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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/28/2019 2:52 PM, Will Martin
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DFBE3D6E-7D75-4BCE-8A3B-EE83CE6A7364@mac.com">A person
using English to talk about an entity needs to know whether that
entity is a “he”, a “she”, or an “it”, or you can’t replace the
noun with a pronoun, and talking about the entity gets awkward.</blockquote>
<p>Style guides have begun recommending the gender-indeterminate <i>they</i>
for these situations.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DFBE3D6E-7D75-4BCE-8A3B-EE83CE6A7364@mac.com">You gave
no indication what the relevance is of the alien being male or
female or not.</blockquote>
<p>No, he didn't, and he doesn't have to. He just asked if there is
a way to say someone is of neutral gender. This is a perfectly
reasonable and complete question. It doesn't require special
context to answer.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DFBE3D6E-7D75-4BCE-8A3B-EE83CE6A7364@mac.com"> I made no
reference as to whether a Klingon would culturally feel an
interest in the biological sexual category of an alien. As a human
using the Klingon language, without any context, I didn’t
understand what the interest is in the sexual category of an
alien. That’s really it. <br>
</blockquote>
<p>Okay, so you were not answering his question, you were
pontificating on some completely different question.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DFBE3D6E-7D75-4BCE-8A3B-EE83CE6A7364@mac.com">
<div class="">I was just trying to point out that while speaking
English, because of the unusual way that English ties
grammatical gender to biological sex classification, you might
have a bias pushing to you want to focus on that.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>First of all, English using biological sex in its very limited
system of genders is not all that unusual.</p>
<p>Second, mayqel's native language is Greek, not English.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DFBE3D6E-7D75-4BCE-8A3B-EE83CE6A7364@mac.com">I’m not
saying that the Klingon language lacks sex-based grammatical
gender for a reason. It’s completely arbitrary, as is the case in
every language.</blockquote>
<p>Not the case. Languages develop the way they do for reasons, not
arbitrarily. "Singular <i>they,</i>" for example, is becoming
common as a reaction to the perceived sexism of using "impersonal
<i>he.</i>" <i>Thou</i> and <i>thee</i> disappeared in part due
to social classes becoming more equal.</p>
<p>I said earlier that English effectively has no gender, but it
actually does have some, also based on biological sex: <i>widow/widower;</i>
<i>steward/stewardess; waiter/waitress</i> (a whole bunch of <i>-ess</i>
endings in fact) and so on. And the female forms of these are
starting to disappear as reactions to the perceived sexism of the
language.</p>
<p>This stuff isn't arbitrary.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DFBE3D6E-7D75-4BCE-8A3B-EE83CE6A7364@mac.com">Do you
care if a chair is a boy chair or a girl chair?</blockquote>
<p>No, he cares if an alien is neuter. How do you translate <i>The
alien is neuter</i>?<br>
</p>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trimboli.name">http://trimboli.name</a></pre>
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