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Gender Marked Professional Names
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1. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 11:47 am |
Turkish lacks grammatical gender. Just like my native language. But there are differences also. Our given names are strictly divided into male and female names while in Turkish unisex names are many and widely used. It is also still common in Finnish that a name of a profession carries an implication of its holders sex, i.e. ends with the equivalent of "man" or "woman" etc. I recently read there are more than 600 such titles and the number is increasing even though language planners object this type of nouns.
Makes me wonder. I cannot think of many Turkish professional names which follow gender. Actually I can think of one, işadamı. Are there more?
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2. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 11:53 am |
bilim adamı
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3. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 11:55 am |
And latest trend is to say " bilim insanı " for this word.
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4. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 12:02 pm |
Another one is ;
Hayat kadını ---> prostitute
Unfortunately, it is still classified as a profession.
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5. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 12:05 pm |
There is a slang as "Allah´ın adamı"
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6. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 12:06 pm |
Balık adam ---> diver
http://www.tbk.org.tr
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7. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 12:10 pm |
bilim insanı seems like a poor compromise. Maybe araştırmacı would be a truly gender neutral naming.
These nouns do not purely reflect sexism. adam and its equivalents are also an unmarked category in (all?) languages. kadın can never be neutral what comes to sex.
In the end of the 19th century when they opened universities for ladies in Finland the female applicants first had to apply to be "set free" from their gender. Really - this word was used.
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8. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 12:15 pm |
Makes me wonder. I cannot think of many Turkish professional names which follow gender. Actually I can think of one, işadamı. Are there more?
Turkish language solves this problem bay calling a judge "hakim hanım", a procecutor "savcı hanım", a mid-woman "ebe hanım", a doctor "doktor hanım" etc if the professional is a lady and the gender difference must be made known.
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9. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 12:29 pm |
bilim adamı and hayat kadını. What a pity.
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10. |
15 Apr 2013 Mon 12:45 pm |
Turkish language solves this problem bay calling a judge "hakim hanım", a procecutor "savcı hanım", a mid-woman "ebe hanım", a doctor "doktor hanım" etc if the professional is a lady and the gender difference must be made known.
Understood. But that is not the problem. The problem is
that she is called bilim adamı.
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