Tea With Tarvos - Tarvos' Log 2019

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tarvos
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby tarvos » Mon May 15, 2017 10:19 pm

zenmonkey wrote:
I was thinking about a question or two I might want to ask and then it occurred to me I could post it to you before the event.
Have you considered that for those languages that have strongly gendered grammatical that the neutral isn't reserved for objects? For example, using grammatical neutral in German does not remove the gender identity of an unmarried woman - das Madchen, das Fraulein, das Madel (primarly used by adult women to designate other adult women) are all neutral and all female.


Gender has two concepts for me: grammatical gender, which to me is simply morphology, and natural gender, which is how we determine whether to use he or she in English. The natural and grammatical gender may not coincide. But we still cannot use "het" (which is how you would refer to neuter nouns) when referring to "het meisje", even though het meisje is neuter (and similar for das Mädchen in German). So here natural gender trumps grammatical gender. This often happens in gendered languages.

Or perhaps that gender typed romance languages may allow for more play within the language? A language like Spanish, as difficult as it may seem in grammatical gender typing, also allows for wordplay that just cannot occur in English. One can say "el papacito" or "la papacita" which is a type of fluid construct that one can play with. While "los chicas" might be grammatically incorrect, I've heard it as a repossessed structure (in one case in a friendly and informal way for a cross-dressing group). Some gender neutral structures are reserved for objects "eso" o "esto" are improper for people but so is "esta" or "este" (and my mother would have raised an eyebrow if I ever addressed someone with "this one" or "that one"). Spanish also has a lot of epicene structures which are gendered independent of the sex of the subject - the frog (la rana), the judge (el juez), etc... Or words that are ambiguous in grammatical gender like sea (el/la mar) and depend on use. And obviously the language has grammatically gendered generic neutrals plurals which may include people of both sexes - like "las enfermeras".


Sure, but my key point is this - this is about gender pronouns, and that's different from gender on nouns. The real issue is how do we create pronouns so that non-binary people don't feel excluded, and Spanish doesn't have a way of doing that, even though certain cases in the gender system allow for ambiguity despite the grammatical gender.

Which refers me back to my previous point - las enfermeras is of course a feminine plural noun (because nurses were nearly always women in the past, although it can refer to men nowadays as well). But if we know we are referring to a group of male nurses, we say "ellos se ocupan de los pacientes" because we know we are referring to men. And that's what I mean by natural gender. Pronouns are often but not always determined by natural gender as opposed to grammatical gender. And precisely that leads to neuter pronouns being completely unsuitable for non-binary people, because normally neuter pronouns cannot refer to people at all even if the grammatical gender of the noun is neuter. They can only refer to objects or things or perhaps animals instead.

If you call a trans person "het" in Dutch, that is the HEIGHT of offensive.
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zenmonkey
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby zenmonkey » Mon May 15, 2017 10:53 pm

Ok, I understand you are focusing primarily on subject/nominative pronouns; I think my questions extended a little bit towards inclusive gender shifts outside of these types of pronouns. You might note that grammatical construct in Spanish (like Italian) can be made with the subject pronoun absent (and referentially understood).

Enrique se levanto. ( ) fue a comprar pan y tomo un vaso de vino.

That type of construct without an explicit pronoun is not only grammatically correct but quite common - obviously not the solution one might want but it also might show that Spanish isn't to be condemned completely without elegant and present workarounds where subject pronouns sometimes aren't that important to the language (even when they might be to a person being addressed).
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tarvos
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby tarvos » Tue May 16, 2017 2:56 pm

zenmonkey wrote:Ok, I understand you are focusing primarily on subject/nominative pronouns; I think my questions extended a little bit towards inclusive gender shifts outside of these types of pronouns. You might note that grammatical construct in Spanish (like Italian) can be made with the subject pronoun absent (and referentially understood).

Enrique se levanto. ( ) fue a comprar pan y tomo un vaso de vino.

That type of construct without an explicit pronoun is not only grammatically correct but quite common - obviously not the solution one might want but it also might show that Spanish isn't to be condemned completely without elegant and present workarounds where subject pronouns sometimes aren't that important to the language (even when they might be to a person being addressed).


This sometimes works, but you cannot continuously use it for a few reasons:

1) Your Spanish will sound stilted if you don't use the pronouns for emphasis when they are truly necessary
2) predicate sentences will still require declination of adjectives, which gives away the gender of the speaker immediately
3) in certain official situations, the pronouns need to be made explicit, or in writing when we are dealing with official documents, and here a gender-neutral pronoun may be an improvement over the masculine used as an umbrella pronoun for everything (especially if you think that this is sexist, which I don't, but I can follow that line of reasoning)
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tarvos
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Passive: AF, DK, LAT
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby tarvos » Thu May 18, 2017 10:20 pm

Having finished my previous book (a Dutch translation of Jim Holt on existence and why there is something instead of nothing, which turned out to be a book that doesn't really merit a lot of discussion here), I've moved on to Sânge satanic (Satanic Blood), which is Cristina Nemerovschi's debut novel (and I am reading it in Romanian, of course).

This book contains a truckload of cursing and swearwords, and it's all about a young metalhead who does way too much drugs, is an atheist (and considering this is Romania, all the old grannies think he's a satanist), bisexual, listens to black metal and Slayer, and in general gets drunk off his ass every night being very nihilistic (you have to if you can stomach most black metal really). The beginning of the book has a scene where he scares an orthodox priest with a cow. It's quite frankly hilarious.

Now I won't pretend that some of the book isn't a little bit overblown, but I have the feeling that's exactly what the author was going for. And deep down, I really like it - although I am way too boring for drugs, it's kind of a very metal lifestyle (and the fact the main character is LGBT in a Romanian book just makes for a very, very hilarious contrast with the rest of Romanian society, which is full of either old orthodox grannies, silly conformist types, and the Romanian version of gopniks, namely cocalari). The book also continuously refers to bands such as Emperor, Mayhem, Slayer, Rotting Christ and cites their lyrics.

I'm not sure this book is for everyone, but I am really, really enjoying it. I doubt it will make me reconsider my views on life; but then again, I don't really need to, this type of amusement is more than enough for me.

Or maybe it's nostalgia for my late teenage years, when all I wanted to do was go to Wacken and see Slayer and Iron Maiden, hah. Well, I did, so there we go.
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby smallwhite » Fri May 19, 2017 5:17 am

tarvos wrote:Slayer... Iron Maiden...

I used to play War Ensemble (Slayer) with my band. I loved it, except as bassist I had to play the same note 256 times in a row :| I also played Dead Skin Mask (Slayer) with a less experienced band. And the first time I played on stage, I played the intro of Phantom of the Opera (Iron Maiden) on guitar as intro to a medley. All good stuff but nostalgia as well now!
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tarvos
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby tarvos » Fri May 19, 2017 8:40 am

Iron Maiden would be a lot more fun on bass I think. Slayer can be... monotonous. Even though I love Slayer.
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby Serpent » Fri May 19, 2017 11:57 am

zenmonkey wrote:I was thinking about a question or two I might want to ask and then it occurred to me I could post it to you before the event. Have you considered that for those languages that have strongly gendered grammatical that the neutral isn't reserved for objects? For example, using grammatical neutral in German does not remove the gender identity of an unmarried woman - das Madchen, das Fraulein, das Madel (primarly used by adult women to designate other adult women) are all neutral and all female.

We've discussed this stuff back on the old forum :D
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tarvos
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Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI
Passive: AF, DK, LAT
Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby tarvos » Fri May 19, 2017 3:33 pm

RO: Am ajuns deja la jumătate cartei și nu regret nimic. Chiar pare că cartea însumă e atât de amuzantă ca eu pot să petrec o zi întreagă doar citând, nu doar pentru ca mă amuz foarte mult cu descripțiile jurnaliștilor, dar și mai pentru ca am timp pentru citirea astăzi. Trebuie să găsesc mai mule cărți de la Nemerovschi, dar cred că sunt foarte greu de obținute aici în Țările de Jos - păi, nu am timp să mă duc la România în fiecare dată când îmi trece prin minte gândul că trebuie să iau ceva de citit în limbi străine.

Firește că nu... sau totuși da?

Bine, n-am mai mult de spus. Mă pun ÎNCĂ o cafea, caldă, vă rog, și trecem mai departe. Unde ajungem o să știe nimeni. De ce trebuie să știu???
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tarvos
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Passive: AF, DK, LAT
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby tarvos » Wed May 24, 2017 9:25 am

And in a few days I devoured a Spanish thriller of 480 pages by Eva García Sáenz de Urturi.

I've also practiced my presentation for the Polyglot Gathering in English and Spanish. I haven't decided where to add other languages yet, but we'll improvise depending on what languages are present.
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Re: Tarvos' новый лог

Postby rdearman » Wed May 24, 2017 5:32 pm

tarvos wrote:And in a few days I devoured a Spanish thriller of 480 pages by Eva García Sáenz de Urturi.

I've also practiced my presentation for the Polyglot Gathering in English and Spanish. I haven't decided where to add other languages yet, but we'll improvise depending on what languages are present.

I feel that I am woefully unprepared for my presentation. :( But I look forward to seeing yours!
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