Why Can't English be a Gendered Language?

[Stephanie]

I am learning Italian at the moment, and Italian is a gendered language.  This means that how you say something, or describe yourself and/or you activities is sometimes slightly different according to whether you are male of female.*  To say 'I went' or 'I have been' is sono andato if you are male, and sono andata if you are female and there are quite a few others.   Don't you think it would be an easier, more elegant and gentle way to come out?  We could just start using the 'opposite' sex way of speaking?

I could have said to my mother a few years ago: ' buonanotte mama, vado a letto perche sono stanca.  Sono la studentessa e ho bisogna dormire.'   instead of 'buonanotte mama, vado a letto perche sono stanco.  Sono lo studente e ho bisogna dormire.'

* Usually with verbs of motion and verbs that take 'essere' as an auxilary.

[Melody Maia]

I can tell you as someone with a mom who is a native spanish speaker (which is also a gendered language), no it did not make it any easier to come out. Now I am dealing with the headache of reminding her to use the feminine when referring to me and that comes up just about every time she opens her mouth. BIG pain. I WISH it was just "she" and "her" and my name.

[tekla]

Italian, like Spanish and French, are Latin based languages, and they get the gender from there.  English is a Germanic based language, and has no gender for articles and/or objects.

[findingreason]

While English may not be a "gendered" language, in the sense that words can have masculine and feminine forms, there are some more subtle characteristics of what is considered "feminine" and "masculine" speech. Instead of direct words, it could be a more speech patterned approach. Intonations, ways of wording things, can be factors. Like, for instance if a guy speaks in a more feminine matter, people can usually pick up on that, and vice versa. But trying to pinpoint it would be more difficult, as trying to standardize what is considered masculine or feminine could then result in stereotyping the language.

Another action that could be used as a subtle way of coming out, could be body language. Girls tend to use more gestures (with hands, etc) than guys in emitting various messages, whether it be assisting speech, or in indirect ways. Messages can also be subtly given in clothing, but if you want to lessen the amount of direct impact it has while still making a statement about, mixing clothes in an androgynous way could be helpful. In the in-between states I've been in, I'll wear a combination of male and female attire, or unisex wear until I'm ready for the next step.

Not sure if any of this would help...but just some suggestions and ideas.

[Stephanie]

While English may not be a "gendered" language, in the sense that words can have masculine and feminine forms, there are some more subtle characteristics of what is considered "feminine" and "masculine" speech. Instead of direct words, it could be a more speech patterned approach. Intonations, ways of wording things, can be factors. Like, for instance if a guy speaks in a more feminine matter, people can usually pick up on that, and vice versa. But trying to pinpoint it would be more difficult, as trying to standardize what is considered masculine or feminine could then result in stereotyping the language.

Another action that could be used as a subtle way of coming out, could be body language. Girls tend to use more gestures (with hands, etc) than guys in emitting various messages, whether it be assisting speech, or in indirect ways. Messages can also be subtly given in clothing, but if you want to lessen the amount of direct impact it has while still making a statement about, mixing clothes in an androgynous way could be helpful. In the in-between states I've been in, I'll wear a combination of male and female attire, or unisex wear until I'm ready for the next step.

Not sure if any of this would help...but just some suggestions and ideas.

You make some good points Finding, but the subtle approach is liable to go unnoticed and if it is noticed people are much more likely to assume that you are gay long before they think trans.   Despite being very feminine at home my sister thought that I was gay she didn't think transsexual.  My mother mistook my femininity for something else because she thought of me at the time as her son and saw me as male-bodied.   If I had been able to use a language that included phrases that only males or females use then I wouldn't have been thought of as gay and my mother would have understood me a whole lot better.  It is only in the last two-three weeks that my mother has finally understood me.

[Nikolai_S]

I actually find gendered languages very challenging. If you're out in public with someone, they have more opportunities to out you. When talking to a cashier or someone, you're forced to choose a gender with which to refer to yourself - and if you're not sure if you're passing, that can be very awkward. Then, there are androgynous people who don't want to be referred to either way, or declare themselves as male or female - gendered languages fight that. Then, there were some times I don't want to out myself as gay to classmates (really conservative area), but couldn't bring myself to pretend I was dating a girl, and in English I can get around that to some extent. In Spanish or Russian, two gendered languages I speak some of, I can't. Plus, when you can't come out, it's even more painful to have to refer to yourself constantly with the wrong gender of words. I've experienced that far too many times in language classes.

On the other hand, if being out wasn't a problem, I can see the advantage of being able to assert yourself immediately as the right gender. You'd also know quickly if you were passing or not. Still, the disadvantages outweigh advantages in my eyes.

[findingreason]

You make some good points Finding, but the subtle approach is liable to go unnoticed and if it is noticed people are much more likely to assume that you are gay long before they think trans.   Despite being very feminine at home my sister thought that I was gay she didn't think transsexual.  My mother mistook my femininity for something else because she thought of me at the time as her son and saw me as male-bodied.   If I had been able to use a language that included phrases that only males or females use then I wouldn't have been thought of as gay and my mother would have understood me a whole lot better.  It is only in the last two-three weeks that my mother has finally understood me.

That is true, usually that's what happens to me too....(come to think of it, a couple of managers at work may already suspect me as gay at least for my actions and such >.>) I should've thought of that....haha.

[Stephanie]

Very interesting comments Nikolai .  I know what it is like to say things that go against your inner soul but other people expect to hear.  I have answered to 'Mr' many times and been referred to as 'this man' on occassion.  These are all things that cause me intense pain. 
I don't know about other languages but in Italian there are plenty of ways of talking about yourself and refering  to yourself that both males and females use.   It is only really in the past tense that you encounter gender differences,oh and some occupations as well(Il/La Giornalista, il/la Dentista). 

[annette]

English is a germanic language and is (thankfully) not gendered but, there are germanic languages who are.
German by example is very gendered.
I think it's easier to learn a language  who isn't gendered all those verb conjugations.

and.....what is in a word that's explaining the gender?
For the latino's the world is masculine (el mundo ) and the moon feminine ( la luna )
For the Germans the world is feminine ( Die welt)
So after all we know nothing about the gender in the words.
In English it's the way you pronounce the words and not using some words that makes it feminine or masculine.
For me, I prefer English the way it is, no struggling with adjectives or something.

hugs
annette

[spacial]

I do too.

The aspect I particularly love about English is that it is so tolerant of mistakes and it accepts new concepts and notions so easily.

[Sean]

One thing I like about languages that force gendered verbs is that it shows you how hard it is to correct habits, so it can give you more patience for your family and friends who are adjusting.

If *I* have to think twice to be able to correctly gender myself when I say, "I want <x>" and I know with every fiber of my being what my gender is, simply because of habit, how hard must it be for those around me who have the habit without the inate sense of my gender?

That's one plus I can see. Another plus is that it gives you extra opportunities to hear how you are being read by others. Waiting for people to use gendered titles or pronouns can take a while and sometimes people really want to know "How well am I passing???" because they want to use the information for safety sake. Last, a lot of times, people just follow your cues. If the person you are with genders you correctly, others go with it. So gendered language can allow you to gender yourself, and not really on someone else to use the 'right' pronoun to cue others in.

The downside, though, as noted is that it gives the people you are with many many more instinctual/habitual ways to misgender you in public.

[SamanthaElle]

You don't really, it's a needless complication with no real linguistic benefit besides intricacy. Most languages tend to lose genders over time anyways, which is why English has none (although that's mainly due to contact with other languages, but still). Plus it makes things more complicated when talking in general. English is nice because you can use the singular they instead of he/she. Finnish is even nicer in my opinion, as one pronoun 'hän' is used for both he and she. (They also have a pronoun for 'it': se.) It seems favourable to me though to not have arbitirary gender divisions where unneeded, however.

[n00bsWithBoobs]

I prefer learning my computer languages. It all breaks down to binary. I have a 1, but I want a 0.

[VeryGnawty]

it's a needless complication with no real linguistic benefit besides intricacy.

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.

[niamh]

As a linguist I can tell you that while the grammatical gender (also known as noun class; the use of the word 'gender' is unfortunate, you could just as well call masculine nouns 'noun class 1' and feminine nouns 'noun class 2', cf. languages such as Swahili that has 18 noun classes) can at first glance seem pointless, researchers in cognition and language have hypothesized that noun classes (grammatical gender) assist us in our organisation of our perceptions about the world through our language. It does serve some purpose, otherwise it wouldn't exist, it's just unclear at present exactly what that purpose is.

As for English, the modern language does not have noun classes. Old English had noun classes but these were gradually lost between the 11th and 14th centuries due to an erosion of inflectional endings and declensional classes.

I don't think it matters much either way whether you live in a place where the language has grammatical gender or not, natural gender is still reflected in language. English has natural gender in the 3d person singular pronoun and it has a gender difference inherent in the words actor/actress, girl/boy, the use of cursing and informal language by men and the use of descriptive adjectives, tag-questions, up-talk and colour terms by women - just some examples of the many we have in English. And then you have Japanese that has gender differences in the use of nouns, formality levels and sentence participles...

Like Finland, I live in an area where the language doesn't have a difference in gender on the 3rd person singular pronoun. We have our own version of 'hän'. However, that still makes no difference to the way people see me or talk about me. They might refer to me as 'hän' but I am still male to them, something that I hate and wish to change. And on the other hand even though the language does not have grammatical gender it still has natural gender (i.e. actor/actress diference) and men and women speak differently (using difference adjectives, manners of speaking, registers...) I could adopt a more female way of speaking and while I would get away with a certain level if I went too far I would open myself up to ridicule.

In every language you can signal your gender if you wish, it's just that some languages require a greater minimum level of signaling than others.

[tekla]

La primera pregunta es: Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife?
Well, let's see.
My guess is that a pineapple is more macho than a knife.
Si! Correcto!
Pineapple es mas macho que knife.
La segunda pregunta es: Que es mas macho, lightbulb o schoolbus?
Uh, lightbulb?
No! Lo siento,
Schoolbus es mas macho que lightbulb.
Gracias.
Laurie Anderson - Smoke Rings

[VeryGnawty]

It does serve some purpose, otherwise it wouldn't exist, it's just unclear at present exactly what that purpose is.

If nobody knows its purpose, then I would suggest that it isn't very purposefull to begin with.  Modern English seems to be doing quite fine without this "noun class" that you speak of.

The fact that something exists does not mean that it is practical.  I could invent a bicycle helmet made of styrofoam if I wanted to.  My guess is that nobody would want to use it because it would be very "unclear exactly what the purpose is"

EDIT:  Also, gender is a better word than "noun class" which sounds pointless.  Gender comes from the Latin "gens" which is roughly translated to mean "kind" or "type"

[tekla]

I could invent a bicycle helmet made of styrofoam if I wanted to.

Ummm, most bike helmets are, at their core, Styrofoam, or some similar material.

[VeryGnawty]

Ummm, most bike helmets are, at their core, Styrofoam, or some similar material.

Yeah.  I thought about that after posting it.

Even so, they aren't made of ONLY styrofoam.  So my point still stands.

(if you find a bike helmet made of only styrofoam, I will be glad to make a new analogy)

[niamh]

The fact that something exists does not mean that it is practical.  I could invent a bicycle helmet made of styrofoam if I wanted to.  My guess is that nobody would want to use it because it would be very "unclear exactly what the purpose is"

EDIT:  Also, gender is a better word than "noun class" which sounds pointless.  Gender comes from the Latin "gens" which is roughly translated to mean "kind" or "type"

And yet Romance languages have had grammatical gender for their whole existence, over 15 hundred years. If the speakers found it pointless it would be abandoned. In evolution the higher apes developed the opposable thumb. We humans have ket this feature but have lost our tail. Language change is an organic process and simply because each new generation learns the language anew over the centuries language change can be vast. Now, while Modern English does not have grammatical gender many languages do. Simply put, if the speakers did not find it useful it would not be maintained.

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. But I don't see what could be pointles about the term 'noun class'. The word 'class' also carries these meanings of 'type' and 'kind' and its advantage is that it avoids the confusion that the term 'gender' imparts where people ask 'how can a table have gender?'

Grammatical gender is just one way for the language to divide out nouns into classes, and thus noun class as a term fits nicely, especially in languages with 18 noun classes (it would sound strange to talk of 18 genders).

Anyway, this is getting away from the OP so I will stop there.