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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
Not to fisk, but there seems to be a disconnect between that broad intention and the specifics of what was written. At issue was the idea that usage is entirely due to the idea of formerly gender-defined occupations.
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I didn't say that it was
entirely to do gender-defined occupations. There is a difference between partially and entirely.
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If correct grammar were completely beholden to individual usage, then English teachers, professors, writers, editors and proofreaders wouldn't be needed.
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It's not about
individual usage. No one is saying that grammar is whatever you wish it to be.
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Again, I've said exactly the same thing using a different romance language as an example. I haven't seen anyone here disagree with that idea, though I do wonder whether you've been reading the posts to which you've responded.
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I didn't claim that anyone disagreed with the idea. You claimed that bias is difficult to eliminate in language, I pointed out that the generic he is not difficult at all to remove. I came back later and edited the post because it occured to me that in a more general sense, what you said was true, if a language has extensive gender bias, yes, it is difficult to remove.
I expected that if I had not added that clarification, it would have been easy for someone to use a language such as Spanish to provide a counter-example to what I had said, and I expect you would have done just that.