used
grammatical
>gender to make some subconscious political statement?
>
>It might help to look at a couple languages that don't have
grammatical
>gender in pronouns or nouns.  How about Modern Western Armenian (an
>Indo-European language), and Tagalog (a Malayo-Polynesian language).
>
>...
>
>Neither Tagalog nor M. W. Armenian have grammatical gender either
in 
>pronouns or nouns.  Notice I don't just say "Armenian", Eastern or
>Classical Armenian may be different, and any reasons for the
difference
>in Western Armenian would be interesting to discuss. 
>
>Anyway, who out there would like to volunteer to say that Armenian
and 
>Philippine societies are completely unbiased with regard to gender
as 
>reflected in their languages?  I don't think so.  This is not a
flame, 
>just an opener to a different kind of discussion.

As I mentioned previously, Hungarian has one (gender-neutral)
third-person singular pronoun when referring to human beings (or to
animals affectionately).

The present Hungarian society, however, is 'old-fashioned'
(especially in the smaller towns and villages), meaning that men and
women have their definite places in society.  The 'typical' man is
still the provider, and the woman the caretaker.

Based on these examples, we may be tempted to conclude that there is
no strong correlation between language and attitudes in society.  I
think this would be short-sighted, as we are only considering
examples from present socities.  To get a better reading, we would
have to broaden our perspectives to include the history of a
language and the history of the people.  This examination could
become extremely difficult as we would have to consider influences
by neighbouring peoples and languages over the course of (perhaps)
thousands of years.

As I am neither a linguist nor a historian, I will stop here.  It is
fascinating to hear (or read) the opinions of different people,
though, especially if they have varied ethnic and cultural
backgrounds.  Please keep responding.

   ...Peter

-------------------------------------------------------
Peter Marko  .....  (613)763-5344  .....  pmarko@bnr.ca
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada