Why Can't English be a Gendered Language?

[tekla]

They (road helmets, the trail ones are a bit different) are like M&Ms, inner goodness covered by a thin candy shell, in this case the plastic shell with the outrageous color schemes that are an unsuccessful attempt to make the helmet look 'cool' when in fact you're always going to look like a dork with it on.^*  I have friends who ride and lost that candy shell long ago - for whatever reason - and they just wear the Styrofoam part now.

But I've never bought the 'language is destiny' deal, if for no other reason than even if I change the language to make it easier for you to communicate, it's not going to help, it's not the language that does it, it's the ability to communicate that makes the difference.

* - of course, dork is much better than fool, which is what a head injury gets you.

[VeryGnawty]

And, so what if the word came from Latin. Latin got it from Indo-European and so on. It doesn't prove anything. Using the meaning of 'kind' or 'type' then, genre might be a better word.

Actually, "genre" would be about the same, seeing as how "genre" comes from the same root as "gender"

I fail to see your point.

[niamh]

Actually, "genre" would be about the same, seeing as how "genre" comes from the same root as "gender"

I fail to see your point.

Exactly. I know. That's why I mentioned that word.

Anyway, as I said. This is silly. I have no interest or stake in what people label things or feel about them, especially not in something as unimportant as some linguistic terminology on a trans forum. I was merely, as a linguist, throwing in my 2c.

[SamanthaElle]

I agree.  In the languages I've studied, gender tends to be a completely arbitrary linguistic rule.  For example, who decides that a chair is feminine and a table is masculine.  It makes no sense.

For that matter, conjugations are also unnecessarily complicated.  A few simple rules would eliminate the need for most conjugations.  Unfortunately, the English language does not have a good set of such rules, despite having few conjugations....

It seems that most languages are very badly designed.  I think we need to reinvent the wheel on this one.

I've been studying Swedish for a bit and it's nice because the conjugations are simply the same for all persons and numbers. Att älska is always 'älskar' in the present active.

But yeah, if you're interested in that stuff, a lot of constructed languages like lojban and esperanto try to get away from the arbitrary nonsense in the inflectional department by having very simply morphological rules. Of course there are then conlangs like Ithkuil and Ilaksh that go in the completely opposite direction, but no one speaks those fluently. Linguists tend to ->-bleeped-<- on conlangs though, I think I'm one of a few linguists who actually enjoys them.

[Stephanie]

What I forgot to mention in my original post was that using the feminine to describe oneself and one's actions when male was only to be used within the close immediate family.   In my OP example I gave the exact same sentence said first by a female and then by a male.   As my mother and sister thought of me as male my use of the feminine would have caused them to ask me why are you saying 'sono andata, sono partita, sono stanca, and sono stufa?'   I was forever hoping that my behaviour would provoke my mother into asking me questions about my gender identity but alas she never did.