Why Is a French Frying Pan Feminine?
Published: August 8, 1991
To the Editor:
In "The Waitron's Knife and Fork" (editorial, July 28), on the Random House Webster's College Dictionary and sexist language, you inquire: Is knife masculine and fork feminine? Are there deeply ingrained attitudes toward the sexuality of all objects?
But comparison with other languages in which words are necessarily masculine, feminine or neuter, will show that no substantive issue is involved. Thus, for instance, in French le poele (masculine) is stove; la poele (feminine) is frying pan.
In German, the sun (sonne) is feminine, and the moon (mond) is masculine; in Latin (sol and luna), it is the other way around.
In Hebrew, the nouns for parts of the body that occur in pairs are feminine (yad, a hand; regel, a foot; ayin, an eye), while those parts of the body not duplicated are masculine (rosh, head; peh, mouth).
I doubt much sexist wisdom can be gotten out of all this. REUBEN ABEL New York, Aug. 1, 1991 The writer is a retired professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research.