| Archive for langcafe2.myfreeforum.org Come in and have your daily cup of languages! |
| fab |
MEDITERRANEANThe mediterranean is not just a sea, but a geopolitical, historical, geographical, and of course climatical area.General map : (with a mistake : Serbia is Slovaquie !) 
Socio-economical disparities : 
The relations with the European union: 
Cities, tourism, activities 
history : The expansion of islam in the 7th century. 
Geology : 
culture of the olive : 
Culture of grape : 
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| Deborah |
I never thought about the origin of the name Olivier before. Now I know. | ||||||||
| Loic |
Very interesting and educational, Fab. I liked those maps a lot. | ||||||||
| Fredrik |
Yes, I can only add: Mare Nostrum! 
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Très bonnes cartes, fab. Très instructives. | ||||||||
| patriccke |
Re: MEDITERRANEAN
So true! I often feel I have a dual European / Mediterranean identity: a very European way of thinking (politically, philosophically...) but a Mediterranean way of life (taking every opportunity to socialise, eating late, going out late as often as possible, not bothering organising things that can be improvised at the last minute, solving problems calling the right friend rather than following a rational way, living outside, worshiping the sun in a temple called seaside, being unable to cook without olive oil, tomatoes, garlic and peppers...) |
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| Uriel |
Hmm. I'm up late (it's 3 am), like to procrastinate, I'm not much of a problem solver, and I love tomatoes, garlic, and peppers. Does that make me Mediterranean, or do I have to have the fascination with olives, too? 
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| Aquatar |
But when someone refers to the Medeterranian, they tend to mean Southern Europe as opposed to North Africa or the Arabic countries don't they? | ||||||||
| fab |
I don't know for other countries, but here when we say "mediterranéen" we mean the both side of the mediterranean sea. |
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| Porthos |
Well, when we're talking about Europe, we usually just say "mediterranean", and people understand that you mean "southern Europe". | ||||||||
| greg in noord-frankrijk |
So Mediterranean means two different things : northern littoral vs northern & southern littoral. The latter meaning makes sense. | ||||||||
| fab |
Yes, especially because the tipical mediterranean features such as climate, food, urbanity or bahaviours (and history) are shared by both sides. |
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| Porthos |
I think there are huge differences between Egypt and Italy, or other areas of North Africa and France or Portugal. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
There are indeed. There also huge differences between a 20yo girl & a 80yo granny but both are women nonetheless. |
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| Porthos |
Did you notice that you called one a 'girl', while the other one was a 'granny'? This suggests that they are different, even if they might share one thing in common, namely, their sex. |
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| fab |
Yes, there are huge differences. The same way there are huge differences beetween Spain and Bolivia. It doesn't prevent that both are hispanic countries, and share some common point that non-hispanic nation doesn't share. Being part of a concept has never been something totalitary that prevent you being part of another concept. A man can be included in the concept of "tall", and in the same time in the concept of "fat". As a tall person he would share common things with a very thin tall woman, despite the fact that they would have differences on other points... Generally speaking, the mediterranean countries share some common geographic characteristics, some common food products, some historical herencies, climatical similarities, etc... It doesn't prevent the fact that they are deeply divided when speaking of economic levels, natural growth, religion practices, etc... |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
I think I did. It's analagous for Egypt and Italy. Both countries are different and share the Mediterranean in common, even if Louxor isn't Porto Fino — but Alexandria (of Egypt) isn't exactly Bolzano or Aosta either. |
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| Uriel |
Yeah, you never hear much about the other half of the seaside! I usually think of the northern coast of Africa as being very different than the sub-Saharan part of the continent, but not as being a whole lot like southern Europe, although of course the two regions would have influenced each other in many ways simply by virtue of their long proximity -- but they still remain separate world regions in my mind. |
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| Loic |
With the exception of Egypt, the other North African mediterranean countries have been colonies of France, Italy and Spain for a good part of the last century.
Greg mentioned in another Geographic thread that he would not think it too 'eccentric' to live in Algeria for a period of time while expressing aversion to Norway, citing the inclemental weather of the country as a reason. Somehow, I wonder whether the preference for Algeria could not be due to climate alone, but also to language. It is common wisdom that the odds of speaking French in Algeria are vastly higher than in Norway. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
In mine too. Northern Africa (from Agadir to Ismaïlia) isn't Southern Europe. However, both areas share common features and, as you said, have been influencing each other for more than a millenary. Although retaining its Arabo-Berber civilisation, Maghreb is increasingly westernising, like Souhwestern Europe somehow Arabised itself during medieval times.
Language would be crucial indeed. But believe me, I have no intention to live beyond the polar circle... Seriously, I don't know if I would be able to live in Norway because I don't know Norway. However, I've been to Morocco and I know I could live there. I just assumed I could adapt in Algeria, a neighbouring country. It also helps that I've met many people with an Algerian background since always while I haven't seen not even half many Norwegians so far. Autre chose : as you can see, (Northern) Algeria is not far away from Andalucia, a European region I like very much. 
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| Uriel |
My dad spent a month driving around North Africa when he got out of the army. He said it was interesting, but you wouldn't like it if you were a woman. Of course, that was in the late 60's. Perhaps things have changed. One of my friends who is married to a man from that region said she also spent a month touring the area, and she liked it very much. But then, she wasn't planning on living there. | ||||||||
| Loic |
Arabic cultures are still very macho. But I suppose it would not matter to foreigners as the Arabic culture of hospitality is legendary.
Is alcohol readily accessible in Morocco, Greg? I don't think I can live very well in a country where everyone is a self-declared teetotaller. Since you have also visited Morocco, how francophone is that country, really? |
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| fab |
Maybe in the USA yes, but here the Maghreb is in the news almost everyday. Not even speaking about the near east... whose political situation is often very hot!
Being mediterranean doesn't mean that south Europe and north Africa (we could add the near east also) are identical. It just mean that they sahre a number of common characteritics called "mediterranean" that other places doesn't share. You could read the writings of Fernand Braudel, one of the speacialists of the question of the mediterranean identity(ies). The common points are mainly about climate, agriculture, food products, landscapes, urbanity, way of life (although the last one is quite vague, Fernad Braudel expalin it well). Geographically speaking, in terms of landscapes and ambiances, when you are in mediterranean area, north shore or south shore you feel it quite clearly most of the time. Exemples, could you guess in which mediterranean country is it ? 1. 
2. 
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All those photos are fom Algeria. In term of général ambiance, as a french I would definitly feel more "at home" in Algeria than in Norway (and maybe also than in Germany, Netherlands and England.) Algeria looks like like southern France in its landscape, architecture, climate, food... And the country is bilingual French/Arabic. The real differences are religious, politic and economic situations. It creates a big divide beetween north shores, and migratory tensions. http://www.al-djazair.com/abdelkhalek.htm |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
My sister went there in 1990, that is two years before the FIS won the local elections (853 municipalities out of 1.539 & 32 wilayas out of 48) and the FLN nullified the ballot — hence the civil war. She spent a couple of days in Algiers where she could not go out unescorted by male company, preferably two men rather than only one. It seems that at this time European-looking girls were not that common in the streets of Algiers. According to what she said, the crowd outside was essentially made up of idle young men hanging around outside — what we call les hittistes (hit being a wall in local Arabic and the hittists being those who are supporting the walls all day long and everyday : the unemployed). Then she flew to Adrar (I think), a city held by the Algerian army bistling with soldiers and their machine-guns. Then the real experience started : she spent one month camelling in the desert. A fabulous experience, she said.
I have to say haschich is far more popular than alcohol in Morocco. But you may find alcohol quite easily : restaurants, hotels & clubs for instance. May be it's available in other places, but frankly that wasn't what I was looking for. I drank much more mint tea than alcohol there. In circuit spots haunted by tourists, you'll find everything on sale in Europe : alcohol & drugs. Morocco is a very traditional country but also very open to the world. The king M6 recently passed a law amending la moudawana (le code du statut personnel). Basically it gives many civil rights to women (like divorce, keep the children, kick the ex-husband out and get alimony). |
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| Uriel |
I had an Algerian algebra professor in college. He once showed us the French way to set up a long division problem (which is essentially vertically flipped from the way I learned it). I had no idea that even something as universal as simple mathematics could have so much variation! 
In my limited experience of riding camels, they're pretty uncomfortable -- I don't think I could stand a month on one. I once saw a photo of my mother on one in Egypt -- she was smiling, but .... then again, she was only 20 or so. Probably wouldn't go near one now. (And my dad had to rescue his camel saddle that he had brought back from her attempts to throw it in the trash on more than one occasion!) Arab hospitality to guests is very well-known; I had another co-worker who had been married to a Jordanian at one point, and she said that when she went to visit his family she was treated like a queen. (Had very nice pictures of Petra, too.) Nope, don't hear much about North Africa here -- probably because we don't really have any cultural ties to it at all. Very unlike France, which would have not only its historical colonial ties, but plenty of family ties as well from all the North African immigrants, the close proximity, shared language, and it being a major travel destination for you. |
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| Deborah |
Sounds right to me. My only contacts with North Africans here have been the result of taking cabs. (The majority of cab drivers in San Francisco are immigrants.) I've met a few Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians that way. BTW, the Yellow Cab fleet (Yellow Cab is the largest cab company in SF) is almost completely manned by Brazilians. |
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| Uriel |
That's too funny. Islam strictly forbids drinking alcohol, but feel free to toke up.... 
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| Loic |
A Muslim need not be an orthodox adherent of his faith, I reckon. | ||||||||
| fab |
Uriel, Not to forget that basically Algiers is only 1 300 kms from Paris, which means that Paris is closer to it than to Stockholm. And from Marseille, only 700 kms separate the two countries. As for turistic destination, it is quite true for Tunisia and Morroco, but not really for Algeria, mainly due to the political situation since the 90's. |
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| fab |
I found this map, which represent the areas where grown olive trees. Actuallt this discribes quite well the limits of the areas considered to be of mediterranean climate.
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| fab |
concernant la méditerranée, on peut évoquer le projet d'union méditerranéenne.
bien que les raisons pour lesquelles Nicolas Sarkozy ait évoqué la mise en place d'une telle structure puissent être sujet à bémol je trouve personellement qu'un organisme inter-étatique de type union Européenne concernant le monde méditerranéen est à mon avi une chose qui va dans le bon sens. 
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| Porthos |
How is northern France anymore "mediterranean" than Belgium, or southern Germany or Switzerland? |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Moi aussi. À condition que le projet soit désarkozifié, sinon il ne sera jamais viable.
For the simple reason that Lille and Marseille belong to the same partially Mediterranean country while Bruxelles, Munich and Zürich do not. That said, Marseille is just as Flemish as Lille is Provençal. Still, both cities are located in France, a country comprising several maritime façades, including a Northwestern-Mediterranean littoral. |
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| fab |
Oui, mais c'est un peu le cas déjà. Zapatero, et surtout Romano Prodi sont interressés par l'idée. Pour que celà marche il faut que qu'il y ait un noyau dur de au moins deux ou trois pays fondateurs qui en soient le moteur, à l'image du couple franco-allemand pour l'Europe - et non pas un seul.
it is a geopolitical union - not a pure geographical or climatical one. if it was the case Portugal, atlantic regions of Spain or black sea regions or Turkey won't be part of it either. the difference between northern France and Belgium or southern Germany is that that northern France is part of a country located on the mediterranean, while Belgium or southern Germany is part of a country located on the Baltic and northseas. based on climate, northern France is not less mediterranean than, say, Egypt, which almost hasn't a mediterranean climate (look at olive trees map above). the same way 95% of Algeria hasn't mediterranean climate. the mediterranean thing, in term of vegetation or ambiance concerns only the mediterranean coasts of the bordering countries. The same way Colombia is part of the geopolitical caribean area, while its neihbours of Ecuador or Peru are not. |
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| Uriel |
Put it this way, though, Fab -- one could argue that the US is a Pacific nation. We have thousands of kilometers of Pacific coastline, and we do a lot of business with other nations on the Pacific Rim, have a large ethnically Asian population along that side of the country, etc.
However, people on the OTHER side of the country -- say, Maryland -- aren't going to have a whole lot of affinity for or identification with the Pacific world. Certainly not like Californians or Hawaiians would. I think in that case it is possible to divide a single country up in terms of its regional affiliations. So you might say the south of France in Mediterranean, but the northern part is more northern European. Just as New England is definitely within the Atlantic sphere (like much of western Europe), Florida is semi-Caribbean, and Greenland is a strange hybrid of North American and Scandinavian. Would that be a fair compromise? |
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| fab |
You know I don't agree with that point of view (I've exposed long long long time my arguments). As person living in northern France I don't consider myself to be more "northern European". You have the right to choose to see things that way, but most people here won't - for our point of view northern Europe began only at north of a Nord-pas-de calais region/Bruxelles line. concerning the mediterranean union, the idea to divide France in two entities - one mediterranean, and the other not - has no meaning. France is not a politically divided country - and as I said this union would be a political one. Such a barrier inside France doesn't exist. Paris, for exemple may be situated in the northern part, it is the capital of the whole country, mediterranean-bordering regions included! and geographically speaking there are not a clear and localised divide, as is it between Italy and Austria, which would 'cut'. in france the transition beetween north and south is progressive, and the peoples are mixed. parts of families in mediterranean regions, others elswhere. France as a whole is a participating country in the mediterranean games. there is no a selection of the athlets to take only those who would be coming from those regions (and how demiliting them then ? are Bordeaux or Toulouse included, and Lyon ?... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Games
you forget that the distances are not at all the same. I understand that it can sound strange to include california in the Atlantic sphere (said that in reality the whole USA are included in OTAN, california is not excluded, even if situated on the Pacific!), since Clalifornia is situated at about 4000km for the Atlantic, but in Europe the distances are not the same, Paris is at 600km from the mediterranean sea, which are about the distance of the westernmost points of newyork state to the coast. Should new york state separated in two: one part would be considered to be "Atlantic", and the other no ? the same for California, only costal California should be included in the pacific region ? |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
I would consider metropolitan France to be a Mediterranean country, an Atlantic country, a Channel country, and to a small extent a North Sea country. However, I would consider Bordeaux to be Atlantic but not Mediterranean, whilst I would consider Marseille to be Mediterranean but not Atlantic.
I would also consider Northern France to be literally more 'Northern European' than Southern France, because it is comparably further to the North within Europe. For the same reason, I would consider Scotland to be more 'Northern European' than England, and Norway to be more 'Northern European' than Denmark. |
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| fab |
that's not so clear. Bordeaux is very close to the Atlantic façade, and does not have climate classified as mediterranean. said that, the culture is not rin reality diferent from the mediterranean south general ambiance can look quite much mediterranean. [img] http://www.peacham.com/france/big/stemilion20.jpg[/img] 
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
fab je t'assure que Bordeaux est tout sauf méditerranéenne, à commencer par le climat et l'ambiance. Ceci dit, c'est une ville méridionale : elle fait partie du Midi atlantique. | ||||||||
| Uriel |
Hmm. Perhaps it IS a difference of mindset. I have no trouble at all dividing up my own country into disparate portions, some of which have little to do with others far away, or of thinking of the capital as being worlds away from some parts of the country in culture and outlook. (And even when I lived in upstate NY, we DID really think of it as divided into upstate and downstate (NYC and its environs) -- and as those areas being separate entities -- even though they were within the same state. It's similar with northern and southern California, too -- there were even serious proposals to split the state at one point. Even the fact that there are areas of overlap or gradation from one region to another don't nullify the disparity between the people at different ends of the continuum. Perhaps it doesn't work that way in France. |
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| fab |
il est certain que Bordeaux n'est pas une ville méditerranéenne au sens strict du terme, mais, comme tu l'as justement noté, il s'agit d'une ville méridionale. Les qualificatifs de "méridional" et "méditerranéen" se recoupent en grande partie - et, en tout cas partagent un certain nombre de points communs (en tout cas concernant la France). Je ne considère pas personnellement Bordeaux comme une ville méditerranéenne au sens strict - mais je voulais just noter, qu'au sens large, certains endroits non situés dans des lieux proches de la méditerranée partagent un certain nombre de points communs avec d'autres qui y sont - et qu'il n'existe pas de critère unique pour définir ce qui est "méditerranéen". C'est le cas aussi du portugal, qui à mon sens, a toute sa place parmis les pays méditerranéens bien qu'il n'en soit pas au sens strict.
yes, but your country is HUGE ! France has just the size of Texas. we don't have portions really "far away" to others.
Yes, of course. I just wanted to correct the conception that some foreigner seem to have of France - which seem to be seen as by some as a country made of two complelty different culture, one supposed to be northern European, the other souther European. My idea is that a northern french, even if not situated along the mediterranean still is much closer to a southern French than to a south german or for exemple. our country is not divided in two. the mediterranean elements from the south have prnetrate and have penetrated northern France since at least 2000 years. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Fab, just a grammatical point that I thought you might be interested in: in English, one doesn't say 'a French'; one has to say 'a French person' (or 'a French man' or 'a French woman').
Basically, if the name of the nationality in English ends in '-an', you don't need to say 'person' after it, for example 'a German', 'an Italian', 'an American', 'a Canadian', 'an Australian', 'an Argentinean' etc. However, for others, you have to say 'a French person', 'an English person', 'a Dutch person', 'a Portuguese person' etc. And then there are some irregulars, such as 'a New Zealander'. Additionally, you'll notice that some people, especially Porthos, say things like 'a Frenchman', 'an Englishman', 'a Dutchman' etc. To me, that usage seems very old-fashioned and politically incorrect, so I don't recommend it. But perhaps it's still in common use in California, I don't know. I hope you don't mind me pointing this out!
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| fab |
Ben,
I didn't knew that. Thanks a lot for the info ! |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
You mean you didn't know that.
Or if you're from Scotland, you didnae ken that. That's how I'll probably be speaking by this time next year.
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| Porthos |
It's not old-fashioned or politically incorrect Fab. Maybe if you're a paranoid, overly pc pansy, but I've never seen it as such. Maybe in England this is so, but at least not in American English. Ben, what would be preferable in England to "Frenchman"? If you're talking exclusively about a male, would you still refer to that person as being a "French person"? Or if you're speaking of a French army division consisting entirely of males, would you still refer to them as "French people" instead of "Frenchmen"? That would sound silly in my opinion. "There's 5,000 [/i]Frenchmen[/i] 10 km from here, poised to attack." Or... "There's 5,000 French [i]persons[i] 10 km from here poised to attack." |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
'French man' (which is pronounced differently from 'Frenchman') if we specifically want to emphasise that it's a man. But if the gender is unimportant or unknown, then 'French person' would be more common.
I'd probably be more likely to say 'French soldiers' in this case. But if I specifically wanted to emphasise that they were all men, then I'd probably say 'French men'.
Never 'persons', although 'people' would be fine. But it would be more common here to say 'French soldiers' in this case anyway. Essentially, people here are encouraged to use language which is as gender-neutral as possible when it isn't necessary to emphasise the gender of the people involved. |
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| Walker |
It's the same here to some extent. I think the best example might be lärarinna which is the female form of "teacher". Nowadays they're called lärare like their male colleagues. |
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| Uriel |
When you get to college, Porth, they'll shove that gender-neutral crap down your throat, too. Personally, I think it's silly to go into contortions to find a gender-neutral term, but to each their own. I sympathize with the sentiment behind it and I'm as much a feminist as the next grrl, but honestly, it's just an idiosyncracy of the language. I don't take it literally or sweat the "implied inequality" we're all supposed to be so aghast about. These things were built into the language long ago. And people do it without knowing it all the time -- after all, the possessive -'s is nothing but a contraction for "his" -- the old way of showing possession would have been to say "John his horse", which later morphed into "John's horse". I wouldn't be surprised to find that there was originally a feminine counterpart to that construction -- "Helga her house" -- it probably fell by the wayside for no better reason than it's a lot harder to add an R onto the end of many words than it is to add an S.
But some people feel strongly about this subject, and if they are also the people grading your midterms, you will learn to bow down. |
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| Uriel |
Just to confuse you more, though, fab, while in the singular you have to say "Englishman" or "Frenchwoman" or "Chinese person", collectively you can still say "the English", "the French", "the Chinese", "the Portuguese" and it would be every bit as grammatically correct (and understood to be plural) as saying "the French people" or "the Spanish people". You would never try to add an S like you would to "Americans", "Koreans", or "Greeks".
An author I was reading said there is a similar trick in French that he used all the time -- since he could never get the hang of which nouns were feminine and which were masculine and was forever messing up the appropriate articles to use with them, he simply avoided the whole problem by only referring to things inthe plural -- where the articles are a lot simpler. But that meant that he had to buy at least two of everything....
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Funny. So basically it's like Germanophones used <die Lehre> = *{female teacher} as the feminine counterpart for <der Lehrer> = {male teacher} although 1] <die Lehrerin> is {female teacher} & 2] <die Lehre> = {apprenticeship, doctrine, tenet, theory, teaching etc}... Funnier : in French <le professeur>, a grammatical masculine, serves as a semantical weak neuter (it is used for both males & females). Yet they lately forged <la professeure>, a grammatical & semantical feminine...
Actually John's horse is identical to Johanns Pferd. As is Ann's horse to Annas Pferd. The <s> is a Saxon genitive, which is a remnant of Old-English singular genitives in strong declensions for grammatical masculine & neuter. The question whether such specific genitive endings could at all be connected with his (genitive singular for grammatically masculine & neutral possessive pronouns in Old English) is probably best answered by the fact that Althochdeutsch equivalents are sin, where <s> isn't final and perhaps unlikely to be stuck to the thing possessed preceding.
C'est un des pièges de la grammaire anglaise qu'Uriel te décrit, fab. Pour les noms de peuples dépourvus de suffixes tels que <an> ou <ard> (etc), le pluriel est un adjectif substantivé, donc invariable. Ça concerne, en particulier, tous les noms de peuples suffixés en <ese>. Ça fonctionne aussi avec certains collectifs d'animés humains : <the rich>, <the poor> etc. En fait, An <the riches> c'est Fr <la richesse> ou Fr <les richesses>. |
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| Porthos |
No! I'll never bow down to all that pc crap! I'll just stick it to the man like I always do! 
I noticed something different in writing recently. A lot of authors are opting to use "her/she" instead of the more traditional "him/he" when speaking of a hypothetical non-gender specific person, and I know they're doing it in a pc fashion, as a way of counter-acting the inherent bias in traditional language which favors the masculine forms of things. Example: When you take the average person to a baseball game, she is most likely going to be impressed by the smells Subconsciously, we associate certain traits or occupations with one sex or the other, as in nursing=female, nurturing=female, football player=male, hunter=male, investment banker = male, and that's usually reflected in speech and in writing when speaking of a hypothetical person, so that depending upon the context, we will create a feminine person or a masculine person based on the pronoun, according to what makes most sense for that given situation. But it's been taken so far by the pc pansy crowd that they'll try to use the feminine form in just about every situation, even though the masculine form would actually be more appropriate. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
I would usually write 'they' in that situation. Or sometimes 's/he'.
Why would the masculine form be 'more appropriate'? Both men and women can go to watch a baseball match. |
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| Porthos |
How about this one?
When a typical hunter reaches the hunting grounds, her natural reaction is to breath in the environment, and become one with nature. Now you can't honestly tell me that her is as appropriate as him would be in that context. |
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| Pauline |
LOL!! Where I live, there are some female hunters Few, of course, but they exist. There are hunting clubs, for shooting boars and other animals or targets. I'd like to learn to shoot targets like a thing on a wall, but *never* to shoot animals. In the place where the forest begin, there's a sign to inform when the hunting hours will be.Ther's a picture on it, of a male hunter, so this sign will agree with Porthos
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
As Pauline mentioned, there are female hunters. I would have absolutely no reason to assume that a hunter must be male. Actually, I can quite easily imagine posh women on horses going fox hunting — before fox hunting was banned in this country, at least.
I'd say: When a typical hunter reaches the hunting grounds, their natural reaction is to breathe in the environment, and become at one with nature. I wouldn't say 'him' or 'her' in that situation, because the gender of the hunter has not been mentioned. |
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| Elaine |
How come you guys can't stay on topic?
I read an article somewhere, written prior to the elections in France, that mentioned how France is (was) in a quandary over how to address Mme. Royal should she be elected president: Madame, la présidente or Madame, le président. One would think the former since she's female, but the Académie française's position was that when referring to the function, the masculine form should always be used. But I don't understand the logic behind this. Why should the function be strictly masculine? |
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| Pauline |
I think that the Académie can shut up.
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| Loic |
There was a reason why French was once lauded as a language of precision and clarity totally befitting its status as an international language of diplomacy. I was taught that la présidente would be the president's wife.
I do not purport to speak on behalf of the Académie Francaise, but I would well imagine the reason why: the institution la présidence is feminine as it is so there is nothing misogynistic about specifying that the function would be grammatically male. Ditto for le juge and la justice. As for using the cumbersome 'they' or the inelegant and ugly 'his or her' to refer to any third person, I think such sentence constructions have a role to play for people who are seriously neurotic and who insist otherwise on being little fascist language policemen. As for there also being female hunters, this is a moot point. There are so few of them everywhere. Most of them would run out of breath chasing after wild boars and it is a fact. I do not hold the female sex in contempt here, but I simply cannot take female hunters too seriously unless she is as physically strong and able-bodied as a male hunter. There are also female sportswomen around. Why don't the fascist language policemen here create a term that lauds sportswomanship? |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
What about huntresses ? Then your typical hunter would definitely not be your typical huntress...
The Académie is right... and twice wrong ! Normally président is a function and the person holding that function. When you say M. le Président or Mme le Président, you're referring to the function even if you're obviously addressing (or mentioning) the person in charge. In both cases, <le Président> is a grammatical (formal, morphological etc) masculine ***AND*** a semantic weak neuter. A noun may be said a weak neuter, semantically, as long as it is no strong neuter (table, épée, avion, maison, pierre, Italie, soleil, papier, océan → inanimates, hence non-sexed) and provided it is neither a semantic masculine (garçon, grand-père, tortue mâle → animates of male sex) nor a semantic feminine (sœur, lionne, tigresse, scorpion femelle → animates of female sex). Now the Académie is wrong in the sense they call that semantic weak neuter a masculine (thus omitting it is just a grammatical masculine), and even a « non-marked gender » [sic] — and that's only more idiotic to the extent both président & présidente are marked : <Ø> for the former, <e> for the latter. The Académie is also wrong (at least some of the near-dead Immortels peopling that venerable institution) because they will simply reject the alternative usage, which emphasises the person holding the function rather than the function itself. In this case it's M. le Président & Mme la Présidente. Simple as that. In short :
<(M.) le Président> → grammatical masculine & semantical masculine <(M. ou Mme) le Président> → grammatical masculine & semantical weak neuter (the actual sex of the holder is unknown) <le Président> → either [1] grammatical masculine & semantical weak neuter (the actual sex of the holder is unknown), or [2] grammatical masculine & semantical feminine (the actual sex of the holder is known & female), or [3] grammatical masculine & semantical masculine (the actual sex of the holder is known & male) <la Présidente> → grammatical feminine & semantical feminine (the actual sex of the holder is necessarily known and necessarily female) <la Présidence> → grammatical feminine & semantical strong neuter (function only, presidential term) |
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| Lazar |
You mean, stick it to the person.
I agree that "his or her" sounds awkward and contrived, but I think you're off the mark on singular "they". For the people that use it, like me and most people I know, it comes naturally, and it would simply sound stilted to use "he" for instances of indefinite gender. Trust me, it's not motivated by ideology. Singular "they" is a naturally evolved form - and it's been used for centuries by such authors as Shakespeare - so I think it's wrong to denigrate its users in such a way. |
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| Loic |
Lazar: I know what you mean. I am not that pedantic when it comes to the more neutral 'they' to refer to the third person. I might have actually sometimes used that to inject a bit of variety into my sentences instead of falling back on 'his' all the time.
What gets my goat is the pompous fashion in which newfangled constructions such as 'his or her' are so enthusiastically touted by a vocal minority of the population. Do you think PG Wodehouse would have used 'his or her' or even 'they' in his prose? |
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| Walker |
Not exactly... der Lehrer - male teacher - lärare die Lehrerin - female teacher - lärarinna die Lehre - doctrine etc. - lära Now they're usually called lärare (Lehrer). Lärarinna seemed too old-fashioned and is too much associated with how it was back in the day when female teachers looked something like this... 
...and only taught kids up to a certain age. So even though lärare would imply that it's a male you're talking about, that is not necessarily the case. |
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| Lazar |
Yeah, I think "his or her" really wasn't a good idea. I once had an English teacher who insisted that we use it, but even she didn't use it consistently. Even worse are some proposed gender-neutral pronouns that people have thought up, like "thon" and "herm". |
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| Loic |
It is always women of a certain age who insist on such trivial matters. Probably too insecure about themselves. |
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| Deborah |
Rot. |
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| Uriel |
Given that I doubt you do a lot of hunting in Singapore, you can be excused for your ignorance, but women hunt all the time around here. Dove, deer, elk, you name it. As my vet once said, you know a woman's from Montana when she's killed more head of game than you, can deadlift more weight than you, and has bigger arm muscles than you. From Sports Afield:
http://www.sportsafield.com/hunting-news/Womenhunters.htm I don't know if you've ever seen Desperate Housewives, but star Eva Longoria grew up poor in Texas, and she says she hunted deer just like her father and brothers -- that was just how you put food on the table. And that's not confined to the US. According to one site I was flipping through, 23% of the people who took the hunting test in Norway were women as well.
In most hunter-gatherer societies, women were expected to fish, trap or snare small game, and participate in larger game hunts. Before the introduction of the horse in the Americas, for example, the entire tribe -- men, women, and children -- commonly turned out to drive game animals into corrals where they could be shot at close range or to drive herds over cliff to their deaths. It was usually only prestigious game -- large trophy game -- that was restricted to male hunters. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
That's what I meant : we agree on that → the star before {female teacher} means that it's a wrong meaning.
C'est vrai. Il y aussi ce côté atlantique qu'on ne trouve pas en Méditerranée, mais qui est bien présent de La Rochelle à Bayonne. |
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| Walker |
Yes. But what I meant is that we're not like Germanophones -- we never called our female teachers a doctrine. We don't usually call them lärarinna these days but there's nothing wrong with that word, so to speak. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Neither do the Germanophones : they never call a Lehrerin a Lehre, for aught I know. |
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| Liz |
LOL! Doctrine - it would cause confusion of meaning! 
You're right - they don't. That would be tantamount to calling a female teacher/doctor a doctrine. |
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| Walker |
Okay. I thought you said they did. My mistake.
It would! |
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