Abandoned Kitten - Day 2: Weeble Poops!!!

"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" wrote in message
...


Rona Yuthasastrakosol wrote:

piggy-backing since I never got the original

"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" wrote in
message
...

How is it "anthropomorphizing" to assign an animal its proper
gender?
Dogs and cats are not humans, true, but they are fellow mammals,
thus
members of a bi-sexual species. Name just ONE language where
individual
living creatures are not referred to by gender! (Certain NOT
English,
as you claim, nor French, German, Italian, Spanish.....)


Two languages, other than English (prescriptively), that I have
first-hand
knowledge of are Thai and Japanese. Neither uses he/she pronouns to
refer
to animals.

As I said in my previous post, *prescriptively*, English is one of the
languages that uses 'it' for non-humans.

Actually, that's not true, unless the animal's gender is unknown.

AFAIK, it is true that in English an animal is referred to as "it", even if
the gender is known. Of course one can *choose* to use a gender-specific
pronoun.

Cathy

--
"Staccato signals of constant information..."
("The Boy in the Bubble") Paul Simon

(And
a "human" is an "it", too, when gender is unspecified.)



*Descriptively*, few people use
'it' except when refering to those animals of which the sex is unknown
(for
example, a dog on the street--"There's a dog! Where did it come
from?").
Prescriptive and descriptive English can be two very different things.
Linguistically speaking, neither usage is incorrect. The descriptive
usage
of he/she in English can probably be traced back to whenever pets became
widely owned, or perhaps even to wide-spread animal domestication.
Humans
did not always have domesticated animals and very likely thought of
animals
in very different terms from how we do now.

On that note, the use of he/she to describe animals is often used when
the
writer/speaker considers the animals to have some personality of its
own.
'It' is more likely used when the writer/speaker has no emotional
attachment
to the animal. (That's where the anthropomorphism comes in--the
attachment
of personality to an animal--though yes, I do think my cat has a very
distinct personality even though 'personality' is a word that is
*prescriptively* to be used for humans, only--note the root of the word
'person'.)

That being said, I think one of the problems with language is that we
(humans) tend to be very ethnocentric. If you were to look at cultures
that
did not value animals as pets, you would probably find more languages
that
do not use he/she to refer to animals (or perhaps use he/she for some
but
not for others). Just because one culture values cats and dogs, doesn't
mean all cultures do (hence the use of dogs and cats as food in some
Asian
cultures). Not all languages even have pronouns, or define pronouns the
same way English does. Of course languages will differentiate between
male
and female (sex) but it does not follow that they will be the same with
he/she/it usage.

rona

"Cheryl" wrote in message
...

Wasn't it? I don't mean to stereotype, but I often find Asians are
more well-versed in the English language than some of us who only have
the one language. (forgive me, Rona, if Asian isn't your
ethnicity).




You're right--partially :-). I am ethnically Asian (half Thai, half
Filipino) though I grew up in Canada and English is my first language. I
would agree that Asians can be more well-versed in the English language
(especially grammatically and in terms of vocabulary) though I would
probably refine it--it's the South-East Asians of privileged classes who
really know their stuff (though educated people from India are also very
adept). My parents were both very well-educated in their respective
countries and their knowledge of the English language puts even the English
of well-educated Americans to shame. It's all about the educational
system, I think.

ObCats: I like mine. She has some strange yet endearing behaviours. I
took her for a walk tonight and she kept chasing her leash. She was very
excited to go down to the end of the driveway, though. It was like new
territory for her.

rona
Stranger Cat and Miss Kitty
http://community.webshots.com/album/85325277afVZIl

"Cheryl" wrote in message
...

Wasn't it? I don't mean to stereotype, but I often find Asians are
more well-versed in the English language than some of us who only have
the one language. (forgive me, Rona, if Asian isn't your
ethnicity).




You're right--partially :-). I am ethnically Asian (half Thai, half
Filipino) though I grew up in Canada and English is my first language. I
would agree that Asians can be more well-versed in the English language
(especially grammatically and in terms of vocabulary) though I would
probably refine it--it's the South-East Asians of privileged classes who
really know their stuff (though educated people from India are also very
adept). My parents were both very well-educated in their respective
countries and their knowledge of the English language puts even the English
of well-educated Americans to shame. It's all about the educational
system, I think.

ObCats: I like mine. She has some strange yet endearing behaviours. I
took her for a walk tonight and she kept chasing her leash. She was very
excited to go down to the end of the driveway, though. It was like new
territory for her.

rona
Stranger Cat and Miss Kitty
http://community.webshots.com/album/85325277afVZIl