Is neutering language incomplete? Is it foolish?

Question

Someone chastised me (mildly, I think) for refering to a country as she. Example: Great Britain struggled to hold on to her colonies but she was too weak. I know it is politicaly correct to neuter language, but it is arbitrary and incomplete. France will always be La France-feminine.

Answer 1

The "la" in front of "la France" is a mark of grammatical gender, while referring to Great Britain as "her" is some other kind of gender. "La France" is in the French language (a language with more than one grammatical gender), while the name "Great Britain" is in English (a language with no distinction by gender). The name for the country in English is "France" (no article needed). Even for countries that use articles in the names, the article is always "the" (e.g. The Netherlands); there's no other article option that would indicate a difference in gender.

Grammatical gender actually has nothing to do with human gender; it's just a morphosyntactic pattern among nouns and things that grammatically agree with them. Although nouns are often referred to as "masculine", "feminine", and so on, this is simply a terminological device. It is not related to any property or characteristic of the noun (that anyone has proven).

(You might be interested to know that languages don't always use words like "masculine" and "feminine" to label the genders in their languages. Swahili has about a dozen genders, so they are called names like "Class 7". Danish has two genders, but they are called "common" and "neuter".)

Referring to "Great Britain" with a female term is some other kind of gender use in language. It's more like anthropomorphism, a literary device, than gender.

By talking about "neutering" and asking whether it's incomplete, I get the impression that you are trying to say that referring to a country as "she" is some sort of remnant of grammatical gender in English that came from languages that had gender, such as Anglo-Saxon or French, English's predecessors. I get the impression that you believe that people used a gender distinction in the past and that has disappeared over the history of English. As far as I know, there has never been a distinction of grammatical gender in English. While it is possible to refer to things like countries, ships, and the sea in English as "she" or "her", it's not used all the time for any noun that I'm aware of. As the previous answerer pointed out, there are no "he"/"him" references. So I still say that this is more like a poetic device, not a grammar feature.

My feeling is that your friend was balking at the fact that you used this poetic type of language in a non-poetic situation. Or perhaps she didn't like a poetically female object (Great Britain) associated with the concept of weakness.

Answer 2

If you were really referring to GB at the time, perfectly correct.The term "Mother England" is fairly common, and the "she" would naturally follow. But in Germany, it was The Fatherland", so it would be masculine.

As mentioned above, ships are generally feminine. I think there were a few exceptions - I believe the WWII German ship Scharnhorst was masculine for some reason.

The US Flag is often feminine - "She's a Grand Old Flag"

I'm sure there are plenty of other instances out there.

Being somewhat older (and old-fashioned too, I suppose), I do not hold with the PC castration of the language. It has given rise to such garbage as "Each child took their book." Sacrificing agreement of number and hence loss of clarity for the sake of being PC? Ridiculous.

Answer 3

at the beginning the term Abrahamic does not artwork because of the fact the three religions are very distinctive. So from a Jewish attitude, it only makes it greater durable to describe the already enormous variations. working example, that Judaism does not ask for converts & thinks everybody non-Jew blanketed could have a place in the international to come back & that one and all "international locations" upload something to the international. For the Tanach you're able to need the unique Hebrew plus Jewish scholarly artwork to verify the meanings of the words. For OT, that's a translation which has adjustments from the Tanach. that's how each and all of the prophecies get in there. Now in case you have faith the OT is God created, & is for Chrsitianity, then that's ok. this is in basic terms a issue whilst individuals turn around & argue that Judaism is inaccurate for utilizing our Hebrew version our own way. The NT grew to become into in no way in Hebrew. there are various translations, yet i don't comprehend how precise. The Septuagint is reported as being a Tanach translation previously whilst, even though it grew to become into in basic terms the 5 books & not the rest.

Answer 4

I think there's nothing inherently wrong with referring to a country that way, but in practice, as you (i think) pointed out, "she" is more often used to describe nonliving things than "he". This brings up the historical connection. Women used to be considered either their fathers' or husbands' possessions; calling your boat, for example, a "she" appears sexist for that reason. I think it's a good thing to discourage.

Answer 5

I think that you should not care about PC because PC is not PC. Reverse discrimination. I personally think that "when in Rome".... There are actually not very many gender-neutral languages. I know french and I am forever keeping myself from imposing genders.

Answer 6

Don't let the PC facists control what you say!