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by Jaxia @ 4:12 pm on January 12, 2005. Filed under News | Quotes

“Before the year 1000, there was no she in English; just heo, which singular females had to share with plurals of all genders because it meant they as well. In the twelfth century, however, she appeared, and she has been with us ever since. She may derive from the Old English feminine demonstrative pronoun seo or sio, or from Viking invasions.”

From American Dialect.org

[link]

7 Responses to “How Important Is She?”

Comments

Interesting. I guess we’ve come a long way.
One thing about French that I always thought was neat is that they have a plural for each gender: il/ils elle/elles. They do use the male for mixed groups though.

Comment by transientmind — January 12, 2005 @ 11:54 am
Woot! Vikings!

Japanese is fun in that it barely bothers with ‘he’ or ’she’ at all. Of course, there’s about eighteen versions of ‘you’ and ‘I’, all with varying degrees of formality, to make up for it.

Comment by _dahne_ — January 12, 2005 @ 12:04 pm
Japanese is fun in that it barely bothers with ‘he’ or ’she’ at all.
Which would explain the look of some Japanese anime characters. :p

Yarha, Words have Sex in Other Languages

Comment by yarha — January 12, 2005 @ 12:07 pm
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the Japanese culture is a lot more relaxed — in general — about homosexuality.

Comment by inviolet — January 12, 2005 @ 1:16 pm
Plural for each gender? English does too:

she/goddesses
he/assholes

Comment by inviolet — January 12, 2005 @ 5:42 pm
Haha. I like the idea because I’m a she, but I have to say I’ve known lots of men who are wonderful and a myriad of women who were assholes. I think it’s just that the human race as a whole has more assholes than not. Pretty sad.

Comment by transientmind — January 12, 2005 @ 5:48 pm
You just single-handedly became the hottest history teacher I have ever had!

Comment by grizzilla — January 12, 2005 @ 9:36 pm

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