> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com,
>
>
> To me that was an eye-opener because
> until then I'd believed that everything was just fine.
Well, I don't really think that. I just think that feminist often complain
about wrong things. For instance, I once heard a feminist saying that it
is suspicious that in Croatian feminine gender (a-stems) has the N. sg.
always different from the A. sg. but that it's sometimes the same in
masculine (o-stems).
> This confuses diachrony with synchrony. Granted that _originally_ the
> msc was a common gender, that statement is irrelevant at a synchronic
> stage where "one man + a thousand women go with masc. agreement".
Yes, but this has a lot to do with the pretty much arbitrary name
masculine gender. I mean, in my native language, man is masc., but my
girlfriend can also be in diminutive, a wall is also masc., as well as the
moon. OK, women is fem. gender, but so is the grass, and a man who is a
fool. So, it looks like it's pretty arbitrary to call genders masc. and
fem. If it were not so, I wonder how many feminists would have this kind
of objection.
Also, this kind of stuff may seem chauvinistic now, but it's clear that
diachronically speaking, this is not so.
Mate