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Gender: When did it become so complicated?

« Deux cents femmes et un cochon sont ARRIVÉS sur le pont, e accent aigu et s parce que dans la langue française le masculin l’emporte sur le féminin… » Monique Proulx (CE QU’IL RESTE DE MOI)

When did gender become a language issue? Perhaps only when those who were tired of being hemmed in or discounted shouted: Enough! But the conversation continues. More recently the question of gender has gone far beyond the male-female dichotomy, and perhaps this new power force representing the gender spectrum will have a greater impact on languages in the long-run. But for the time being, as it does in almost all other aspects of social life, gender inequality between the masculine and feminine persists in many languages. In this respect, however, I cannot make a case for languages other than English and French. 

The tongue and the pen

Spoken language is always evolving. Written language, by its very nature, is much more conservative. While the language we speak gets tweaked by each passing generation, augmented by terminology stemming from new technologies and creative thinkers, and enriched with words and phrases from other languages, the extent to which a given written language is adaptive is very telling of the values and attitudes of its caretakers. English is fairly plastic, and the difference between its standard spoken and written forms is much less discernible than between the two forms in French. 

Les néologismes ♦ New Word Formations

Aucune langue n’est statique. En fait, chaque langage est une réflexion de la société qui l’utilise et évolue selon les besoins particuliers de l’époque : certains mots disparaissent graduellement de la langue courante, d’autres apparaissent et  d’autres encores sont modifiés. Nous parlons de néologisme lorsqu’un nouveau mot est créé, ou qu’une nouvelle définition ou fonction est attribuée à un mot qui existe déjà.

Ici, Brice Torrecillas, d’Au Pied de la Lettre, nous explique ce que c’est un néologisme.

 

Words can be created in several ways. The following video by Annis Eliana Bt Abdullah and Hamizah Bt Mohdisa presents different processes by which new terms are formed, such as borrowing from another language, compounding two separate words to form a single word, or conversion, whereby a word takes on a new function (for example, a noun that is converted into a verb), to name but a few.

 

And finally, from January 28, 2013: a bit of wisdom from Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/01/28

The changing times

                     In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
– Eric Hoffer

I use this quote as a reminder to not get stuck in a mode of thinking simply because it is what I know: to question everything, to make conscious choices, to be curious and open to exploring new territory. To my mind, that is what freedom is about.