Posted by Martin on July 14, 1999 at 17:04:47:
In Reply to: Re: "What a word's worth" - Part 2 posted by Nick on July 14, 1999 at 16:36:16:
Just a small note: I wrote a whole thesis once on the Bantu system of gender (the majority of Bantu lang.'s have up to 25 genders, NONE of them being what we here would call masculine or feminine), and as to whether that had any effect on thinking and attitudes (sexism for example). The only real effect that I could find was in insult vocab; to call a Bantu an animal (any, some worse than others, occasional ones such as lion maybe OK) is a deadly insult (far, FAR worse than a sex-based insult), to call an English or French person a snake or a caterpillar is strong, but not deadly.