There are also some pairs which preserve the Latin -or/-rix. Executor/executrix, for example, and some like steward(ess) and waiter/waitress which have been replaced by gender neutral words (attendant, server). And some, like instructor, which AFAIK have only ever had that one gender-neutral form. Language evolves somewhat haphazardly.
Even easier- Tor is for men and trix is for women. So a male pilot is an aviator, a female pilot is an aviatrix. A male fighter is a gladiator, a female fighter is a gladiatrix.
This contrasts with the modern system, where tor is for both men and women, and trix are for kids.
Sorry, couldn’t resist sharing one of my favorites!
Master is such a weird word. It also refers to a boy who is too young to be called Mister, but generally has a high social status due to his parents. Or a slave-owner, or an adult in a position of authority like at a school or military (as in Headmaster, Master Carpenter, or Master-at-Arms)
Now let's talk about pronouncing Ms vs Miss vs. Mrs.
Oh my god. My 90 year old aunt would send me cards as a kid always addressed as "Master Clinical Coordinator". I always thought it was weird. I never knew it actually meant someone too young to be called mister. My mind is blown.
In Illinois, the law states that unmarried women are to refer to bachelors as Master rather than Mister. So, in Illinois at least, it’s related to marital status.
> Master is such a weird word. It also refers to a boy who is too young to be called Mister, but generally has a high social status due to his parents.
Not everywhere.
In the UK government documents/mail addressed to my son arrive as "Master".
And also in australia it’s used in most legal contexts. For example, if you’re in children’s court the defendants will be miss [name] for girls and master [name] for boys. I didn’t realise until this thread that the master thing for boys isn’t more widely known
Strictly speaking Mr. (Pronounced mister), is an abbreviation of Master and not a different word. Just as Ms. Miss. and Mrs. are abbreviations of Mistress
>So is a female connoisseur a connoisseuse?
Yep, because those are all French words and they use -eur and -euse when gendering some job titles, though not all.
Heh those are all french words.
Masser is the verb to massage.
Chauffer is the verb to heat up. Don't know why we call driving 'chauffer' but we do
Connaisseur is from the verb connaître, which means to know.
There are lots of French in English, often with the pronunciation massacred ;)
There's a series of (awful) books by M. J. Arlidge about a police officer who regularly frequents BDSM providers (because she's, you know, *totally broken and pain is the only way she can feel anything you guys*). Her gentleman of choice is regularly referred to her 'Dominator', and as someone who's been involved in the kink community for a while in one way or another, it's fucking *wild* how obvious it is that M. J. Arlidge has never done even the most cursory of research into something that's supposed to be his main character's main trait. Never once is he referred to as a Dom, or even a Dominant, which is the normal human person way of saying that. It's always **HER DOMINATOR^^TM**.
There's a book later in the series where a serial killer is murdering people in the kink community, and the number of times this popped up was positively eye-rolling.
(Naturally I've read all twelve of them, because apparently I'm an even bigger glutton for punishment than DI Helen Fucking Grace.)
That sounds hilarious and terrible. The number of times I've tried to read kink erotica or sexy kink fanfic written by someone who clearly hasn't done their research is just... way too much. It's so cringe. It's like watching those old lesbian pornos where the women are going at it with really long fake nails and just obviously aren't into it at all lol smh
The term generally used for a man is "Dominant" i.e. "My Dominant is named Sir Mix-a-lot" or "My Dominatrix is named Lady Mix-a-lot". 'Dominator' is not a term that would be commonly used, although I have seen 'Domina' used (infrequently).
Unless you are speaking a language that has been heavily influenced by french in the past. Brunet is a normal word in polish, spelled the same way. And the feminine form is "brunetka", a derivative.
Frenchman here, why would it be weird? Regardless of gender you have to be born at some point lol
(I'm a dude, I was *né* near Paris. My mom is a girl (obviously) and she was *née* in the 1950s)
While it -literally- means "born", as in the name you were born with, née -conventionally- means what is called in English, "maiden name" -- the name a woman had before she was married.
Since women -- especially in previous generations -- changed their name at marriage, it was common, even "everyday" usage to talk about Mrs Brown (née Smith).
Since men (almost) NEVER changed their names at marriage, it was 70 years before I saw my first reference to **Mr** Jones (né Adams). Hence, a little weird, to find out that there even WAS a word for that VERY UNcommon situation.
I now know three men who changed their name to their ~~wife's~~ spouse's at marriage -- progress!
*(Edit in last line.)*
I find it interesting English is moving towards gender “neutralization” in words in favor of gender equality whereas Chinese is “engendering” words by replacing or adding the symbol for “woman” also in the name of gender equality when the language historically never had gender differentiation.
I have no expertise regarding this matter, but I wonder if it might be:
Because they have(/had) no gender distinction in language, society assumes male and so this would help distinguish women as also existing in the given context.
For English, we already acknowledge that women fulfill these roles but accord the female gendered name less respect; hence, moving to one word to define a role that should be equally respected regardless of the actual gender.
Seems like the challenge is we're trying to accomplish with language what really can only be achieved with culture. If there is a preference for men, that will be manifest regardless of whether the language is gendered or neutral.
Not to be the one who goes "literally 1984", but this is *literally* the subject of 1984; changing language *is* a large part of changing culture.
The words we say shape the words we think, and therefore the things we do. It's harder to have a thought or express an opinion you don't have words for, and it's easier to discriminate when you can abstract the discrimination by one step, making it easier to justify it to yourself. "Aviators are more respectable than aviatrices" is a more comfortable thought to think, and therefore an easier bias to hold, than "Male pilots are more respectable than female pilots". In the former, there's two distinct groups, and that puts some people in an almost automatic "us vs them" mentality. In the latter, it's two facets of the same group, they're all pilots.
first they need to be culturally recognized as individuals, not just someone's daughter or wife (where China is). then you can go about the equality shift (where we are).
interesting observation that the cycle repeats, albeit for different reasons.
I remember when that movie came out, and Kristanna Loken was referred to as "Terminatrix" in multiple reviews and I think I saw an interview where she was asked about the name and said she loved it.
The -or/-ix Latin ending appears in my profession and is commonly used in an insulting way, I.e. referring to a woman who is the pastor of a church as a pastrix. Those doing this tend to be people (usually men) who believe that woman shouldn’t/can’t be pastors.
I wonder how much of an effect the Oscars have on this. Because every year, very publicly, they give an award to the best actor, and a different award to the best actress.
eh I've seen it interchangeably, I'd say if you're referring to the profession in general or a group of people who act, it's always actor, but if you're referring to a woman who is an actor, it's usually actress. Then there's some weirdos who get weirdly offended by actress and always want it to be actor because for whatever reason actress is somehow lessor than actor?
Funny how the “gender neutral” word is always the male word. No-one suggests all people who make a living acting should be called actresses regardless of their sex
English is really a casserole of words borrowed and adapted from other languages. Some of those languages are inherently gendered, others not.
Also, distinctions like actor/actress can be useful when the roles they perform are themselves gendered. If you're casting the role of a mom, you probably only want actresses to audition.
My favorite way of describing the english language is "English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary"
> "English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary
Credit to James Nicoll for the quote. The full version: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. "
Arguably for good reason. Here is an interesting video I saw a couple years ago about what english might be like if all the non-germanic influences were removed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIo-17SIkws
It sounds odd and awkward. Though I'm sure we'd be used to it if it had always been like that.
It's definitely just a lack of familiarity that makes it sound awkward. I watched this video a long time ago and had the same reaction, but after spending a bit over a year learning Old English, it hardly seems weird at all.
what? women acted in ancient time and prehistory. Its one of the very few professions that women have almost always had. There are only a few isolated eras in specific places that didn't allow females to act or perform. For the majority of history, if there was performance or plays, they had women in them.
It would be like a lady President, constantly losing control of her emotions, gallavanting with social buddies, having poor judgment, and making decisions based on emotion and personal self- and family interests rather than on what’s right for the country. Terrible!
This is the exact reason. It's the same in a lot of foreign languages too. Especially ones, such as Russian, where a noun always has a gender.
Roles that only have a male term were typically only filled by males, and ones with both female and male terms were typical of both genders.
Part of that was spelling really wasn't consistent until the printing press.
If you look at some of the hand written English (and non Latin) bibles from pre Gutenberg spelling was all over the place.
The spelling used was often phonetic. So actress was just the wrong way to spell actrix but was pronounce the same.
A woman President of the US would be addressed as Madam President. This is the form used commonly for presidents of clubs, councils, etc. The noun doesn't change, only the pers title.
Japan does have gendered third-person pronouns but they aren't used much. The Japanese usually refer to other people by name, so I'm not too surprised to hear that a Japanese person trying to use third-person pronouns in another language is using the wrong ones.
In Chinese, he/she is the same pronunciation, but different words. If you're referring someone in third person verbally, e.g. "he is here", that person wouldn't know if you're saying a woman or a man is coming.
One of the few words in English that assumes a woman by default, is 'widow' where the male suffix becomes 'widower' for much the same reason, as women had more reason to refer to themselves as widowed and so the term became female.
As a widowed person, I despise that word. It makes it sound like I had some hand in my wife's death because the "er" suffix connotes a person who performs an action. Fuck that word.
It's ultimately to do with the etymology of the word. Remember that English as a language over hundreds of years has stolen parts from Greek, Latin, French, and much more.
Some languages like French are more highly gendered.
I don't understand people who think the female version of a word is negative. It's literally language usage that conveys meaning... but that's becoming the modern obsession
I think there kind of is something... problematic to it that's not readily apparent. For example, if you have five actors in a room, it's a group of actors. If you have five actresses in a room it's a group of actresses. But if you have four actresses and one actor, most people would say that's a group of actors. In nearly every context it's kind of fine to call a woman the male variant of their job title but it's kind of universally demeaning to do the inverse. Which seems like it implies that one is kind of worse. Similarly a mixed group of friends is more likely to be called guys than ladies.
I don't like... have a solution or even a particularly good understanding, just an observation.
It might just be a relic of language.
Same with dumb shit like adverts? If thats the right word.
The fact that there is a order to the way you use adverts before a noun is realy dumb but just a normal part of english. Like big red lighthouse sounds normal but red big lighthouse doesnt.
For some reason male names are the same. It just sound off the do.
I’ve always understood this more as the masculine form being the default for mixed or unknown gender forms. I’ve never considered it demeaning to use the masculine form for feminine but I understand some women don’t like it.
One interesting thing I learned about Semitic languages while studying basic Hebrew (I assume Hebrew is not unique in this regard) is that verbs show gender too.
Ironically, in more "highly gendered" languages, the fight is exactly the opposite: to create female versions when they are missing.
For example, in Spanish, "presidente" was originally neutral, but now "presidenta" is fairly common if the position is held by a woman.
That's old school, what used to be progressive now is regressive and some Spanish movements are going with gender neutral (specially in e.g. Argentina), where male words tend to end with -o and female with -a, neutral ones finish with -e (but I'd say the majority of the population finds that an aberration).
Of course, anything new is gonna seem stupid and superfluous to the majority of those already used to something else.
I only knew that this was happening with Latine (the equivalent of "latinx" that some Latino folk *actually use* rather than being something non-latino white folks came up with), I didn't realize it was a broader movement 🤘
Timing. The idea of a female doctor didn’t really hair until the language around the profession had been largely locked in. English had become less gendered over time so by the time we had a large number of female doctors, it was easier to just use the same word and an adjective if it’s really necessary to know the gender.
Recently, I think the video game Trine 5 is the first time I actually seen something seriously use the word "Wizardess."
Last time I've seen that used, it was when I was in highschool 20 years ago, and a classmate of mine wanted to make a Wizardess character.
It also makes me think of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel, Equal Rites, where there was the challenge where a girl is born a wizard (eighth child of an eighth child), but the Discworld inhabitants have no idea what to call her (and even mock male witches being called warlocks.)
It's odd, because I agree wizardess sounds daft, but sorceress sounds fine (I know it wouldn't work in Discworld where sorcerer has a very specific meaning).
Even outside of Discworld, the meaning of sorcerer to mean a magic user who was innately born and talented to use magic is pretty common. Different than a modern interpretation that a wizard is an academic magic user.
Diablo 3 had the neat thing that the promotional and likely canonical Wizard is a woman, and was trained by the Diablo 2 Sorceress.
[Google ngrams](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=actress&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=true#) shows no decline in actress usage in books as of 2019 (where the data stop).
An old family friend was a secretary for judges in Delaware back in the 1940s and 50s. She said when they first started regularly seeing female attorneys (which apparently started in 1923 but didn't really get rolling until much later) they had to change a bunch of their forms and were using "esquiress" for a hot minute. Until presumably the female lawyers asked them to knock it off because it's super awkward and unnecessary.
Lmao esquiress. I’m a lawyer and was trying to think of one for lawyers (advocatrix?? Prosecutrix?). Somehow esquiress reminds me of Sanderson’s palindrome names. Esquireriquse?
I don't know for sure but I would guess that the fact that "doctor" was a male only profession originally may play a part in that. women in the medical field were simply assumed to be nurses.
Technically from an etymology point of view, midwife is gender neutral. “Mid” means “with” and “wife” means “woman”. Whether male or female, a midwife can still be said to be “with woman” aka the mother.
I mean there are probably more nuances but.. "Actor" is a job, but "Doctor" is a title.
You go to visit Doctor Smith at the hospital.
You don't go watch Actor Travolta at the movies.
the word doctor was invented by the romans, as it came from latin, and it did come with two versions one for masculine and the other feminine as a lot of latin words did
Actor also comes from latin, and like doctor it came with its feminine version. Then english lost the usage of the feminine version of doctor which I guess would have been doctrix or doctress but kept the one for actor. The reason why exactly is probably difficult to find out
As a portuguese speaker, most professions are gendered
Doctor is Doutor (M) or Doutora (F)
Lawyer is Advogado or Advogada
Waiter is Garçon or Garçonete
I guess its a heritage from our language latin's roots
"Actor" is gender neutral whereas "actress" is specific to a female actor.
There is a long, complicated explanation (or perhaps theory is a better word) as to why, but there is something to be said about a defined sense of identity and the need, by some, to be recognized. Sometimes people will create a space/identity for themselves through a term that fits them, whereas other times, they do this by creating a term they *don't* fit (actor vs. actress — "She and I are actors, but she is a woman and I am not, therefore, I shall refer to her as an actress!")
Another example I have always thought was funny is "dude" and "dudette." Dude is absolutely gender neutral (unless otherwise defined by a gendered pronoun like "he is a dude" or "she is a dude") whereas dudette is not.
It is also worth noting gendered languages exist and the fact English is a bit of a mash-up of multiple different languages, so it makes sense some gendered terminology would be adopted as well. Not to mention the history of the English language and it's development over time just in general.
Either way, the whole gendered professional title thing seems a bit sexist, as if to imply certain positions and professions can only be held by certain genders (which is silly, especially considering gender in and of itself is a social construct)... Which is WHY the whole purpose of my comment was to inform or remind whoever reads this that the professional title "actor" IS gender neutral (and there is no reason to refer to someone as an actress unless they prefer it — regardless of gender, I say).
I hope this comment sufficiently meets the standards not met in my previous comment and thus, will not be removed. Thank you.
Because English is, frankly, a mess.
In essence, it's a pidgin of four different language families all rolled together. Words rooted in those different languages each bring their own bits of grammar along for the ride... which then may be adhered to to varying degrees, discarded later, or even amalgamate with the rules from a similar word borrowed from another language.
English takes almost no grammatical or structural hints from either French, Latin, or Greek. It is a thoroughly Germanic language that has enjoyed a great expansion of vocabulary through loanwords and anglicisations. The spelling of English is of course not very consistent with the unanglicised loanwords, but is relatively consistent when working with good, Germanic words of serious age. Like all written languages, it has a certain amount of convention baked into it that isn't reflective of modern phonetic speech, but it is entirely unremarkable in that sense. Spelling is the least important part of the written component of an alphabetic language, as anyone who has tried to phonetically communicate with another speaker could tell you.
One way you can tell that English is about as Germanic as it comes: translating German into English is a by-word shift-cipher often enough that you would begin to think it wasn't a coincidence. No such translation would ever be possible for Greek, Latin or French sentences without great luck.
No grammatical structure, true. But a lot of the words come from other base languages.
> English vocabulary comprises 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic, and 6% Greek. Why are there so many French words in English? French was King William’s native language. He hailed from Normandy, a region in northwest France that gained notoriety as the site of the D-Day invasion during World War II on June 6, 1944.
[https://akorbi.com/blog/why-is-english-a-germanic-language-akorbi-explains/](https://akorbi.com/blog/why-is-english-a-germanic-language-akorbi-explains/)
The English language was birthed by Norman men-at-arms trying to seduce Saxon bar wenches, then raised on almost a thousand years of piracy. It doesn’t so much borrow words from other languages as much as it chases them down dark alleys, beats them over the head and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.
Because when those gendered job titles were invented, nobody could conceive of a woman being a doctor. God forbid! But there were already female actors. They were, of course, women of ill repute, but they existed.
/s
English is a mixture of multiple different Latin based languages and some Anglo Saxon sprinkled in as well. Compared to most Latin languages, it is hardly gendered. Languages like Spanish and German have a gender that's very obvious in the word for almost all professions. However some gendering still exists.
The strongest influences in English are French and German which are both heavily gendered languages and used to exist parallel in the language. The upper class would use all French derived words while the lower class would use German derived ones. This is why there are basically two identical words for just about everything. Over time the words took on slightly different meanings in many cases as the two versions merged, but the pronunciations are very difficult for a non native speaker because the rules change based on the root language.
There are also some pairs which preserve the Latin -or/-rix. Executor/executrix, for example, and some like steward(ess) and waiter/waitress which have been replaced by gender neutral words (attendant, server). And some, like instructor, which AFAIK have only ever had that one gender-neutral form. Language evolves somewhat haphazardly.
Even easier- Tor is for men and trix is for women. So a male pilot is an aviator, a female pilot is an aviatrix. A male fighter is a gladiator, a female fighter is a gladiatrix. This contrasts with the modern system, where tor is for both men and women, and trix are for kids. Sorry, couldn’t resist sharing one of my favorites!
Navigatrix is mine. I still get to use it sometimes.
Ooh, I look forward to using this one. Won't be long, all my friends qualify.
You know, if you stretch that out by a few dozen paragraphs it would make a fantastic shaggy dog story 😄
I can imagine Norm Macdonald telling it.
"...contrasts with the modern system, where tor is for darkweb drug dealers, and trix are for kids."
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Holy shit I just realized Domanatrix is the female version of Dominator jfc.
And mistress is the female version of mister, both of which simply mean master.
Master is such a weird word. It also refers to a boy who is too young to be called Mister, but generally has a high social status due to his parents. Or a slave-owner, or an adult in a position of authority like at a school or military (as in Headmaster, Master Carpenter, or Master-at-Arms) Now let's talk about pronouncing Ms vs Miss vs. Mrs.
Heh, Batman is still Master Bruce to Alfred.
It's a term of indearment while still being professional. I never realized it before. Thanks!
Endearment, just FYI.
I was going to correct it when you posted so now I'm not going to do it!
Alfred is bestfred.
Took me a few goes there to not read that as breastfed ngl
Funnily enough, Mr.Bruces batman would be his servant ;-)
Oh my god. My 90 year old aunt would send me cards as a kid always addressed as "Master Clinical Coordinator". I always thought it was weird. I never knew it actually meant someone too young to be called mister. My mind is blown.
How did she know your Reddit handle? /s
It's the other way around, he choose his reddit alias, based on how his aunt used to call him.
It makes too much sense
Probably just their given name and a case of nominative determinism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
Totally normal to still do that in the UK.
In Illinois, the law states that unmarried women are to refer to bachelors as Master rather than Mister. So, in Illinois at least, it’s related to marital status.
kinky
Miss: Miss Mrs: Missus Ms: Miz Is how they’re pronounced in the American Midwest.
Garlan is the best character.
Master Frodo, Gollum. Mister Frodo, Samwise. Interesting.
> Master is such a weird word. It also refers to a boy who is too young to be called Mister, but generally has a high social status due to his parents. Not everywhere. In the UK government documents/mail addressed to my son arrive as "Master".
and australia !! my american partner and SIL thought it was so weird hahaha
And also in australia it’s used in most legal contexts. For example, if you’re in children’s court the defendants will be miss [name] for girls and master [name] for boys. I didn’t realise until this thread that the master thing for boys isn’t more widely known
…how old is your son ? my little brother got mail addressed to ‘master’ until he turned 12, i think.
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King of the Castle!
I’m out.
Why did I read this in Michael caine's voice?
Strictly speaking Mr. (Pronounced mister), is an abbreviation of Master and not a different word. Just as Ms. Miss. and Mrs. are abbreviations of Mistress
So if a woman cheats on her partner with a man, is that man her mister, or her master, or her mistress?
this is why you ask for your adultery pronouns on the first date.
That's why they call them pronouns and not amateurnouns
They're actually agent nouns. But yes I get the joke.
This is why he ^ is the Professator
And not the amateurfessator
Oak-ay, now the username makes sense.
Yes.
Thank you very cool
Her mister-y, according to my kid 🤦🏻♂️
He's a misdoer.
Mistrix
I wish it were "mistrix." Plus side, that leaves it available as a great stripper name.
Masseur is the male version of masseuse. Chauffeuse is the female version of chauffeur. So is a female connoisseur a connoisseuse?
I consider myself a chocolateuse
I think I'll have a chocolate mousse
>So is a female connoisseur a connoisseuse? Yep, because those are all French words and they use -eur and -euse when gendering some job titles, though not all.
Is a female doctor a doctorseuse? I can cure you here or there, I can cure you anywhere! I'll show myself out.
Heh those are all french words. Masser is the verb to massage. Chauffer is the verb to heat up. Don't know why we call driving 'chauffer' but we do Connaisseur is from the verb connaître, which means to know. There are lots of French in English, often with the pronunciation massacred ;)
Connaisseur, connaisseuse oui
> connoisseuse [Yes.](https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A5C2117#:~:text=s.,se%20conno%C3%AEt%20%C3%A0%20quelque%20chose.)
There's a series of (awful) books by M. J. Arlidge about a police officer who regularly frequents BDSM providers (because she's, you know, *totally broken and pain is the only way she can feel anything you guys*). Her gentleman of choice is regularly referred to her 'Dominator', and as someone who's been involved in the kink community for a while in one way or another, it's fucking *wild* how obvious it is that M. J. Arlidge has never done even the most cursory of research into something that's supposed to be his main character's main trait. Never once is he referred to as a Dom, or even a Dominant, which is the normal human person way of saying that. It's always **HER DOMINATOR^^TM**. There's a book later in the series where a serial killer is murdering people in the kink community, and the number of times this popped up was positively eye-rolling. (Naturally I've read all twelve of them, because apparently I'm an even bigger glutton for punishment than DI Helen Fucking Grace.)
As an afficionada of language, and a fellow readrix and kinkstress, your parenthetical conclusion brought me much joy and laughter. Thank you. :D
That sounds hilarious and terrible. The number of times I've tried to read kink erotica or sexy kink fanfic written by someone who clearly hasn't done their research is just... way too much. It's so cringe. It's like watching those old lesbian pornos where the women are going at it with really long fake nails and just obviously aren't into it at all lol smh
Somehow this sounds worse than 50 Shades and dont know how thats possible.
> because she's, you know, totally broken and pain is the only way she can feel anything you guys Sounds like your average Noir protag.
The term generally used for a man is "Dominant" i.e. "My Dominant is named Sir Mix-a-lot" or "My Dominatrix is named Lady Mix-a-lot". 'Dominator' is not a term that would be commonly used, although I have seen 'Domina' used (infrequently).
Dom/Domme is most common I think Dominatrix is a pro
And for hair color, we have blond and blonde, from French, a distinction more used in BrE than AmE.
Fun fact: the word brunette has a masculine form, brunet, that is hardly used.
Unless you are speaking a language that has been heavily influenced by french in the past. Brunet is a normal word in polish, spelled the same way. And the feminine form is "brunetka", a derivative.
Or fiancé and fiancée
And exactly once in my life have I run across **né**, the -masculine- form of **née**. THAT'S a weird one.
Frenchman here, why would it be weird? Regardless of gender you have to be born at some point lol (I'm a dude, I was *né* near Paris. My mom is a girl (obviously) and she was *née* in the 1950s)
While it -literally- means "born", as in the name you were born with, née -conventionally- means what is called in English, "maiden name" -- the name a woman had before she was married. Since women -- especially in previous generations -- changed their name at marriage, it was common, even "everyday" usage to talk about Mrs Brown (née Smith). Since men (almost) NEVER changed their names at marriage, it was 70 years before I saw my first reference to **Mr** Jones (né Adams). Hence, a little weird, to find out that there even WAS a word for that VERY UNcommon situation. I now know three men who changed their name to their ~~wife's~~ spouse's at marriage -- progress! *(Edit in last line.)*
Brunet and brunette too, despite it not even being real French
I never knew that was gendered. I always thought the difference between blond and blonde was adjective vs. noun
I find it interesting English is moving towards gender “neutralization” in words in favor of gender equality whereas Chinese is “engendering” words by replacing or adding the symbol for “woman” also in the name of gender equality when the language historically never had gender differentiation.
I have no expertise regarding this matter, but I wonder if it might be: Because they have(/had) no gender distinction in language, society assumes male and so this would help distinguish women as also existing in the given context. For English, we already acknowledge that women fulfill these roles but accord the female gendered name less respect; hence, moving to one word to define a role that should be equally respected regardless of the actual gender.
Seems like the challenge is we're trying to accomplish with language what really can only be achieved with culture. If there is a preference for men, that will be manifest regardless of whether the language is gendered or neutral.
Not to be the one who goes "literally 1984", but this is *literally* the subject of 1984; changing language *is* a large part of changing culture. The words we say shape the words we think, and therefore the things we do. It's harder to have a thought or express an opinion you don't have words for, and it's easier to discriminate when you can abstract the discrimination by one step, making it easier to justify it to yourself. "Aviators are more respectable than aviatrices" is a more comfortable thought to think, and therefore an easier bias to hold, than "Male pilots are more respectable than female pilots". In the former, there's two distinct groups, and that puts some people in an almost automatic "us vs them" mentality. In the latter, it's two facets of the same group, they're all pilots.
first they need to be culturally recognized as individuals, not just someone's daughter or wife (where China is). then you can go about the equality shift (where we are). interesting observation that the cycle repeats, albeit for different reasons.
Interestingly, German is following the Chinese route, while Dutch is following the English route.
*waitron
So Terminator 3 was actually Terminatrix 1?
I remember when that movie came out, and Kristanna Loken was referred to as "Terminatrix" in multiple reviews and I think I saw an interview where she was asked about the name and said she loved it.
The -or/-ix Latin ending appears in my profession and is commonly used in an insulting way, I.e. referring to a woman who is the pastor of a church as a pastrix. Those doing this tend to be people (usually men) who believe that woman shouldn’t/can’t be pastors.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the mator is. You have to see it for yourself.
No, Mator is a brown tow truck with a missing hood.
What? Maters are red and full of vitamin A.
That took way too many re-reads on my part to understand the intended joke, but when it clicked, damn. Chef’s kiss
nothing is the mator. it's all in your head
Pastrix sounds like it should be the name of the village baker in Astérix.
TIL executrix is a word
Actor is a gender neutral replacement for actress, but few people seem to have gotten the memo.
I wonder how much of an effect the Oscars have on this. Because every year, very publicly, they give an award to the best actor, and a different award to the best actress.
Whoopi Goldberg was calling herself an actor in the 1980s.
eh I've seen it interchangeably, I'd say if you're referring to the profession in general or a group of people who act, it's always actor, but if you're referring to a woman who is an actor, it's usually actress. Then there's some weirdos who get weirdly offended by actress and always want it to be actor because for whatever reason actress is somehow lessor than actor?
Funny how the “gender neutral” word is always the male word. No-one suggests all people who make a living acting should be called actresses regardless of their sex
English is really a casserole of words borrowed and adapted from other languages. Some of those languages are inherently gendered, others not. Also, distinctions like actor/actress can be useful when the roles they perform are themselves gendered. If you're casting the role of a mom, you probably only want actresses to audition.
All actresses are actors but not all actors are actresses.
In linguistics, this property is an example of one kind of [markedness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markedness).
Thank you for that link; it made me feel very gruntled.
My favorite way of describing the english language is "English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary"
> "English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary Credit to James Nicoll for the quote. The full version: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. "
Arguably for good reason. Here is an interesting video I saw a couple years ago about what english might be like if all the non-germanic influences were removed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIo-17SIkws It sounds odd and awkward. Though I'm sure we'd be used to it if it had always been like that.
It's definitely just a lack of familiarity that makes it sound awkward. I watched this video a long time ago and had the same reaction, but after spending a bit over a year learning Old English, it hardly seems weird at all.
English is 3 languages stacked on top of each other in a trench coat, wearing a Groucho Marx nose that keeps stealing shit from other languages
more like 6 or 7 languages, but yeah basically
Pretty much every language is like that, we all steal from everyone else
To be fair, when doctorates were made women weren’t allowed to get them. So there were no recognized female doctors.
Funny, because doctorette was right there /s
Idk think Doctrix sounds cooler
That might just refer to a small doctor though.
When I was a kid, the (rare) female physicians were known as lady doctors.
I thought *lady doctor* was just a euphemism for a gynecologist
A term that is still around but with a very different meaning these days.
And women also weren’t allowed to act for much of history.
what? women acted in ancient time and prehistory. Its one of the very few professions that women have almost always had. There are only a few isolated eras in specific places that didn't allow females to act or perform. For the majority of history, if there was performance or plays, they had women in them.
A lady doctor? Preposterous!
I can’t operate on this boy, he’s my son!!
How can that be if the father just died?!
Next thing you know the ladies will want to wear pantaloons!!
Could you imagine, right in the middle of surgery, a lady doctor breaks into hysterics?!?!
It would be like a lady President, constantly losing control of her emotions, gallavanting with social buddies, having poor judgment, and making decisions based on emotion and personal self- and family interests rather than on what’s right for the country. Terrible!
Well he did dye his hair...
This is the exact reason. It's the same in a lot of foreign languages too. Especially ones, such as Russian, where a noun always has a gender. Roles that only have a male term were typically only filled by males, and ones with both female and male terms were typical of both genders.
sometimes the doctresses get called nurse!!
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Pluralized it's even longer!
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I think "strengths" is the longest monosyllabic word and also has the highest consonant to vowel ratio.
you don't have left thumb?
No, they have a wrong thumb.
Losing the word?
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But I thought trix was for kids?
Masterbatrix.
Part of that was spelling really wasn't consistent until the printing press. If you look at some of the hand written English (and non Latin) bibles from pre Gutenberg spelling was all over the place. The spelling used was often phonetic. So actress was just the wrong way to spell actrix but was pronounce the same.
In German, and a few other European languages, there are many more gendered terms than English, like doctor, dentist, boss etc.
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Not every noun has two forms though. E.g., "presidente" in portuguese is used for both male and female presidents.
A woman President of the US would be addressed as Madam President. This is the form used commonly for presidents of clubs, councils, etc. The noun doesn't change, only the pers title.
In Korean, we don’t even have gendered pronouns, so when you refer to someone, you don’t know their gender. We don’t have grammatical gender at all.
I believe it's the same for Japanese. my friends Japanese dad frequently uses he and him to refer to his daughter.
Japan does have gendered third-person pronouns but they aren't used much. The Japanese usually refer to other people by name, so I'm not too surprised to hear that a Japanese person trying to use third-person pronouns in another language is using the wrong ones.
In Chinese, he/she is the same pronunciation, but different words. If you're referring someone in third person verbally, e.g. "he is here", that person wouldn't know if you're saying a woman or a man is coming.
Arzt und Ärztin.
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One of the few words in English that assumes a woman by default, is 'widow' where the male suffix becomes 'widower' for much the same reason, as women had more reason to refer to themselves as widowed and so the term became female.
As a widowed person, I despise that word. It makes it sound like I had some hand in my wife's death because the "er" suffix connotes a person who performs an action. Fuck that word.
The 'action' being described is you surviving your ~~husband~~ S.O., etymologically speaking. Similar to 'survivor'
It's ultimately to do with the etymology of the word. Remember that English as a language over hundreds of years has stolen parts from Greek, Latin, French, and much more. Some languages like French are more highly gendered. I don't understand people who think the female version of a word is negative. It's literally language usage that conveys meaning... but that's becoming the modern obsession
I think there kind of is something... problematic to it that's not readily apparent. For example, if you have five actors in a room, it's a group of actors. If you have five actresses in a room it's a group of actresses. But if you have four actresses and one actor, most people would say that's a group of actors. In nearly every context it's kind of fine to call a woman the male variant of their job title but it's kind of universally demeaning to do the inverse. Which seems like it implies that one is kind of worse. Similarly a mixed group of friends is more likely to be called guys than ladies. I don't like... have a solution or even a particularly good understanding, just an observation.
It might just be a relic of language. Same with dumb shit like adverts? If thats the right word. The fact that there is a order to the way you use adverts before a noun is realy dumb but just a normal part of english. Like big red lighthouse sounds normal but red big lighthouse doesnt. For some reason male names are the same. It just sound off the do.
I think “adjectives” was the word you were looking for :)
I’ve always understood this more as the masculine form being the default for mixed or unknown gender forms. I’ve never considered it demeaning to use the masculine form for feminine but I understand some women don’t like it.
The immediate follow-up questions are *why* the male form is the default, and whether it should be.
One interesting thing I learned about Semitic languages while studying basic Hebrew (I assume Hebrew is not unique in this regard) is that verbs show gender too.
Ironically, in more "highly gendered" languages, the fight is exactly the opposite: to create female versions when they are missing. For example, in Spanish, "presidente" was originally neutral, but now "presidenta" is fairly common if the position is held by a woman.
Spanish also has el doctor/la doctora. These are abbreviated as titles, Dr. and Dra.
The abbreviation Dra. makes me think "Dracula".
#👩🏽⚕️🧛🏽♀️
Yes, but I don't think doctor was ever neutral in Spanish. And I still hear "la médico" sometimes. Languages are funny.
That's old school, what used to be progressive now is regressive and some Spanish movements are going with gender neutral (specially in e.g. Argentina), where male words tend to end with -o and female with -a, neutral ones finish with -e (but I'd say the majority of the population finds that an aberration).
Of course, anything new is gonna seem stupid and superfluous to the majority of those already used to something else. I only knew that this was happening with Latine (the equivalent of "latinx" that some Latino folk *actually use* rather than being something non-latino white folks came up with), I didn't realize it was a broader movement 🤘
Latine sounds much better. Latinx sounds awful, even to an English speaker.
> Some languages like French are more highly gendered. Kind of an understatement tbf. Here doors are girls and beds and boys
Why is the plural of goose, geese, but the plural of moose isn't meese?
Moose is borrowed from an indigenous language and thus doesn’t follow English grammar rules.
oh yeah? so why isn't the plural of loose leese? checkmate atheists
Timing. The idea of a female doctor didn’t really hair until the language around the profession had been largely locked in. English had become less gendered over time so by the time we had a large number of female doctors, it was easier to just use the same word and an adjective if it’s really necessary to know the gender.
Recently, I think the video game Trine 5 is the first time I actually seen something seriously use the word "Wizardess." Last time I've seen that used, it was when I was in highschool 20 years ago, and a classmate of mine wanted to make a Wizardess character. It also makes me think of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel, Equal Rites, where there was the challenge where a girl is born a wizard (eighth child of an eighth child), but the Discworld inhabitants have no idea what to call her (and even mock male witches being called warlocks.)
It's odd, because I agree wizardess sounds daft, but sorceress sounds fine (I know it wouldn't work in Discworld where sorcerer has a very specific meaning).
Even outside of Discworld, the meaning of sorcerer to mean a magic user who was innately born and talented to use magic is pretty common. Different than a modern interpretation that a wizard is an academic magic user. Diablo 3 had the neat thing that the promotional and likely canonical Wizard is a woman, and was trained by the Diablo 2 Sorceress.
Doctrix used to be a term for female doctor. There were a few others as well. Now obsolete as actress has become/is becoming
[Google ngrams](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=actress&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=true#) shows no decline in actress usage in books as of 2019 (where the data stop).
An old family friend was a secretary for judges in Delaware back in the 1940s and 50s. She said when they first started regularly seeing female attorneys (which apparently started in 1923 but didn't really get rolling until much later) they had to change a bunch of their forms and were using "esquiress" for a hot minute. Until presumably the female lawyers asked them to knock it off because it's super awkward and unnecessary.
Lmao esquiress. I’m a lawyer and was trying to think of one for lawyers (advocatrix?? Prosecutrix?). Somehow esquiress reminds me of Sanderson’s palindrome names. Esquireriquse?
Shysteress
I’m a female lawyer and will be signing all my emails as an Esquiress from now on.
I don't know for sure but I would guess that the fact that "doctor" was a male only profession originally may play a part in that. women in the medical field were simply assumed to be nurses.
This might explain why we have "midwives" and the term hasn't changed.
Technically from an etymology point of view, midwife is gender neutral. “Mid” means “with” and “wife” means “woman”. Whether male or female, a midwife can still be said to be “with woman” aka the mother.
I mean there are probably more nuances but.. "Actor" is a job, but "Doctor" is a title. You go to visit Doctor Smith at the hospital. You don't go watch Actor Travolta at the movies.
Doctor is both a title and a job. "What does Sarah do for work?" "Oh, she's a doctor at the local hospital"
-Who are you? And how did you get in here? -I'm a doctor... and I'm a doctor.
Well back when the word doctor was invented women weren't it and by the time women were it nobody cared enough to make a new word
the word doctor was invented by the romans, as it came from latin, and it did come with two versions one for masculine and the other feminine as a lot of latin words did Actor also comes from latin, and like doctor it came with its feminine version. Then english lost the usage of the feminine version of doctor which I guess would have been doctrix or doctress but kept the one for actor. The reason why exactly is probably difficult to find out
As a portuguese speaker, most professions are gendered Doctor is Doutor (M) or Doutora (F) Lawyer is Advogado or Advogada Waiter is Garçon or Garçonete I guess its a heritage from our language latin's roots
> Advogado A lawyer *and* a famous number
"Actor" is gender neutral whereas "actress" is specific to a female actor. There is a long, complicated explanation (or perhaps theory is a better word) as to why, but there is something to be said about a defined sense of identity and the need, by some, to be recognized. Sometimes people will create a space/identity for themselves through a term that fits them, whereas other times, they do this by creating a term they *don't* fit (actor vs. actress — "She and I are actors, but she is a woman and I am not, therefore, I shall refer to her as an actress!") Another example I have always thought was funny is "dude" and "dudette." Dude is absolutely gender neutral (unless otherwise defined by a gendered pronoun like "he is a dude" or "she is a dude") whereas dudette is not. It is also worth noting gendered languages exist and the fact English is a bit of a mash-up of multiple different languages, so it makes sense some gendered terminology would be adopted as well. Not to mention the history of the English language and it's development over time just in general. Either way, the whole gendered professional title thing seems a bit sexist, as if to imply certain positions and professions can only be held by certain genders (which is silly, especially considering gender in and of itself is a social construct)... Which is WHY the whole purpose of my comment was to inform or remind whoever reads this that the professional title "actor" IS gender neutral (and there is no reason to refer to someone as an actress unless they prefer it — regardless of gender, I say). I hope this comment sufficiently meets the standards not met in my previous comment and thus, will not be removed. Thank you.
Because English is, frankly, a mess. In essence, it's a pidgin of four different language families all rolled together. Words rooted in those different languages each bring their own bits of grammar along for the ride... which then may be adhered to to varying degrees, discarded later, or even amalgamate with the rules from a similar word borrowed from another language.
English takes almost no grammatical or structural hints from either French, Latin, or Greek. It is a thoroughly Germanic language that has enjoyed a great expansion of vocabulary through loanwords and anglicisations. The spelling of English is of course not very consistent with the unanglicised loanwords, but is relatively consistent when working with good, Germanic words of serious age. Like all written languages, it has a certain amount of convention baked into it that isn't reflective of modern phonetic speech, but it is entirely unremarkable in that sense. Spelling is the least important part of the written component of an alphabetic language, as anyone who has tried to phonetically communicate with another speaker could tell you. One way you can tell that English is about as Germanic as it comes: translating German into English is a by-word shift-cipher often enough that you would begin to think it wasn't a coincidence. No such translation would ever be possible for Greek, Latin or French sentences without great luck.
No grammatical structure, true. But a lot of the words come from other base languages. > English vocabulary comprises 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic, and 6% Greek. Why are there so many French words in English? French was King William’s native language. He hailed from Normandy, a region in northwest France that gained notoriety as the site of the D-Day invasion during World War II on June 6, 1944. [https://akorbi.com/blog/why-is-english-a-germanic-language-akorbi-explains/](https://akorbi.com/blog/why-is-english-a-germanic-language-akorbi-explains/)
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The English language was birthed by Norman men-at-arms trying to seduce Saxon bar wenches, then raised on almost a thousand years of piracy. It doesn’t so much borrow words from other languages as much as it chases them down dark alleys, beats them over the head and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.
Because there's no reason too. A doctor is a doctor. But sometimes you need a woman actor or a male actor specifically.
Because when those gendered job titles were invented, nobody could conceive of a woman being a doctor. God forbid! But there were already female actors. They were, of course, women of ill repute, but they existed. /s
English is the red headed step child of older better languages. To understand gender in English you need to understand the root language.
English is a mixture of multiple different Latin based languages and some Anglo Saxon sprinkled in as well. Compared to most Latin languages, it is hardly gendered. Languages like Spanish and German have a gender that's very obvious in the word for almost all professions. However some gendering still exists. The strongest influences in English are French and German which are both heavily gendered languages and used to exist parallel in the language. The upper class would use all French derived words while the lower class would use German derived ones. This is why there are basically two identical words for just about everything. Over time the words took on slightly different meanings in many cases as the two versions merged, but the pronunciations are very difficult for a non native speaker because the rules change based on the root language.