sexist language

[Frederic Maffray]

In article <7731 at dasys1.UUCP>, Jean-Pierre Radley writes:
In article <3803 at imag.imag.fr> pierre at imag.UUCP (Pierre LAFORGUE) writes:

#> Why don't you use the latin language, instead  of decadent ones
#> as  is  the  english ?   Distinction  between "HOMO"  and "VIR"
#> allows to avoid frustations.

# As a native speaker of both French  and English, I  can say that
# it ill behooves you to describe English as "decadent".

He was obviously  speaking  with  tongue in  cheek,  but    he was
misunderstood, as it happens all the time  when someone forgets to
cram his text with smileys.

# It is, au contraire, [and we don't necessarily put a phrase like
# "au contraire" in quotes] extraordinarily alive. 

Probably, but, precisely, I feel that you seem to make a  big fuss
of this ostentatious use of a foreign phrase...

# Certainly it is more tolerant than French, more adaptable, ...
# ... larger (just a count of the word-list), and still growing.

I believe that any serious linguist would take such statement with
some salt.   When  I  look at any   English-French  dictionary, it
appears that  each language takes up  about one half  of the book,
and that they have pretty  much the same  average density of words
per page. Now when I look at an all-English language dictionary, I
find that the number of "words" --  more properly  'entries' -- is
artificially boosted by several  features  which are unique to the
English language.  For example, after the word sodium,  you find a
long  list of various  chemicals like   "sodium chlorate," "sodium
chlorite", etc. The same goes concerning "potassium", etc.  On the
other hand, in a French dictionary  (and similarly for any Romance
language) you will find  the one   entry "chlorate", and,  in  the
description of this entry,  you will read: "Exemples:  chlorate de
sodium, chlorate de potassium, etc." As a consequence,  the French
dictionary will have only one entry ("chlorate") while the English
dictionary will  count    one different entry  for  each   kind of
chlorate.  Similarly, you have three entries:  "moon", "light" and
"moonlight", whereas French  will have  only  two entries: "lune",
"clair", with  the phrase "clair de  lune"  being explained in the
body of the description of the word "clair", and NOT as a separate
word.  English  is  fond of such  compound  words and phrases  and
lists each of  them separately.  Another example  is with pairs of
words like Spanish/Spaniard, Arab/Arabian/Arabic, Jewish/Jew, etc.
Romance languages usually   do  not  distinguish between noun  and
adjective as far as nationality is concerned.  So again  they have
only one entry where English has several.

# Dieu merci, we do NOT  have  an Academie to protect English from
# useful foregn words.

I could bet this  one would be mentioned...   It's funny,   I have
come to realize that, should I want to know what  the AF is up to,
I would find out much more easily by reading an American newspaper
than a  French one.   In  reality, the   popular reference  on the
French  language (as  used  for example   by  the  referees in  TV
word-games) is definitely not the  AF, but the dictionaries of the
major publishing  companies (Larousse, Robert, Littre'),  of which
new editions appear every year around September.  Then is the time
when the media  talk  the most about  the state  of  the language.
Nobody gives a flying fuck what the senile  sleepwalkers of the AF
say.   It  takes them an average 35  years to come  up with  a new
edition of their thing, so everybody knows perfectly it's obsolete
as soon as it  is released.  Believe me,  they  have about as much
influence on the language as the Pope has on Gay Paree.

As for  foreign words, English speakers like   to  boast  that the
English  language contains a  great many of them, but  in reality,
I've always been non-plussed by this claim.  I don't find that the
average American  newspaper   uses that   many foreign  words  and
phrases, and  anyway very  few   of them are  very  common  words.
Oftentimes,  these words  are  of a  very specific, 'exotic', use,
like "ayatollah" or "cappuccino" or "sierra".  And how many people
outside the elite actually use words like "Weltanschauung" or "nom
de plume"?

On the other hand, in French there are many foreign (in particular
English) words which have passed into everyday use.  It's possible
that in  sheer numbers, English  has  more foreign borrowings than
French, in  particular as a   legacy of Britain's  large  colonial
empire.  But  foreign borrowings in French are  much more frequent
and conspicuous, from  "stop" to "stock"  to "jeans" to "sandwich"
to "freezer" to "parking" to "week-end" to "squat"  to "hamburger"
to "ketchup" to "prime-time"  to "zap", etc.  Robert actually puts
out a 1300-page Dictionary  of Anglicisms  (i.e.,  borrowings from
English into French).   It may  be  precisely because of the heavy
presence of foreign  words in French  that the dead members of the
AF get so upset.

In   the 18th  and  19th century,  when  French  was  the dominant
language of  Europe, people used  to say that  is was the language
with the most clarity, with the most  nuances, etc.  They  did not
give a hoot for the current alleged superiority of English.
Seems to me that any dominant culture  likes to pretend that it is
so because of  some kind of  built-in characteristic, like because
it  is naturally  superior,  richer, subtler, etc.,  while in fact
this  dominance is essentially due  to demographic, political, and
economic power. Language is politics.

Fred