Japanese pronouns

Subject: Japanese pronouns
From: Karen Kay <karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM>
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 13:38:27 -0800

Jan Boomsliter said:

Actually, Jan was merely quoting the text below, from whom I'm not sure.

> The lack of a gendered pronoun in
> Japanese, for example, doesn't appear to have had profound effects
> on the role of women in Japanese culture."

> Say what?

The last sentence is what Jan said, and I echo it. Maybe for different
reasons, though.:) Japanese doesn't have gender for nouns, but there
is *NO gender-neutral* third-person sg. pronoun. There are pronouns
for he 'kare' and she 'kanojo'. The fact is that most Japanese
speech/writing is gender-neutral because pronouns are used less
frequently.

I doubt that this furthers our discussion of gender-neutral English
writing, but I thought I should correct the fact.

Karen
karenk -at- netcom -dot- com


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