[split] Names, pronouns, articles... and gender

[redchild]

However, there is the problem of assigning masculine/feminine distinctions to interchangeable characters. Names containing combinations of characters from both the masculine and feminine would end up being mixed. Unless a name were assigned purely with feminine or masculine characters, the majority of people would be given names that are more or less gender neutral. Assigning feminine/masculine aspects to only certain characters would be too arbitrary, even though languages are already quite arbitrary anyway.

It can be made to be gender specific, however, if there were an established serial format, like an identification number on bar codes. A portion of a series of numbers and letters would mark the sex of the person (say, any three character combination of purely mas/fem letters and digits, or the first two and last two characters in a serial) in addition to the person's unique ID number.

This is assuming purely the use of the Latin alphabet, seeing as English is considered the 'standard' language in international relations. I wouldn't know how to begin with languages that don't have a Latin-based alphabet in them like Sanskrit or Thai.

Also the baby's name I mentioned earlier was made up of a combination of different elements like the first initial of someone, his birth date, etc, so that adds another layer of arbitrariness. You could name somebody the price of a large pizza pie if you wanted to or the freeway route you took to get to the hospital in time for the birth.

Anyway I don't really know where this is going so I'm going to stop before I lose sleep over pondering the structure of a hypothetical alpha-numerical language.

I had heard something vague before but never really thought about it, I must admit...puts a different perspective on the other 'gender' debate though, when entire languages deem the need to differentiate the genders as unimportant on a literary level!!

That does beg the question(s): to what extent does the use or non-use of gender specific pronouns in a language affect how people relate to each other according to gender? Assigning gender-specific pronouns and words probably evolved from early human distinctions of things considered to be male or female traits. But what about gender neutral ones? I don't think it likely that the first languages created would be gender-neutral, so do languages evolve to be gender neutral? Why would one language be gender neutral and another not?