Starshadw at aol.com writes: > In a message dated 6/17/2002 1:24:08 PM Mountain Daylight Time, dd-b at dd-b.net > writes: > > 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." Is that simply an artifact of the translation into English, where the gender is key? Where calling a woman the "emperor" would sound funny? -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / New TMDA anti-spam in test John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/ New Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info