On a completely different note, one I'd planned to blog about before I got the celebratory news of increased legality, I'd like to talk about language. Ever since I started learning foreign languages, I've always been fascinated by the idea of gendered words. From the obvious and inane middle-school jokes about "how can you tell if this pencil's a boy or a girl?" to more evolved questions in high school and college, gendered words have always held questions. Why, for example, is the moon in Europe almost always considered feminine and the sun masculine? Why is it reversed in Japan? Who came up with gendered language in the first place? And does it actually affect how we think about the words themselves? I've had several people scoff at this last question, but a researcher at Stanford has now decided to look at this question as well. Her findings? People do indeed think differently about differently gendered words.
When you think of a bridge, how would you describe it?
Which of these sets of descriptions would you describe as more masculine or feminine?
As it turns out, the set of more "masculine" attributes--"strong, sturdy, towering, etc." was chosen by people whose primary language is Spanish, in which "bridge" is a masculine word. The set of more "feminine" attributes was chosen by people whose main language is German, in which "bridge" is a feminine word.
So does gendered language affect peoples' perceptions of objects? I think so. The question now becomes, what do speakers of an ungendered language like English have to say?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565&ft=1&f=1007
2 comments:
Mostly, we say, "Why the heck do you have nine different words for 'the'?!?"
;-)
I think I have a pretty good guess about the sun thing, though. In Greek and Roman mythology, the sun is represented by a god (Apollo), and the moon by a goddess (Diana). In Japanese mythology, the sun is a goddess (Amaterasu). I don't know for certain, but I would bet that the Japanese have a moon god, rather than a goddess. Now of course, that really just begs the question of why those genders were assigned to the deities in question, but the gendered nouns in European languages almost certainly are an echo of Europe's founding mythologies.
It's true...the Japanese do have a moon god as well. I was thinking about that when I gave the example, but I couldn't think of a good non-mythology related example...
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