Sexism and Language

I supported the anti sexist language advice of the '70s. I obtained a copy of the ABC (Australian TV) guide for their announcers and copywriters that was produced and issued at that time. Very useful it was.

But you have to understand that sexist language is a feature of the english language.

The english language has several rather interesting features.

For a start, it is not a phonetic language. Not like Czech for example. Hear a Czech word and you can write it down. See a word and you can pronounce it. Well, the first part is a little less accurate considering the "i" and "y". But it is pretty damn close to perfect.

(Parenthetically, they used to teach children to read english at primary school by recognition of the word as a unit. Later in life people's nervous system would have derived the rules behind the language. Nowadays, teaching to children uses a lot of sounding out the components of a word. Too fine, too fine, to produce people who can really read, write and spell in english).

Second, it stands, to my knowledge, apart from other languages that have gender-based words in that the gender words of english refer to the reality whereas the gender words of, say, french or german or italian, refer not to the physical reality but to the gender of the words being used.

I was watching an episode of Columbo in France. Colombo arrived at the scene, as he does, and asked "Ou est la victime?". The answer was "Elle est la". The coarse translation is: "Where is the victim. She is there". The murdered person was male. "Elle" or "she" had to be used because the noun "victime" is feminine.

This is the easiest example I know.

So talking to non english-speakers about sexist language is a different thing altogether. In a sense, they do not have it, cannot have it.

By the way, in "A Fish Called Wanda" ("Un Poisson Nomme Wanda"), the english version has the judge say "She has known him all her life". The french was "... tout sa vie".

Had it been "She has known him all his life", guess what - exactly the same. Because the "sa" refers to "vie" and has nothing to do with the gender of the actual real life persons.

So if your first language is english, before you slag off to someone, whose first language is something else, about their sexist language - hold your tongue. First, learn their language. Then judge, if judge you must.