🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <M2T55J@mailgzrz.tu-berlin.de> bzfstoer@ZIB-Berlin.DE writes:
>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.

Of course French and Spanish (and probably the other Romance languages,
but I can't say) also indicate the gender of the speaker in the form
of the part participle.

>
>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.

If you are _writing_ scientific papers and sending them to
the U.S., it may well be an advantage that your American
correspondents think you are male! You can always correct
them after the papers are accepted! Of course, it would also
help to FAMOUS and male. I think someone once did a study in
which the same papers were sent out to many journals under
different names. You can imagine the results for yourself....

>And there's just no nice-looking way in English of saying in official letters
>"Hey, I'm Mrs."

Well, some people put the title they prefer in parentheses
before their names, after the signature at the bottom of the
letter. E.g.:

Yours truly,

[signature]

(Mrs.) M. Stoer
-- 
Roger Greenwald
Greenwald@hf.uib.no (address valid only until 10 August 1992)