Hello Ardith,   
      
   Thursday November 22 2018, Ardith Hinton wrote to Michael Dukelsky:   
      
    MD>>  Actors were put before actresses. It is sexism! :-)   
      
    AH>>  The author put these words in alphabetical order.  So   
    AH>>  would I.  I've noticed people using "actor" in reference   
    AH>>  to both at times and I could write an essay on the   
    AH>>  subject, but I'll leave it at that for now....  ;-)   
      
    MD>>  I am looking forward to reading your essay. :)   
      
    AH>            On one hand I'm thinking "Me & my big mouth!"... on the   
    AH> other I know I'll have a great time organizing my thoughts about   
    AH> various things I've learned over the years because one of my   
    AH> correspondents has expressed an interest.  ;-)   
      
   It is good you've made a decision to share your thoughts with us.   
      
    AH>            Until the 1960's, schoolteachers used formal grammar... and   
    AH> expected their students to do likewise.  My grade two teacher, e.g.,   
    AH> insisted we speak & write in complete sentences at all times.  She'd   
    AH> repeat "have you not" until we figured out for ourselves that she   
    AH> meant "haven't you" because... as I now know   
    AH> ... contractions aren't used either in formal English or in literature   
    AH> intended for beginning readers.  In those days no explanation was   
    AH> offered, however.  The way many Authority Figures dealt with   
    AH> colloquial English was to ignore whatever they didn't approve of...   
    AH> and from that standpoint I appreciate the descriptive approach taken   
    AH> by modern dictionaries, in which they report what people say but   
    AH> include flags like "colloq." or "coarse slang" or "[Aus./Cdn./UK/US]"   
    AH> so we can make our own choices as to what works best in a particular   
    AH> situation.   
      
    AH>            You may have seen jokes elsewhere of a type I'd describe as   
    AH> "gallows humour" from senior citizens about how, if one didn't say   
      
   What is gallows here? Is it vicious, perverse, wicked or is it a gibbet,   
   derrick?   
      
    AH> "Miss Stickler, may I please go to the lavatory?" one would be   
    AH> completely ignored or be forced to sit through a lecture on the   
    AH> difference between "can" & "may" or wait until recess.   
      
   Hm-m-m... For me it is a strange joke, it is not funny at all.   
      
    AH>            When our daughter went to the same school I noticed the   
    AH> sign "GIRLS' LAVATORY" had been truncated to "GIRLS".  In many ways   
    AH> that makes more sense to me than pictures which could be interpreted   
    AH> as meaning "males wearing kilts" or "females wearing trousers".  In   
    AH> the sink-or-swim environment of my childhood, I learned a lot about   
    AH> English which I didn't fully appreciate back then....  :-))   
      
   I understand you mean that girls' feelings were neglected. But saying of   
   sink-or-swim environment in general. It may be cruel, but it prepares a young   
   person to a real life, doesn't it? It is interesting to hear what this   
   environment manifested in? Has anything changed since then?   
      
    AH>            Things began to change during the 1960's.  People   
    AH> questioned many of the rules they'd grown up with... one being the use   
    AH> of the masculine pronoun in situations where the gender of any   
    AH> individual may not be obvious.  According to the rules of formal   
    AH> grammar "each student should bring his own pencil" is quite correct,   
    AH> unless all of the students are female.  Some women didn't like that...   
    AH> they felt they were being ignored, especially when the word "man" was   
    AH> also used to refer to human beings in general.  I thought it was silly   
    AH> that if I had just one male student in a class of forty I was required   
    AH> to say "his", although when I read professional literature I noticed   
    AH> that nurses & elementary teachers were referred to as if they were   
    AH> invariably female.  For many people nowadays it's a lot easier to use   
    AH> the plural pronoun regardless of the actual gender or number.   
      
    AH>            Re occupational titles people can no longer take it for   
    AH> granted that firemen & mailmen are male... so they are called fire   
    AH> fighters & mail carriers.   
      
   Well, it is maybe OK with mail carriers, but firemen have very physically hard   
   and dangerous work. Do you think it is good when women want to do a physically   
   hard work?   
      
    AH> The majority of such titles appear to be   
    AH> gender-neutral even if they weren't in the past.  There are still   
    AH> exceptions, though.  While waiters & waitresses have been replaced by   
    AH> servers it would not be safe to assume a governess is a female   
    AH> governor...   
      
   In Russian a governess is rather a governor's wife.   
      
    AH> and I must admit to some puzzlement over the increasing   
    AH> tendency to refer to both actors & actresses as actors because I would   
    AH> imagine their gender is a legitimate job requirement if e.g. the   
    AH> casting director wants somebody who can handle the role of Prince   
    AH> Charming or Snow White in a live-action film.  In animated films I can   
    AH> see from the credits that males play female roles at times & vice   
    AH> versa... but I probably wouldn't know otherwise.  If what matters is   
    AH> the sound of their voice rather than their physical appearance I can   
    AH> think of other situations like that too.  But when Meryrl Streep   
    AH> describes herself as an actor I'm not sure I understand her line of   
    AH> reasoning.  I guess she likes the idea of a unisex job description &   
    AH> I'm not averse to it myself.  OTOH, she's old enough to remember when   
    AH> some feminists would have been outraged about her choice.  :-)   
      
   Here the society is more conservative and we have no such changes in the   
   language yet. They are still ahead, but I think such changes are inevitable.   
   On the other hand one can never say how much time must pass before the changes   
   start. When I was young it seemed that "socialism" we had here was forever.   
   But it unexpectedly crashed. So maybe the changes in the language you talked   
   about may also come to us much earlier than somebody may imagine.   
      
   Michael   
      
   ... node (at) f1042 (dot) ru   
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    * Origin: Moscow, Russia (2:5020/1042)