🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5263@shum.huji.ac.il> Yair Friedman writes:
 
> Are there any languages that have a first person gender?

Yes, the Slavic languages.
Whenever I'm using a (1.st person singular) past tense verb in Polish or Russian,
it gets the ending "lam" (in Polish) or "la" (in Russian),
whereas men have to put "lem" or "l" to the past tense endings.
The same distinction is made in 2. and 3. person singular past tense verbs.

I think this is absolutely practical.
My first name is so completely unknown outside of Germany,
that from people I'm writing English to, I often get addressed the wrong way,
whereas my Polish-speaking partners never get confused
and very politely address me with "droga" or "Pani".
And it is really annoying that always every English-speaking person
assumes that I am Mr. Stoer,
for instance, when they want me to send them a scientific paper.
And there's just no nice-looking way in English of saying in official letters
"Hey, I'm Mrs."
In Polish, you can without effort formulate a sentence with a past tense verb,
which conveys the message very naturally.

Mechthild Stoer