Hi Kurt,
--- Kurt Oertel <oertel@...-kiel.de> wrote:

> much has been made of the neuter gender of "das
> Maedchen". Feminists got
> on this case and even Mark Twain made some
> sarcastic remarks about it
> when traveling in Germany. But one should
> consider that this is a
> diminutive form and in German the diminutive
> form always becomes neuter.

Yes, but my point is that as recently as Mark
Twain's time the neuter gender got carried
through to all pronouns in a German text
(regardless of whether the neuter came form the
diminutive or otherwise).

I don't think feminism has been active long
enough (*certainly* not in Germany) to explain
the broad grammatical change that has happened.
But perhaps you can say more about what the
"feeling" is for a German speaker.

For instance, I myself never ever use the pronoun
"es" when refering to a girl even if I've used
the term "Maedchen" in the same sentence. But I
do not *consciously* avoid using "es" out of
political correctness - it just comes naturally.

Of course it may come naturally bcs English is my
native language - yet I never, ever hear modern
Germans use "es" to refer to girls either - I
only read it in old text. Not even cranky old men
who - I suspect - are influenced little by
feminism, use "es". I believe modern Germans also
have a natural feeling that the "biological"
gender prevails for pronouns. If the Germans
avoid using "es" out of 'political correctness',
then you would think you'd hear people use "es"
at least "by accident" sometimes.

This is the case for "he or she" in English. It
is politically correct (and I believe basically
polite) to use "he or she" whenever you are
talking about an unknown third person.
Nevertheless, I catch myself and even confirmed
feminists using the normalized "he" in such cases
all the time.

The tie-back of this to ON is that I suspect
people used to have a very different natural
feeling towards gender. In other words, earlier
Germans did not use "es" unnaturally in order to
tie out artificially to the pronoun, but because
if felt *natural* to them to insure the pronoun
ties to the noun if refers to.

In the same vein, the poet may have had Loki use
"vit tvau" because he genuinely wanted to
indicate Loki had some "neutral" noun in mind
when he said it.

The humor intended may have been to refer to a
sexually oblique person as neuter. I can think of
instances such as this just sitting on the tube
in London with my wife, when a very, very
'unusually fashioned' person walks by. While it
would be impolite to say it loud, in private
conversation sometimes my wife may ask me
something like "was that a he or a she?" to which
I might joke "that was an it." Not extremely
funny, perhaps, but it happens.

- DS


=====
Kindest Regards,
- DeepStream
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