Glass-Half-Full Grammar

[steepholm]

Those of you who learned French - do you remember the lesson where they taught you about the third person plural pronoun? To recap: if you're talking about a group of males, it's "ils"; if a group of females it's "elles". But if it's a mixed group? Well, of course it's "ils", even if there's just one male and 999 females, so humiliating would it be for any man to have "elle" slapped on him. Besides, the rules seem to declare, men are simply more important.

I'm sure many have raged against this very patriarchal piece of grammar - including my daughter. However, today, my Japanese teacher told me that when she was learning French, her teacher (a man) had a different explanation: "If you have a glass of water and someone pees in it, it doesn't matter whether how much. Even if it's just a drop - you're still not going to drink from that glass."

Yes, I know it's problematic in its own right, but what a useful corrective to an age-old unfairness! (When I told my daughter this, she laughed like a drain.)

Comments

[larryhammer]

Spanish has the same rule about ellos/ellas.

[steepholm]

I can well believe that many languages do. If any language goes the other way, I'd like to hear about it!

[rushthatspeaks]

I have always hated that rule and consequently have discovered that if you just use 'ons' (neutral plural usually for objects) instead, people glare at you, but they do understand what you mean.

[steepholm]

Good idea!

It's hard to get around some of the ways that gender is baked into French in other ways, of course, not least when talking about oneself. I remember being profoundly grateful that I didn't have to speak it in my days of peak dysphoria.

[cmcmck]

Apparently the académie has attempted to do something about this so other half informs me and made such a foul up as would make French almost impossible to learn as a second language- they've followed Canadian French PC which is pretty dreadful.

'They' may not be perfect in English, but..........

[ashkitty]

The foundation of gender studies in France is heavily language-based for this reason. That's a funny metaphor though.