Expressing "neutral gender"
I don't suppose, someone can come up with a descent way to say "this alien is of neutral gender", right ? Because all I can think of, is crap like "this alien isn't male, and isn't female". Anyways, thought I should ask, in case someone could think of something better. Though I seriously doubt it.. But I *do* hope someone proves me wrong.. Which is something I seriously doubt too.. I'll just shut up now. ~ m. qunen'oS klingon has a complete vocabulary
Am 27.05.2019 um 13:12 schrieb mayqel qunen'oS:
I don't suppose, someone can come up with a descent way to say "this alien is of neutral gender", right ?
Because all I can think of, is crap like "this alien isn't male, and isn't female".
The Klingon language has such constructions very often and I would not call them crap. That's just how the language works.
Anyways, thought I should ask, in case someone could think of something better.
I would try something like this. It's right we don't have no word for "sexual gender", but it may work with one of the "class" words we have: {wa' porgh buv neH ghaj nov Seghvam.} "This alien race has only one body class." You may also try the other way around, although it does not always mean "neutral gender": {be' loD je ghaH nov'e'} "The alien is both male and female." -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Sexuality
Unless you are planning on having sex with an alien, why would you care if it were male or female or neither? Some trees are considered male and others of its species female, but unless you are seeking fertile fruit, most people never bother to figure out whether a tree is a he or a she. Klingon doesn’t have sexually classified gender like English does. Most languages don’t. Gender can have all kinds of categorization systems, like marking the difference between old words vs. newer words borrowed from some other language. Klingon gender has to do with marking the difference between beings capable of using language, body parts, and everything else. Biological sex role has nothing to do with it. So, in Klingon, you’d be less interested in noting that it wasn’t male or female (since there is no “he” or “she” or “it” to use as the pronoun when discussing the alien), but instead, you’d be trying to figure out whether it used language. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On May 27, 2019, at 7:12 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't suppose, someone can come up with a descent way to say "this alien is of neutral gender", right ?
Because all I can think of, is crap like "this alien isn't male, and isn't female".
Anyways, thought I should ask, in case someone could think of something better.
Though I seriously doubt it..
But I *do* hope someone proves me wrong..
Which is something I seriously doubt too..
I'll just shut up now.
~ m. qunen'oS klingon has a complete vocabulary _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
Once again, you're addressing a matter on the assumption that someone gives a crap, as to what a klingon would or would not say. I used the alien example as an example. The question is "how do we express neutral gender". Since I'm not into klingon roleplaying/cosplaying etc, I don't care for the preferences of a fictional race. You're trying (again) hard, to promote the image, that "if klingon lacks something, then it's for a reason". Klingon vocabulary lacks a lot of things, because it's humanly impossible for someone to create an entire vocabulary from scratch. But I can't accept arguments that everything is the way it was supposed to be. We all love klingon. But some refuse to blind themselves to the obvious truth, that there are things missing. Anyways, I'm tired of all this. ~ m. qunen'oS
For someone who wants to lecture me for making assumptions, you seem to be making a lot of assumptions. 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. A person using Klingon to talk about an entity needs to know whether the entity is a {ghaH} or an {‘oH}, or if there are more than one of them, whether they have {-pu’}, {-Du’}, or {-mey} at the end. If you don’t know the particulars of this, then talking about the entity or entities gets awkward. A person who speaks Danish similarly needs to know whether the word for an entity is an old word, or a newer, borrowed word. If they don’t know that, then things get awkward. If a person wants to write about something in Japanese, they need to know whether to write the name in Hiragana, Katakana, or Kanji, or things get awkward. If a person speaking French is talking about a noun that isn’t male or female, then they need to know whether the French speaking population classifies that noun as masculine or feminine, or they don’t know whether to use {le} or {la}, and a bunch of other stuff involving helper words and pronunciation and spelling get weird, and talking about the entity gets awkward. You gave no indication what the relevance is of the alien being male or female or not. 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. Yes, there have been times when, as part of the joke of using Klingon, I’ve played with the hyper-testosterone cultural thing, but this isn’t one of those times. 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. I wanted to point out that bias, in case it was something you had not thought about before. It’s one of those things that learning a different language does to expand your brain function. You have to think outside the box a little because each language has a differently shaped box. Here, on Earth, in America, speaking English, I’ve often wondered what the big deal is about sexual identification and orientation among people who do not specifically intend to have sex with each other. Let people identify with whatever, and have whatever preference they like, so long as they are not trying to involve you or a child who deserves the protection of adults in some kind of act that should require your consent and doesn’t have it. If it doesn’t hurt anybody who doesn’t want to be hurt, let people be happy with themselves and each other. 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. Nothing is “missing” from Klingon in terms of linguistic gender. It’s just different from English, as are most languages. Do you care if a chair is a boy chair or a girl chair? Or maybe it’s just a chair? So, how is an alien different from that? There are many life forms that are neither male nor female, or both. Among more complex animal life forms on Earth, it’s significantly less common, but if you include plants and microbes, fungus and slime molds, one has less and less reason to care whether it’s a boy or a girl, in any language. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On May 28, 2019, at 1:49 PM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
Once again, you're addressing a matter on the assumption that someone gives a crap, as to what a klingon would or would not say.
I used the alien example as an example. The question is "how do we express neutral gender".
Since I'm not into klingon roleplaying/cosplaying etc, I don't care for the preferences of a fictional race.
You're trying (again) hard, to promote the image, that "if klingon lacks something, then it's for a reason".
Klingon vocabulary lacks a lot of things, because it's humanly impossible for someone to create an entire vocabulary from scratch.
But I can't accept arguments that everything is the way it was supposed to be.
We all love klingon. But some refuse to blind themselves to the obvious truth, that there are things missing.
Anyways, I'm tired of all this.
~ m. qunen'oS _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 5/28/2019 2:52 PM, Will Martin wrote:
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.
Style guides have begun recommending the gender-indeterminate /they/ for these situations.
You gave no indication what the relevance is of the alien being male or female or not.
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.
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.
Okay, so you were not answering his question, you were pontificating on some completely different question.
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.
First of all, English using biological sex in its very limited system of genders is not all that unusual. Second, mayqel's native language is Greek, not English.
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.
Not the case. Languages develop the way they do for reasons, not arbitrarily. "Singular /they,/" for example, is becoming common as a reaction to the perceived sexism of using "impersonal /he./" /Thou/ and /thee/ disappeared in part due to social classes becoming more equal. I said earlier that English effectively has no gender, but it actually does have some, also based on biological sex: /widow/widower;/ /steward/stewardess; waiter/waitress/ (a whole bunch of /-ess/ 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. This stuff isn't arbitrary.
Do you care if a chair is a boy chair or a girl chair?
No, he cares if an alien is neuter. How do you translate /The alien is neuter/? -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On May 28, 2019, at 3:17 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 2:52 PM, Will Martin wrote:
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. Style guides have begun recommending the gender-indeterminate they for these situations.
This points out the arbitrary nature of gender, since English could just as easily have come up with masculine, feminine, and mixed versions of plural pronouns, but instead arbitrarily decided that while singular had to indicate whether singular entities were insees or outsees, but plural ones didn’t have to.
You gave no indication what the relevance is of the alien being male or female or not. 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.
Okay. Of course, the less context a person provides, the easier it is to be misunderstood. Communication is always incomplete. Context makes it more complete.
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. Okay, so you were not answering his question, you were pontificating on some completely different question.
Yep. As so many of us here like to do so often, yourself included. It just bothers you when *I* do it.
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. First of all, English using biological sex in its very limited system of genders is not all that unusual.
Second, mayqel's native language is Greek, not English.
Thanks. That’s more missing context. I wonder how Greek handles gender. I’d enjoy it if he explained how Greed does it, from a native perspective. No one has described to me how Greek handles gender.
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. Not the case. Languages develop the way they do for reasons, not arbitrarily. "Singular they," for example, is becoming common as a reaction to the perceived sexism of using "impersonal he." Thou and thee disappeared in part due to social classes becoming more equal.
Not really. Thee and thou disappeared during the Restoration period because English people were falling all over themselves trying to be more French. Guys were waking up in ditches after drinking brandy from mugs made for ale, because they were clueless about the higher the alcohol content of hard liquor. Read Samual Pypes Diaries for stories about stuff like this. And it was cool to bow and pretend to defer to the second person as being of greater number than the first person. They were pretending to speak to royalty, who had for centuries demanded that people refer to singular royals as if they were plural. “We are not amused." This is why Quakers refused to drop thee and thou for centuries because they recognized it as pretentious, which it is. It had much more to do with royalty than it did with greater equality of the classes. Quakers were big on the rightness of equality among all of humanity, and they were the LAST ones to give up on thee and thou. Some Quakers still use these words when speaking among themselves. They call it “plain speech”, which is nothing like an attachment to bygone days of inequality among classes. Style guides are pushing the singular asexual “they” because they are trying to figure out a trend that will work. Efforts at creating a new pronoun failed. Maybe this will work better. Or not. We don’t know yet. There’s also the other way to fix the “you” plural/singular problem with the northern “youse guys” or the southern “y’all”. Likely, we’ll never get everyone to agree on either. If we did, then the old plural would be the new singular and we’d have a new plural. It really is arbitrary, and since nobody controls the language, it just depends on whatever trend catches on and sticks. “Cool” still works. “Groovy”? Not so much. Language isn’t particularly reasonable. Efforts to find the reasons for language stuff happening are driven by the desire to have reasons for things. It’s a strong human desire, even when an effect has no single, determinable cause.
I said earlier that English effectively has no gender, but it actually does have some, also based on biological sex: widow/widower; steward/stewardess; waiter/waitress (a whole bunch of -ess 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.
This stuff isn't arbitrary.
Again, you are confusing linguistic gender for sex. There are a lot of languages with linguistic gender drawn on boundaries other than sex and plenty of languages with no gender. English has lots of gender stuff based on masculine, feminine and neuter. Getting back to the original question about an alien that isn’t male or female, how would one handle that in French? They have masculine and feminine, but they have no neuter. Do we consider French to be incomplete because THEY don’t have a quick, convenient way to describe an alien that isn’t male or female? Any French speakers here with suggestions as to how to say “The alien is neuter” in French? The original post seemed to be in a huff about how incomplete Klingon is because it doesn’t work like English to describe a neuter alien. Do we criticize English as being incomplete because it doesn’t have an easy, convenient way without borrowing a word from German to describe pleasure derived from misfortune experienced by others? All languages are incomplete. So? Like this is something to get worked up about?
Do you care if a chair is a boy chair or a girl chair? No, he cares if an alien is neuter. How do you translate The alien is neuter?
loD be’ ghap rurbe’ nov. Or I’d just point and say, {nov ‘oH} or {nov ghaH} depending on whether I considered it to be capable of using language, and if someone wanted to read maleness or femaleness or the need to be one or the other, that would be on them and not on me, unless someone explained a context about why I’d care whether it was male, female, or neuter. Unless I believe that males should dominate females or vice versa, or unless there’s some other big cultural difference in how males or females should be handled or treated or thought about, or unless I intend to try to mate with one of these aliens, WTF difference does it make whether it’s male or female or neither? Give me enough context to make me care. Alien means “Not like me.” So, if it’s not like me, and I don’t want to mate with it, why even feel curious as to whether it’s male or female or neither? It’s not part of my culture, human or Klingon. It’s alien. What it does when it has sex IF it has sex is none of my business or concern. This is the extreme of sexism: Caring about whether an alien is male or female or neuter.
--
SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org <http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org>
charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On 5/28/2019 5:13 PM, Will Martin wrote:
On May 28, 2019, at 3:17 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 2:52 PM, Will Martin wrote:
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.
Style guides have begun recommending the gender-indeterminate /they/ for these situations.
This points out the arbitrary nature of gender, since English could just as easily have come up with masculine, feminine, and mixed versions of plural pronouns, but instead arbitrarily decided that while singular had to indicate whether singular entities were insees or outsees, but plural ones didn’t have to.
English didn't /decide/ anything. Its speakers did, slowly, due to changing social pressures. This is not arbitrary. It may look arbitrary to someone examining it without any historical context, but that's their lack of perspective, not the language itself.
You gave no indication what the relevance is of the alien being male or female or not.
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.
Okay. Of course, the less context a person provides, the easier it is to be misunderstood. Communication is always incomplete. Context makes it more complete.
This question needs to further context. How do you say that someone is of a neuter sex? You STILL haven't offered an answer.
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.
Not the case. Languages develop the way they do for reasons, not arbitrarily. "Singular /they,/" for example, is becoming common as a reaction to the perceived sexism of using "impersonal /he./" /Thou/ and /thee/ disappeared in part due to social classes becoming more equal.
Not really. Thee and thou disappeared during the Restoration period because English people were falling all over themselves trying to be more French.
And why was that? Because after the Norman-French conquered, French was the upper-class language and English was the lower-class language. What do you do when you want to appear higher-class? One inexpensive thing to do is to adopt the speech of the higher class.
There’s also the other way to fix the “you” plural/singular problem with the northern “youse guys” or the southern “y’all”. Likely, we’ll never get everyone to agree on either. If we did, then the old plural would be the new singular and we’d have a new plural.
/You/ as both singular and plural is not a problem. /We/ as both inclusive-/we/ and exclusive-/we/ is not a problem. /They/ being sex-inclusive//but /he, she,**/and /it/ not being sex-inclusive is not a problem. These are simply the features of Modern English pronouns.
It really is arbitrary, and since nobody controls the language, it just depends on whatever trend catches on and sticks. “Cool” still works. “Groovy”? Not so much.
That's not arbitrary. Arbitrary would be without reason or system. Language change is very systematic.
Language isn’t particularly reasonable. Efforts to find the reasons for language stuff happening are driven by the desire to have reasons for things. It’s a strong human desire, even when an effect has no single, determinable cause.
If you have access to good enough sources, you can usually find the reason for any given change in language. Do you know about the field of philology?
I said earlier that English effectively has no gender, but it actually does have some, also based on biological sex: /widow/widower;/ /steward/stewardess; waiter/waitress/ (a whole bunch of /-ess/ 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.
This stuff isn't arbitrary.
Again, you are confusing linguistic gender for sex.
No I am not, though you would dearly like to find fault with me, so you imagine I am doing this.
There are a lot of languages with linguistic gender drawn on boundaries other than sex and plenty of languages with no gender. English has lots of gender stuff based on masculine, feminine and neuter.
English gender, such as it is, is based on a real-world mapping of the biological sex of what a noun represents. What is male is given a masculine gender, what is female is given a feminine gender, and what is sexless is given a neuter gender. However, English gender, for the most part, doesn't extend beyond its pronouns. Yes, there are other languages with masculine, feminine, and/or neuter genders that aren't determined by real-world biological sex. I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about English.
Getting back to the original question about an alien that isn’t male or female, how would one handle that in French?
Who frikkin' cares? This is the Klingon list; how would you say it in Klingon?!
The original post seemed to be in a huff about how incomplete Klingon is because it doesn’t work like English to describe a neuter alien.
No, the original post was in a huff because mayqel was trying to head off exactly this argument. He didn't want people telling him whether he's allowed to talk about neuter; he wanted to set up a situation in which one would WANT to talk about neuter, and how would it be done? He KNEW you guys were going to tell him that he shouldn't WANT to talk about neuter. And you did.
Do you care if a chair is a boy chair or a girl chair?
No, he cares if an alien is neuter. How do you translate /The alien is neuter/?
loD be’ ghap rurbe’ nov.
THANK YOU FOR FINALLY ANSWERING THE QUESTION! Couldn't you have just done that to begin with?
Or I’d just point and say, {nov ‘oH} or {nov ghaH} depending on whether I considered it to be capable of using language, and if someone wanted to read maleness or femaleness or the need to be one or the other, that would be on them and not on me, unless someone explained a context about why I’d care whether it was male, female, or neuter.
The context is "I care whether that alien is neuter." Why isn't that clear? Why does a speaker have to justify the things they care about before you'll translate it?"
Alien means “Not like me.” So, if it’s not like me, and I don’t want to mate with it, why even feel curious as to whether it’s male or female or neither? It’s not part of my culture, human or Klingon. It’s alien. What it does when it has sex IF it has sex is none of my business or concern. This is the extreme of sexism: Caring about whether an alien is male or female or neuter.
This is warped. Suppose you want to have sex with an alien that speaks Klingon. How do you ask if they're neuter? Having answered the question, is the answer only correct when proposing sex? --- "How do I say that I am hungry in Klingon?" "Well, without further context, unless you've invited me to dinner, why should I care about the biological processes your body uses to acquire nourishment? The details of your intestinal track are nobody's business but your own. In some cultures it is very rude to eat in front of others. Expressing your hunger would be the extreme of cultural effrontery to them." "*jIghung!* The answer is *jIghung!*" -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On 5/28/2019 1:32 PM, Will Martin wrote:
Unless you are planning on having sex with an alien, why would you care if it were male or female or neither?
To direct them to the correct bathroom? To buy the right sort of clothing as a gift? To correctly recommend either a urologist or gynecologist? Any number of other reasons that might come up?
Some trees are considered male and others of its species female, but unless you are seeking fertile fruit, most people never bother to figure out whether a tree is a he or a she.
Because in English trees are never /he/ or /she;/ they're always /it,/ regardless of their sexual properties.
Klingon doesn’t have sexually classified gender like English does. Most languages don’t.
English only has biological gender in its singular third-person pronouns, it only applies to some cases of biological sex, and it has no kind of gender agreement. The only way you could say that most language don't have the sort of gender that English has is to say that most languages have more extensive gender systems. Modern English effectively has no gender.
Gender can have all kinds of categorization systems, like marking the difference between old words vs. newer words borrowed from some other language. Klingon gender has to do with marking the difference between beings capable of using language, body parts, and everything else. Biological sex role has nothing to do with it.
So, in Klingon, you’d be less interested in noting that it wasn’t male or female (since there is no “he” or “she” or “it” to use as the pronoun when discussing the alien), but instead, you’d be trying to figure out whether it used language.
And yet there are still situations in which you want to express the biological sex of someone or something, so there should be a way to do it, and you should be able to discuss it. (There are a couple of extreme cases of gender in English. For instance, some maintain that the difference between /blond/ and /blonde/ is as in French: the /-e/ makes the adjective feminine, and should be used when referring to blond(e) women. Others maintain that this distinction belongs to French, not English, and that /blond/ should be used for all people with this color hair.) Back to the original question: sorry, I can't think of a better way to say /neuter/ than to say *be' 'oHbe'; loD 'oHbe'* or variations thereof. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On May 28, 2019, at 1:55 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 1:32 PM, Will Martin wrote:
Unless you are planning on having sex with an alien, why would you care if it were male or female or neither? To direct them to the correct bathroom?
Assuming they’d use a bathroom.
To buy the right sort of clothing as a gift?
Assuming that sex identity is the thing an alien would use to gravitate toward a particular type of clothing.
To correctly recommend either a urologist or gynecologist?
Assuming that such doctors would know the physiology of an alien.
Any number of other reasons that might come up?
Each one of the things you brought up could be answered specifically with much more clarity than expecting one generic answer to work for all of them. Yes, in English, one answer would work for all of them, except perhaps in countries where men and women wear similar clothing and it’s more important to know their class status, like how it used to be illegal to wear purple unless you were in the royal family, etc. Hermione’s robe looked a lot like Harry’s robe. Size was more important than sexual gender.
Some trees are considered male and others of its species female, but unless you are seeking fertile fruit, most people never bother to figure out whether a tree is a he or a she. Because in English trees are never he or she; they're always it, regardless of their sexual properties.
[whiny voice] Yes, but sometimes it’s REALLY IMPORTANT to know whether a tree is a boy or a girl.
Klingon doesn’t have sexually classified gender like English does. Most languages don’t. English only has biological gender in its singular third-person pronouns, it only applies to some cases of biological sex, and it has no kind of gender agreement. The only way you could say that most language don't have the sort of gender that English has is to say that most languages have more extensive gender systems. Modern English effectively has no gender.
Well said. Thank you. I had not thought about that. Gender agreement is nearly missing in clusters of words. Number agreement is a bigger deal. Still, there are the pronouns, and dictionaries are rife with sexual gender associated with specific nouns.
Gender can have all kinds of categorization systems, like marking the difference between old words vs. newer words borrowed from some other language. Klingon gender has to do with marking the difference between beings capable of using language, body parts, and everything else. Biological sex role has nothing to do with it.
So, in Klingon, you’d be less interested in noting that it wasn’t male or female (since there is no “he” or “she” or “it” to use as the pronoun when discussing the alien), but instead, you’d be trying to figure out whether it used language. And yet there are still situations in which you want to express the biological sex of someone or something, so there should be a way to do it, and you should be able to discuss it.
(There are a couple of extreme cases of gender in English. For instance, some maintain that the difference between blond and blonde is as in French: the -e makes the adjective feminine, and should be used when referring to blond(e) women. Others maintain that this distinction belongs to French, not English, and that blond should be used for all people with this color hair.)
Back to the original question: sorry, I can't think of a better way to say neuter than to say be' 'oHbe'; loD 'oHbe' or variations thereof.
Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or women, even if they ARE male or female. That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing, even when the things themselves are not generally similar. Thanks again for bringing up stuff I hadn’t thought of. Learning French, the gender thing was pushed so hard and compared to English in ways that didn’t, for my high school and college mind, make me fully reflect on all the ways that English doesn’t mark gender. Except when it does.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org <http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org>
charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On 5/28/2019 5:48 PM, Will Martin wrote:
On May 28, 2019, at 1:55 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 1:32 PM, Will Martin wrote:
Unless you are planning on having sex with an alien, why would you care if it were male or female or neither?
To direct them to the correct bathroom?
Assuming they’d use a bathroom.
You typically direct someone to a bathroom when they ask you how to get to the bathroom. That is implicit in my suggestion. One does not usually walk around directing people to bathrooms who didn't ask. So yes, we can safely assume that an alien that asks where the bathroom is wants to use a bathroom.
To buy the right sort of clothing as a gift?
Assuming that sex identity is the thing an alien would use to gravitate toward a particular type of clothing.
And some people do. So what happens if you're dealing what that sort of person? An alien shopping on Earth, for instance, would find almost every store selling clothes split along male/female lines.
To correctly recommend either a urologist or gynecologist?
Assuming that such doctors would know the physiology of an alien.
Same answer as the bathroom.
Any number of other reasons that might come up?
Each one of the things you brought up could be answered specifically with much more clarity than expecting one generic answer to work for all of them.
No. There is no "neuter for the purpose of going to the bathroom" noun in Klingon. There is no "neuter for the purpose of choosing fashion" expression in Klingon. The question is straightforward.
Hermione’s robe looked a lot like Harry’s robe. Size was more important than sexual gender.
Utterly irrelevant.
Some trees are considered male and others of its species female, but unless you are seeking fertile fruit, most people never bother to figure out whether a tree is a he or a she.
Because in English trees are never /he/ or /she;/ they're always /it,/ regardless of their sexual properties.
[whiny voice] Yes, but sometimes it’s REALLY IMPORTANT to know whether a tree is a boy or a girl.
That's true. In biology or agriculture, one might need to know. And the tree is still called an /it,/ regardless.
Gender can have all kinds of categorization systems, like marking the difference between old words vs. newer words borrowed from some other language. Klingon gender has to do with marking the difference between beings capable of using language, body parts, and everything else. Biological sex role has nothing to do with it.
So, in Klingon, you’d be less interested in noting that it wasn’t male or female (since there is no “he” or “she” or “it” to use as the pronoun when discussing the alien), but instead, you’d be trying to figure out whether it used language.
And yet there are still situations in which you want to express the biological sex of someone or something, so there should be a way to do it, and you should be able to discuss it.
(There are a couple of extreme cases of gender in English. For instance, some maintain that the difference between /blond/ and /blonde/ is as in French: the /-e/ makes the adjective feminine, and should be used when referring to blond(e) women. Others maintain that this distinction belongs to French, not English, and that /blond/ should be used for all people with this color hair.)
Back to the original question: sorry, I can't think of a better way to say /neuter/ than to say *be' 'oHbe'; loD 'oHbe'* or variations thereof.
Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or women, even if they ARE male or female.
In Klingon, *loD* and *be'* mean /male/ and /female,/ not just /man/ and /woman./
That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing, even when the things themselves are not generally similar.
Unnecessary, since the word *loD *can be used in Okrandian Klingon canon to mean adult male member of any sentient species. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Would the following construction be valid? loD ghaHbe’ be’ ghaHbe’ je ghotvetlh’e’. —jevreH Sent from my iPhone
On May 28, 2019, at 18:09, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 5:48 PM, Will Martin wrote:
On May 28, 2019, at 1:55 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 1:32 PM, Will Martin wrote: Unless you are planning on having sex with an alien, why would you care if it were male or female or neither? To direct them to the correct bathroom?
Assuming they’d use a bathroom. You typically direct someone to a bathroom when they ask you how to get to the bathroom. That is implicit in my suggestion. One does not usually walk around directing people to bathrooms who didn't ask. So yes, we can safely assume that an alien that asks where the bathroom is wants to use a bathroom.
To buy the right sort of clothing as a gift?
Assuming that sex identity is the thing an alien would use to gravitate toward a particular type of clothing. And some people do. So what happens if you're dealing what that sort of person? An alien shopping on Earth, for instance, would find almost every store selling clothes split along male/female lines.
To correctly recommend either a urologist or gynecologist?
Assuming that such doctors would know the physiology of an alien. Same answer as the bathroom.
Any number of other reasons that might come up?
Each one of the things you brought up could be answered specifically with much more clarity than expecting one generic answer to work for all of them. No. There is no "neuter for the purpose of going to the bathroom" noun in Klingon. There is no "neuter for the purpose of choosing fashion" expression in Klingon. The question is straightforward.
Hermione’s robe looked a lot like Harry’s robe. Size was more important than sexual gender.
Utterly irrelevant.
Some trees are considered male and others of its species female, but unless you are seeking fertile fruit, most people never bother to figure out whether a tree is a he or a she. Because in English trees are never he or she; they're always it, regardless of their sexual properties.
[whiny voice] Yes, but sometimes it’s REALLY IMPORTANT to know whether a tree is a boy or a girl.
That's true. In biology or agriculture, one might need to know. And the tree is still called an it, regardless.
Gender can have all kinds of categorization systems, like marking the difference between old words vs. newer words borrowed from some other language. Klingon gender has to do with marking the difference between beings capable of using language, body parts, and everything else. Biological sex role has nothing to do with it.
So, in Klingon, you’d be less interested in noting that it wasn’t male or female (since there is no “he” or “she” or “it” to use as the pronoun when discussing the alien), but instead, you’d be trying to figure out whether it used language. And yet there are still situations in which you want to express the biological sex of someone or something, so there should be a way to do it, and you should be able to discuss it.
(There are a couple of extreme cases of gender in English. For instance, some maintain that the difference between blond and blonde is as in French: the -e makes the adjective feminine, and should be used when referring to blond(e) women. Others maintain that this distinction belongs to French, not English, and that blond should be used for all people with this color hair.)
Back to the original question: sorry, I can't think of a better way to say neuter than to say be' 'oHbe'; loD 'oHbe' or variations thereof. Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or women, even if they ARE male or female. In Klingon, loD and be' mean male and female, not just man and woman.
That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing, even when the things themselves are not generally similar. Unnecessary, since the word loD can be used in Okrandian Klingon canon to mean adult male member of any sentient species.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On Tue, May 28, 2019, 16:54 Jeffrey Clark <jmclark85@gmail.com> wrote:
Would the following construction be valid?
loD ghaHbe’ be’ ghaHbe’ je ghotvetlh’e’.
—jevreH
Since {loD ghaHbe'} and {be' ghaHbe'} are sentences, you'd need {'ej}; I think {loD ghaHbe' 'ej be' ghaHbe' ghotvetlh'e'} works, though of course I'm no expert. jatlh charghwI': ---
Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or women, even if they ARE male or female.
That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing, even when the things themselves are not generally similar.
novpu' maHmo', loD SoHbe' 'ej be' jIHbe', qar'a'? But I do agree that a lot of the aspects of language are arbitrary; there's nothing about English-speaking culture that makes us need to mark tense on all our verbs, or put an article in front of all our singular nouns, for example. As John McWhorter says, language tends to ooch along like a lava lamp, and one usually can't predict what state it will ooch to next. -QISta'
Sent from my iPhone
On May 28, 2019, at 18:09, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 5:48 PM, Will Martin wrote:
On May 28, 2019, at 1:55 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 1:32 PM, Will Martin wrote:
Unless you are planning on having sex with an alien, why would you care if it were male or female or neither?
To direct them to the correct bathroom?
Assuming they’d use a bathroom.
You typically direct someone to a bathroom when they ask you how to get to the bathroom. That is implicit in my suggestion. One does not usually walk around directing people to bathrooms who didn't ask. So yes, we can safely assume that an alien that asks where the bathroom is wants to use a bathroom.
To buy the right sort of clothing as a gift?
Assuming that sex identity is the thing an alien would use to gravitate toward a particular type of clothing.
And some people do. So what happens if you're dealing what that sort of person? An alien shopping on Earth, for instance, would find almost every store selling clothes split along male/female lines.
To correctly recommend either a urologist or gynecologist?
Assuming that such doctors would know the physiology of an alien.
Same answer as the bathroom.
Any number of other reasons that might come up?
Each one of the things you brought up could be answered specifically with much more clarity than expecting one generic answer to work for all of them.
No. There is no "neuter for the purpose of going to the bathroom" noun in Klingon. There is no "neuter for the purpose of choosing fashion" expression in Klingon. The question is straightforward.
Hermione’s robe looked a lot like Harry’s robe. Size was more important than sexual gender.
Utterly irrelevant.
Some trees are considered male and others of its species female, but unless you are seeking fertile fruit, most people never bother to figure out whether a tree is a he or a she.
Because in English trees are never *he* or *she;* they're always *it,* regardless of their sexual properties.
[whiny voice] Yes, but sometimes it’s REALLY IMPORTANT to know whether a tree is a boy or a girl.
That's true. In biology or agriculture, one might need to know. And the tree is still called an *it,* regardless.
Gender can have all kinds of categorization systems, like marking the difference between old words vs. newer words borrowed from some other language. Klingon gender has to do with marking the difference between beings capable of using language, body parts, and everything else. Biological sex role has nothing to do with it.
So, in Klingon, you’d be less interested in noting that it wasn’t male or female (since there is no “he” or “she” or “it” to use as the pronoun when discussing the alien), but instead, you’d be trying to figure out whether it used language.
And yet there are still situations in which you want to express the biological sex of someone or something, so there should be a way to do it, and you should be able to discuss it.
(There are a couple of extreme cases of gender in English. For instance, some maintain that the difference between *blond* and *blonde* is as in French: the *-e* makes the adjective feminine, and should be used when referring to blond(e) women. Others maintain that this distinction belongs to French, not English, and that *blond* should be used for all people with this color hair.)
Back to the original question: sorry, I can't think of a better way to say *neuter* than to say *be' 'oHbe'; loD 'oHbe'* or variations thereof.
Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or women, even if they ARE male or female.
In Klingon, *loD* and *be'* mean *male* and *female,* not just *man* and *woman.*
That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing, even when the things themselves are not generally similar.
Unnecessary, since the word *loD *can be used in Okrandian Klingon canon to mean adult male member of any sentient species.
-- SuStelhttp://trimboli.name
_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 5/28/2019 7:14 PM, Christa Hansberry wrote:
On Tue, May 28, 2019, 16:54 Jeffrey Clark <jmclark85@gmail.com <mailto:jmclark85@gmail.com>> wrote:
Would the following construction be valid?
loD ghaHbe’ be’ ghaHbe’ je ghotvetlh’e’.
—jevreH
Since {loD ghaHbe'} and {be' ghaHbe'} are sentences, you'd need {'ej}; I think {loD ghaHbe' 'ej be' ghaHbe' ghotvetlh'e'} works, though of course I'm no expert.
I also don't know whether two "to be" sentences can share a subject/topic like that. It's an interesting question.
jatlh charghwI': ---
Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or women, even if they ARE male or female.
That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing, even when the things themselves are not generally similar.
novpu' maHmo', loD SoHbe' 'ej be' jIHbe', qar'a'?
But I do agree that a lot of the aspects of language are arbitrary; there's nothing about English-speaking culture that makes us need to mark tense on all our verbs, or put an article in front of all our singular nouns, for example. As John McWhorter says, language tends to ooch along like a lava lamp, and one usually can't predict what state it will ooch to next.
I had to stop listening to John McWhorter; he doesn't study linguistics so much as push a linguistic agenda. There's nothing that makes us need to mark tense on all our verbs, but there are historical reasons that we do. It didn't arise out of nothing. Languages evolve in very much the same way that species evolve. There's nothing that makes us need to have an appendix on our large intestine, but there are good reasons we have one. It's very disadvantageous that the left recurrent laryngeal nerve loops all the way down and under the aortic arch, but there's a reason so many animals have this anatomy. It's not arbitrary. It may not be useful to us, but it's not arbitrary. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Perhaps: lod be’ ghap ghaHbe’ ghotvetlh’e’ Sent from my iPad
On May 28, 2019, at 19:54, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2019 7:14 PM, Christa Hansberry wrote:
On Tue, May 28, 2019, 16:54 Jeffrey Clark <jmclark85@gmail.com> wrote: Would the following construction be valid?
loD ghaHbe’ be’ ghaHbe’ je ghotvetlh’e’.
—jevreH
Since {loD ghaHbe'} and {be' ghaHbe'} are sentences, you'd need {'ej}; I think {loD ghaHbe' 'ej be' ghaHbe' ghotvetlh'e'} works, though of course I'm no expert. I also don't know whether two "to be" sentences can share a subject/topic like that. It's an interesting question.
jatlh charghwI': ---
Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or women, even if they ARE male or female.
That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing, even when the things themselves are not generally similar.
novpu' maHmo', loD SoHbe' 'ej be' jIHbe', qar'a'?
But I do agree that a lot of the aspects of language are arbitrary; there's nothing about English-speaking culture that makes us need to mark tense on all our verbs, or put an article in front of all our singular nouns, for example. As John McWhorter says, language tends to ooch along like a lava lamp, and one usually can't predict what state it will ooch to next. I had to stop listening to John McWhorter; he doesn't study linguistics so much as push a linguistic agenda.
There's nothing that makes us need to mark tense on all our verbs, but there are historical reasons that we do. It didn't arise out of nothing.
Languages evolve in very much the same way that species evolve. There's nothing that makes us need to have an appendix on our large intestine, but there are good reasons we have one. It's very disadvantageous that the left recurrent laryngeal nerve loops all the way down and under the aortic arch, but there's a reason so many animals have this anatomy. It's not arbitrary. It may not be useful to us, but it's not arbitrary.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 5/28/2019 8:15 PM, Daniel Dadap wrote:
On May 28, 2019, at 19:03, Jeffrey Clark<jmclark85@gmail.com> wrote:
lod be’ ghap ghaHbe’ ghotvetlh’e’ Or maybe {joq}, since {… ghap ghaHbe' …} seems to leave open the possibility of this person being a man AND a woman. I think.
We've wondered before about conjunctions and negatives. I don't think we have anything conclusive. Another form would be *loD ghaHbe' ghotvetlh'e' 'ej be' ghaHbe'.* This would be, I think, the least controversial. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
lieven:
But on the other hand, what they really mean is simply "The Klingon language does not express it that way". Sometimes it's just the way it tis, and we have to live with it. It's not about how a fictive race may think or talk, it's sometimes just how a language works.
This is a valid argument; but it is an argument, which we can accept only on matters 'oqranD has already clarified. For example, if someone said, we need to have a word for "exaggerate", then of course he would need to listen, that 'oqranD decided to use the bo'Dagh phrase. Or, an even better example, if someone said we need a word for "curious", he would need to be reminded, that 'oqranD was asked and said to use {neHqu'}. But now, I need to continue another ancient cat story, which I'm writing. ~ m. qunen'oS keep calm and learn klingon
participants (9)
-
Christa Hansberry -
Daniel Dadap -
De'vID -
Jeffrey Clark -
Lieven L. Litaer -
M Roney -
mayqel qunen'oS -
SuStel -
Will Martin