Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving)
Pete Ware <ware(a)cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
How amusing. It's not difficult to get english to be gender
neutral
(it's only the occasional noun like chairman, mailman, stewardess)
that needs a "fixing", but languages with most nouns being either
feminine or masculine -- what a nightmare.
Oh, I don't think you're quite hitting the point here. Yes, it's true
that in many languages most nouns are feminine or masculine -- French
and Croatian are such (e.g. in Croatian, a table is "male", while a
chair is "female". As a school joke goes, it's not by chance that
death is female, while life is male, disease is female, while health
is male (ok, neutral), etc.)
Croatian works in a different way than English -- we have suffixes
that modify the gender of words that denote occupation. For example,
policeman is /policajac/, while policewoman is /policajka/, or doctor
is /liječnik/, while a female doctor is /liječnica/. Additionally,
each of these forms has its own plural: /liječnici/ means two or more
male doctors, while /liječnice/ means two or more female doctors.
At least we have a word to denote "man" without implying gender
(English "man or woman" PC looks ugly to me.)
Croatia is still very far from having a serious discussion about this
-- so far noone has cared about those issues (except for a small
feminist minority.) Perhaps it's better that way -- there are much
more important issues to worry about.