[TheForge] Fw: autodarkening helmet and other OT thoughts

[David E. Smucker]

Bruce, explain to me, how the gender of "key" and "keyhole" in German is NOT 
biological?
It always made sense to me, maybe I missed something.

Dave

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From: "Bruce Freeman" <freemab222 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2009 6:28 PM
To: "terry l. ridder" <terrylr at blauedonau.com>; "Blacksmithing List 
Sponsored by ABANA" <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [TheForge] autodarkening helmet and other OT thoughts

> Nice to know I'm not the only semantically oral compulsive in the
> group.  (I figure "semantic" fits with "oral" but  not the other end.)
>
> Ever notice how letters and syllables are disappearing - or being
> inserted - into our words.
>
> Real-A-tor (an invented word, anyway), daylight savingS time, tin[NED]
> can (poor example, I admit.  Sad headache today and can't think of a
> better one, except, perhaps, for duc[T] (aka duck) tape.
>
> My real pet peeve is the destruction of our grammar due to ignorant PC
> forces.  I've probably spoken of this before in this forum because it
> is a pet peeve.  Preface:  I am proudly a feminist (though male),
> which is to say I consider women to be the complete political equals
> of men.  (This is  not to say men and women are in any way the same.
> "Viva la difference.")  Furthermore, despite the multiple uses of the
> words, "masculine" and "feminine," in the GRAMMATICAL sense, have
> NOTHING to do with "male" and "female" (which are biological
> referents).  English speakers, especially Americans, most of whom have
> never studied a foreign language, just can't grasp that concept.  But
> in German, "das maedchen," means "the young woman," yet is NEUTER.
> Nobody in his right mind would consider "ein maedchen" to be neuter -
> it is the WORD that is neuter.  Only one of many possible examples.
> The consequence of this is that the PC construction "he/she" is
> bullshit, and nothing more.  The use of "they" for "he" is worse,
> though sometimes a sentence can be rewritten to make it acceptable.
> "He" is proper to refer to persons of unspecified sex, because "he" is
> masculine gender and implies nothing about sex.  Animals and (strictly
> speaking) babies should be referred to as "it."  It, however, is not a
> personal pronoun, but an impersonal pronoun, hence our use of "he" and
> "she" for animals and babies we hold dear.  (I think few would object
> to calling a rat or lawyer "it".)
>
> Oh, and by the way, "gender" is a grammatical concept, not a
> biological one.  The proper word is "sex" when asking whether one is
> male or female.  Funny how folks are shying away from that now.  I
> suspect that's because some think "sex" is a verb, or at least that it
> describes the act.  Even in Victorian time, "sex" was very commonly
> used correctly.
>