On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, Ron Artstein wrote: > Regarding Hebrew, a lot of the gender-specific language in > instructions and such comes from the obligatory marking of gender > in the imperative and second-person pronouns. Fortunately, these > can usually be put in the plural, where Hebrew has practically lost > its gender distinction, with the [na]/[en] forms dying out and the > [u]/[em] forms being used for both genders. So go for it; what's > there to lose?
I agree that the gender-neutral form is best for 2nd person, but there are cases when a gender-neutral form becomes too hard to read. For example how should I write "advanced user" in gender-neutral Hebrew? Mishtamesh(t) Mitkadem(t). This looks very awkward. I prefer arbitrarily chosing a gender, and adding a comment. Instead of flipping a coin, however, I select the gender that will apply to most of the people filling in the form. > > In the case of Haifux, where the overwhelming majority of the > > populace are, maybe regretably, male, the logical decision is > > to use the masculine form. > > Here I strongly disagree. The Haifux majority is what I would > consider an *accidental* majority---there's no principled reason > for it (unlike, say, in a men's basketball team). Aiming your > language at such an accidental majority just serves to enhance the > gender bias. So should I use the feminine form and make the male majority read funny looking text? If you can suggest a gender-neutral version of the form, I'd gladly replace it. > > The W2L series is not abotu changing the gender composition of > > Haifux. Maybe women will respond better, but also the other way > > around, and as the vast majority of the target populace is > > (regretably) male, this will have a negative impact on the > > total number of participants. > > What?! We're talking about making the site gender-neutral, not > gender-specific. I don't see men getting upset at this. I don't see > them even noticing this. > > Those of you (men) who cook and do laundry, doesn't it annoy you to > find on packages instructions like `tagni beshemen amok' or `hosifi > pkak ekhad le-liter mayim'? Well, it annoys me, and I'd rather see > `tagnu ...' or `yesh lehosif ...'. I don't see a reason why > instructions for formatting a disk should be any less neutral. See my comments above. Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://alon.wox.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
