How is English less expressive than other languages?

Uriel   Thu Aug 13, 2009 8:59 pm GMT
English has plenty of ways to talk about sex without requiring special inflections or word endings in law or science -- it simply adds a modifier like "male" or "female". There. Idea conveyed. English isn't any less expressive because it takes an extra word to get the point across. It would only be less expressive if there were truly no way to express the idea at all.

And there are plenty of words that intrinsically convey gender in English, especially for people and animals:

Male:

man
boy
bloke
guy
lout
bull
stallion
gelding
colt
buck
stag
dog (when used as a modifier, as in dog fox)
tom (as in cat)
billy (as in goat)
jack
drone
ram

Female:

woman
lady
girl
maiden
lass
bitch (both meanings)
vixen
queen (bees, ants, and cats)
mare
filly
jenny
nanny
cow
heifer
ewe
doe
and noun with an -ess suffix, like lioness and giantess and actress

And there are many others.
Damian London SW15   Thu Aug 13, 2009 9:28 pm GMT
Vixen f
Sow f
Chap m
Hen f = often used as a form of address in Scotland, especially in the Glasgow area to refer to any female person.....usually as a term of affection or endearment but not exclusively so.

It's amusing how some words which on the face of it you would think convey feelings of friendliness and mateyness, are really used by the speaker in a negative way to express displeasure or irritation, even anger. Take the word "sunshine" for instance - sounds nice and pleasurably lighthearted and it's used quite often in the UK, mostly in England, as a substitute for a person's name, but unfortunately almost always in the hostile manner I've just described. As in: "Hey, sunshine, what the f**k do you think you're doing? Sod off before I deck you!"

British police officers in the front line of confrontation with yobs out on the streets of the UK quite often use the word "sunshine" as a means of address to a stroppy, mouthy scroat...especially here in London in the Metropolitan Police. I heard one PC* use it during some kind of fracas with some unruly youths on the concourse of Tottenham Court Road tube station.

*As it was in a tube station setting, as with any London transport tube station or British Rail train station, that particular PC would be a British Transport police officer and not Metropolitan Police - two different police forces altogether, but it makes no different to their verbal terminology.

.....and I'm intrigued to see Uriel's assumption that a lout is generally male.......she should take a stroll through the average UK city centre late at chucking out time late on a Friday or Saturday night .....but we've discussed this issue at length elsewhere...so we'll let sleeping dogs lie on that one now.
Jasper   Thu Aug 13, 2009 11:04 pm GMT
DAMIAN: "and I'm intrigued to see Uriel's assumption that a lout is generally male......"

It may be an American thing, Damian. My mental picture of a lout is invariably male, too; it could be a symptom of what they call "Male Pattern Badness"
???   Thu Aug 13, 2009 11:13 pm GMT
English still retains some 'inflection' (is it actually that?) for gender of some nouns anyway.

Actor/Actress
Waitor/Waitress
Author/Authoress
Count/Countess
Murderer/Murderess

But they have been falling into disuse for ages, because, well, they're simply not that important to us.

But actually I see, the one to keep is the distinction between 'murderer' and 'murderess' because that will be much more useful in law! lol
???   Thu Aug 13, 2009 11:34 pm GMT
And you might say, well why would they be important when so many other terms in English don't distinguish between male and female any more anyway.

Like:

Teacher
Doctor
Scientist
Lawyer

etc

But this just shows this gender disticntion isn't important.

English can distinguish between a female and male actor, if it wants, but not a male and female doctor, but it means nothing to any one in terms of expression.

And guess what, even if we choose to say 'actress' for a female actor, no one thinks it adds anything worthy to the language at all.
Achab   Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:21 am GMT
For non-native speakers:

Jasper's comment, an insight into the native speaker's mind, is also a pun on "male pattern baldness" (mind you, ba*l*dness), also known as androgenic alopecia.

With every good wish,

Achab
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wretch   Fri Aug 14, 2009 2:36 am GMT
If English is inexpressive for not 'directly' having gender, then imagine how inexpressive languages without 'direct' plural must be! For example, Japanese.
mar   Fri Aug 14, 2009 2:43 am GMT
to my opinion and experience English is a language somebody must learn, has more vocabulary(I still doubt it) maybe oficially, the difference between the U.S and british english seems fake,germanic languages´s speakers would learn it in 2 months, 65% of the good movies used it, girls are wet already when you meet them , no reason to speak at all.

french:is the second most spoken language after english, has more verbs and more tenses,english speakers prefer to learn it as a second languaje above any other tongue,if you learn it while you are an adult you will never pronounce correctly,some girls get wet while you speak it.

spanish:90% of the people that learn it is because they like it not because they must,even though 99% of the people that i've known ¨speak spanish´they just can say ¨hola¨ and ¨mamacita¨(I've lived in the U.S. and Canada) english and french teachers have told me ¨spanish is way easier to learn than english¨ ¨ le francais c'est plus dificile que l'Espagnol¨, however they do not speak it, differences between spanish,castellano,latin american spanish,etc in fact exist ,but we understand each other perfectly,portuguese and italian speakers may understand spanish without any background ,depending on the country,dictionaries have to expain that a word is oficially used in certain places,just México add hundreds of words per year to spanish and yes some girls not just get wet but they want to make it if you ask them in ESPAÑOL.
Uriel   Fri Aug 14, 2009 3:10 am GMT
We have lots of words for poorly behaved women, but lout isn't one of them, I guess! Lout isn't used much in the US anyway, at least not in this century, so I will defer to you on the particulars, Damian. It seems tobe alive and well over there.

I suppose English will seem "unexpressive" to people who are used to having certain information conveyed constantly and innocuously, as in the gender issue. For instance, you can read post after post in English and have no clue as to the author's sex unless they use an overtly masculine or feminine name or deliberately identify themselves as male or female; as long as they stick to the first person, there are few clues. For instance, I've been chit-chatting with an Australian on another forum for years on all manner of topics, and today I got the first clue that what I've always assumed was a he might actually be a she. For god's sake!

In Spanish or French, any self-referential adjectives would probably give it away immediately. And it might not even occur to a speaker of that language to withhold such information, whereas English-speakers can scrupulously guard their basic identity if they wish. So the variations between languages probably all balance out in the end, but they do affect the information that a speaker expects to get out of an exchange. For instance, I can't for the life of me figure out what the big deal is with English-speakers not having built-in gender, because we have other ways to indicate it if it's an important attribute (such as in law or science). But a speaker who is used to getting such information as a matter of course would be frustrated at its absence. We English-speakers just assume that if the sex was important or relevant, somebody would have mentioned it.

So these things show how the structure of your language can subtly influence your thinking.
John   Fri Aug 14, 2009 4:02 am GMT
BTW, Russian verbs only indicate gender in the past tense.
crazy actress   Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:00 pm GMT
English can distinguish between a female actress and male actor, if it wants,

but not a male and female Teacher, Doctor, Scientist, Lawyer, etc

that is just primitive and sexist, Media and TV is more important than Science and Culture.
Snow-white   Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:29 pm GMT
Maybe it's also a matter of building the approbriate female word form? It's easy to build Actress form Actor, but how would be the female form of Teacher, Scientist, or Lawyer? It would be hard to build and to pronunce.
Snow White   Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:10 pm GMT
Ha, checked it! Snow-white is actually Snow White in English! You know, Snow White and Rose Red or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ...

The thread's topic is ''How is English less expressive than other languages?'' and we ended up in a discussion about gender. Another way in which a language can be expressive is the use of diminutives and augmentatives.

So, in German, Snow White is Schneeweißchen or Schneewittchen, so the name sounds somewhat twee because of the diminutive suffix -chen. (It's the same suffix as in Mädchen, so it maybe could also convey some connotation of sex. The suffix can be applied to words of all genders.)

Of course, in English, you can add (or modify it with) the word little etc., but then, you have two words. Do you think for an Englisch native speaker, Snow White bears the same connotation of being a twee little girl than Schneeweißchen in German?

What, if the addition of a suffix of that kind causes the word to be modified a bit, so that it becomes unique? I think that that's somewhat more than just using a modifier word to make up a new name or term.
Snow White   Fri Aug 14, 2009 1:13 pm GMT
<<Of course, in English, you can add (or modify it with) the word little etc., but then, you have two words.>>

Actually three words, if you don't consider Snow White as one word (or better term) but two.