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Gender Neutral Spanich, etc.

Started by Odibex Grallspice, May 03, 2020, 01:20:37 PM

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The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: Cain on May 15, 2020, 06:34:36 PM
I'll have you know machismo and honour killings are totally different from when incels go off the deep end.

I sense the potential for a horrible rap battle here ending in mass bloodshed. Just gonna go ahead and not chase it.
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

rong

Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on May 15, 2020, 07:53:30 PM
Quote from: Cain on May 15, 2020, 06:34:36 PM
I'll have you know machismo and honour killings are totally different from when incels go off the deep end.

I sense the potential for a horrible rap battle here ending in mass bloodshed. Just gonna go ahead and not chase it.

I'd pay extra for a seat in the splash zone, tho
"a real smart feller, he felt smart"

The Wizard Joseph

Quote from: rong on May 15, 2020, 10:13:24 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on May 15, 2020, 07:53:30 PM
Quote from: Cain on May 15, 2020, 06:34:36 PM
I'll have you know machismo and honour killings are totally different from when incels go off the deep end.

I sense the potential for a horrible rap battle here ending in mass bloodshed. Just gonna go ahead and not chase it.

I'd pay extra for a seat in the splash blast zone, tho

FTFY  :D
You can't get out backward.  You have to go forward to go back.. better press on! - Willie Wonka, PBUH

Life can be seen as a game with no reset button, no extra lives, and if the power goes out there is no restarting.  If that's all you see life as you are not long for this world, and never will get it.

"Ayn Rand never swung a hammer in her life and had serious dominance issues" - The Fountainhead

"World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation."
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality :lulz:

"You program the controller to do the thing, only it doesn't do the thing.  It does something else entirely, or nothing at all.  It's like voting."
- Billy, Aug 21st, 2019

"It's not even chaos anymore. It's BANAL."
- Doktor Hamish Howl

The Johnny

Quote from: rong on May 15, 2020, 03:08:01 PM
It seems gender is more entrenched in the language than I realised. 

Do you think the constant reinforcement of gender differences in the language could explain the chauvenistic nature of latin culture?  I don't think there is a direct English translation of machismo, for example.

As much as it reinforces animistic thought patterns, by which i mean, maybe.
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

Pergamos

Quote from: rong on May 15, 2020, 03:08:01 PM
It seems gender is more entrenched in the language than I realised. 

Do you think the constant reinforcement of gender differences in the language could explain the chauvenistic nature of latin culture?  I don't think there is a direct English translation of machismo, for example.

I wouldn't simply blame the language.  Spanish speaking culture may be a bit more chauvanistic than English speaking, but French speaking culture is not, and French is just as tightly gendered as Spanish is.

rong

Quote from: Pergamos on May 16, 2020, 10:46:12 PM
Quote from: rong on May 15, 2020, 03:08:01 PM
It seems gender is more entrenched in the language than I realised. 

Do you think the constant reinforcement of gender differences in the language could explain the chauvenistic nature of latin culture?  I don't think there is a direct English translation of machismo, for example.

I wouldn't simply blame the language.  Spanish speaking culture may be a bit more chauvanistic than English speaking, but French speaking culture is not, and French is just as tightly gendered as Spanish is.
That's a good point.
"a real smart feller, he felt smart"

The Johnny

Quote from: Pergamos on May 16, 2020, 10:46:12 PM
Quote from: rong on May 15, 2020, 03:08:01 PM
It seems gender is more entrenched in the language than I realised. 

Do you think the constant reinforcement of gender differences in the language could explain the chauvenistic nature of latin culture?  I don't think there is a direct English translation of machismo, for example.

I wouldn't simply blame the language.  Spanish speaking culture may be a bit more chauvanistic than English speaking, but French speaking culture is not, and French is just as tightly gendered as Spanish is.


https://i2.wp.com/theglobalamericans.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/female-homicide.png?fit=1600%2C2900&ssl=1

It's 2007-2012 statistics for feminicide so its not current, but its worldwide figures.

#1 El Salvador
#2 Honduras
#4 Guatemala

And correlation is not causation, but well...
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

altered

Latin cultures tend to be more violent as a whole, due to either being fascists (Spain, parts of Latin America) or relatively oppressed people thrown into the meat grinder repeatedly for the benefit of rich white people (parts of Latin America and the Caribbean) or straight up getting constantly smashed into the dirt for being left of Mussolini (the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean). Don't forget plenty of heavily armed drug cartels with foreign backing.

Then global (read: modern Western-driven) culture is pretty fucking misogynistic as a general rule, so of course in the places people get killed most often, most deaths will be of women.

I feel like that is a more powerful determinant than assuming gendered language creates misogyny.

Consider: all the Romance languages and the Germanic languages are just as gendered and only some of them have the distinction of having a gender neutral grammatical gender, and yet I can't think of any statistic that says Germany, Switzerland and Austria are any more dangerous for women than Belgium or Ireland. Nor France, nor Portugal, etc.

Then consider that Arabic has a much weaker grammatical gender than any of the Romance languages, but the Middle East is a much tougher place to be a woman than most Latin cultured nations. Also, it really sucks to be a woman in parts of Southeast Asia, such as the Philippines, but Tagalog has no grammatical gender. In fact, it doesn't even have gendered pronouns. Seriously.

Sorry. Doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
"I am that worst of all type of criminal...I cannot bring myself to do what you tell me, because you told me."

There's over 100 of us in this meat-suit. You'd think it runs like a ship, but it's more like a hundred and ten angry ghosts having an old-school QuakeWorld tournament, three people desperately trying to make sure the gamers don't go hungry or soil themselves, and the Facilities manager weeping in the corner as the garbage piles high.

Cain

Agreed. This discussion sounds way too close to linguistic determinism. I get why this is an intellectually attractive argument, but the evidence for it simply is not there and there are far better explanations for machismo, violence against women etc than the language being gendered.

The Johnny


So you're telling me that if we all switched to speaking Esperanto the world's problems would not be fixed?

Fuck you!
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

rong

aha - linguistic determinism.  I didn't know it had a name, but that certainly fits the bill. 

although I think it may be a factor in explaining some behaviors, simply trying to find illustrative examples is proving difficult enough to rule out the plausibility altogether.

how many exceptions can a rule have before it is no longer a rule?
"a real smart feller, he felt smart"

Cain

There is a "soft" version of linguistic determinism, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In short, this argues that linguistic categories can influence, but do not necessarily drive outcomes. And the thing is, we can of course think of counterexamples. The infamous one is that the Inuit have 3 different words for snow, obviously because they deal with snow more than us down south and so need different words to describe the different qualities of snow they encounter. But just because English doesn't have three different "snow" words doesn't mean that people don't modify "snow" with other descriptions, to achieve the same effect as these three words have.

It's a problematic distinction, especially when considering how language evolves.

rong

Quote from: Cain on May 18, 2020, 02:02:28 PM
There is a "soft" version of linguistic determinism, called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In short, this argues that linguistic categories can influence, but do not necessarily drive outcomes. And the thing is, we can of course think of counterexamples. The infamous one is that the Inuit have 3 different words for snow, obviously because they deal with snow more than us down south and so need different words to describe the different qualities of snow they encounter. But just because English doesn't have three different "snow" words doesn't mean that people don't modify "snow" with other descriptions, to achieve the same effect as these three words have.

It's a problematic distinction, especially when considering how language evolves.

there should be a word for this concept:  linguinfluence?  languence?  influage?  langfluistic?  I think I like the first 2 better.
"a real smart feller, he felt smart"

altered

The only pretty solid evidence I have found of something like SWH goes the opposite direction: it's easier to discuss something that words encompass; if you need to discuss a novel idea you name it. Language grows in the directions the speakers find most important. And this seems like an iron clad hypothesis, given the existence of jargon, slang and portmanteaus. The inverse is senseless.
"I am that worst of all type of criminal...I cannot bring myself to do what you tell me, because you told me."

There's over 100 of us in this meat-suit. You'd think it runs like a ship, but it's more like a hundred and ten angry ghosts having an old-school QuakeWorld tournament, three people desperately trying to make sure the gamers don't go hungry or soil themselves, and the Facilities manager weeping in the corner as the garbage piles high.