Cool, thanks for the follow-up. In the off-chance anyone cares, my Italian colleagues say they would say "una dentista" for a female dentist but don't know if that's grammatical or not. So much for learning the language from books. However, in French I'm right - "un medecin" is how one refers to a doctor, male or female (double-checked with a native speaker this time - and learned there's a feminist movement in govt. to change this rule/law). By the way, re "they" - its use as a 3rd person singular has a long history in English so saying the current use is "incorrect" risks getting into an argument with the kind of people who argue about this kind of thing (loose paraphrase of something in _Dragon_...) On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, - Holly - wrote: > For the interest of David Silberstein, Philip Hart and others that care: > > I reposed the question to my grandfather regarding gender-specific pronouns > in the Hungarian language. This time, however, instead of asking in person > or by telephone, I e-mailed him, thereby obtaining a response in writing. > (Now I can't mess up his words again!) I have copied his e-mail below for > anyone interested, though I think much of this was already said by David > Silberstein in his response to my post requesting his knowledge on the > subject. > _______________________________________________________________________ > > >P.M.C.T. wrote: > > <snip> > > > > >I remember our little conversation about gender specific pronouns, or the > >lack thereof, in the Magyar language. Actually Hungarian does not > >differentiate between male and female genders in pronoun usage, but there > >is differentiation between personal pronouns and impersonal referring to > >inanimate objects. For example: > >In English, there is gender differentiation in the third person singular > >pronouns, such as "he" "she" and "it". The Hungarian equivalents are "o" > >(with an umlaut, that looks like the double quote mark -"-, on top) for > >"he" and "she", and "az" for "it". > >The result is that in Hungarian there is no feminist controversy, as we > >have in English, for using a male oriented pronoun for gender- > >neutral reference to people in the singular who in the context could be > >either male or female. In English we are attempting to overcome this > >controversy by using, incorrectly, I might add, the plural pronoun "they" > >instead of "he" for this generic singlular reference. > >Does this make sense to you? > > > >By the way, you did not ask but here is another related item. In English > >while the words "man" and "woman" refer to the male and female persons, > >respectively, "man" is also used as a gender-neutral identifier of human > >beings. In Hungarian there are three words for these references. > > > >"ferfi" (with a single quote mark -'- on top ot the e) means "man" in > >gender-specific sense, > > > >"no" (with a double quote mark -"- on top of the o) means "woman", and > > > >"ember" means "man" in a generic sense, or more loosely, "human". > > > >Here again, the language does not interfere with the women's movement. > > > > [... and then bunch of personal stuff that has no bearing on this message > board...] > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ > MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* > http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus > >