Language Influences Thought

(Davv here, late post because of ISP troubles!)

This might go the other way, too. When I think about it, I find attempts to invent and use "new" neutral pronouns in place of the default "he" odd, as in that there would be little use for it.

However, reading what you wrote here, I got thinking again. My native language, Norwegian, assigns genders to every noun (for instance, "computer" is masculine and "refrigerator" is neuter). I guess this is like German, but the particular assignments are different. In any event, the assignments don't have to make sense except by their own internal logic - I don't find computers more masculine than refrigerators, for instance, even though they use that assignment.

So perhaps the reason I don't find the default use of "he" in English any problem is because my mind says "oh, it's just another arbitrary gender assignment" -- like the many nouns. I don't know if that is the case, but it got me wondering.

It's not absolute, though. The internal logic of English makes it feel grammatically wrong to use another pronoun as default. So I still refer to my creatures (who have quite unusual reproduction and thus don't fit any), in singular, as "he". Saying "she" would imply that they're distinctively female, and "it" that they're inanimate, and neither of those are true.

However, a crucial counterpoint is that English makes it easy to NOT lay blame, with the passive exonerative ("Mistakes were made.")

... which reminds me of some people trying to speak English without using "to be" at all. One can speak passively or indirectly even under that constraint, but the task becomes much harder.