Readalong

TPG:Preface:P.xiv Dragaeran word gya

Starshadw at aol.com Starshadw at aol.com
Mon Jun 17 15:59:38 PDT 2002

In a message dated 6/17/2002 1:24:08 PM Mountain Daylight Time, dd-b at dd-b.net 
writes:

> Used to refer to a person of unknown sex, which will be translated
> into English as "he" according to the translator (that'd be Steven).
> Remember this when you're tempted to infer that somebody is male from
> the use of "he" to refer to him; at least in the Paarfi books.

I'm not so sure about that.  It specifically says that the symbol is used "to 
represent someone of unknown sex" which, to me, indicates that it is the 
symbol you would use if you had not met someone/had no records to indicate 
gender/had no one to ask who knew the gender.  I don't think it means we need 
question the gender of every character referred to as "he" in the book - one 
would hope that the chroniclers and historians would give some indication as 
to the gender of the people they were writing about.
 
> Interesting questions arise from this; I was just commenting on the
> words Emperor and Empress in another message (about the date).  If
> Dragaeran has a non-sex-specific pronoun for people, I wonder if it
> has non-sex-specific words for various jobs, as well.  It would make
> sense.  (Or perhaps it simply *lacks* the sex-specific forms; there
> may be no way to imply that a a ruler is male in Dragaeran with one
> word; you might have to say "the emperor is male" to get it across.) 
> 

No, that doesn't seem right, or else they wouldn't have two words - they 
would have simply one.  So Zerika would be the Emperor, not the Empress.  Why 
have two words at all?  Unless you want to indicate that perhaps the Emperor 
title is the "higher" title, with "Empress" being the lesser (ie, the Emperor 
is called Emperor and his/her consort is called Empress).  But again, Zerika 
proves this wrong because she is called the "Empress" and not the "Emperor."

Stacy