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 #2 (permalink) Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:36 am Hotel profession |
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Hello Kamilla,
You can choose between at least two names:
1. Female management assistant in hotel and hospitality
2. Hotel catering and operations manager
It sounds even better in English, doesn't it? |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| #3 (permalink) Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:52 am Education in english |
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| Yes it does! Thank you so much! |
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kamilla
Guest
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| #4 (permalink) Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:29 am Hotel profession |
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| Conchita wrote: |
You can choose between at least two names:
1. Female management assistant in hotel and hospitality |
Don't use the word female in this title. Think about it: Can a woman be qualified to be a "male management assistant"? Not unless she is managing males. In German and Spanish you mark almost everything for gender, but in English we don't. So, you would say hotel management assistant or hospitality management assistant. They already know you're a woman, so you don't have to put it into your title.
| Conchita wrote: |
| 2. Hotel catering and operations manager |
You can also say hotel sales manager or assistant. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5334
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #5 (permalink) Tue Apr 04, 2006 11:06 am Manageress? |
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Jamie (K) wrote:
| Quote: |
| Think about it: Can a woman be qualified to be a "male management assistant"? Not unless she is managing males. |
Maybe you’ve just created a new job concept! At least it doesn’t sound bad to me (though, after a while, it gives an awful and ambiguous impression!).
You’re right, of course. The use of ‘female’ was too literal a translation.
| Quote: |
| In German and Spanish you mark almost everything for gender, but in English we don't. |
And sometimes it can be a little confusing. For example when someone says ‘my friend’, ‘his boss’, ‘our neighbour’, etc. you often have to wait until a pronoun, a name or some additional information is given to know if it’s a ‘he’ or a ‘she’. By the way, are expressions like ‘a she-doctor’, ‘a she-lawyer’ or 'a manageress' still used nowadays? And how do they sound?
Thank you. |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| #6 (permalink) Tue Apr 04, 2006 14:12 pm Manageress? |
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| Quote: |
| In German and Spanish you mark almost everything for gender, but in English we don't. |
| Conchita wrote: |
| And sometimes it can be a little confusing. For example when someone says ‘my friend’, ‘his boss’, ‘our neighbour’, etc. you often have to wait until a pronoun, a name or some additional information is given to know if it’s a ‘he’ or a ‘she’. |
Again, this is only because people who speak continental European languages feel an ingrained need for everything to have a gender. If an English speaker says "my friend", "my boss", "my neighbor", and the person's gender doesn't matter to the story, then they stop there. If the gender does matter, they will say, "a guy I'm friends with", "a woman I know", "the woman who supervises me", "the lady next door", "the man down the street", etc. But we can usually wait for the gender, just as the Germans can wait and wait and wait for the verb.
There's also a problem with the term "friend", though. In some European languages the word for "friend" means a friend when it's used with someone of the same gender as the speaker, but it means boyfriend or girlfriend when the speaker and the friend are of different genders. If you want to say someone of the opposite sex is your platonic friend in these languages, you have to call the person an acquaintance or a comrade. But what if the person is a really close friend, but not your boyfriend or girlfriend? This is really confusing to English speakers.
Plus, what is a friend? In the US we call many people friends who would be acquaintances in German, for example.
| Conchita wrote: |
| By the way, are expressions like ‘a she-doctor’, ‘a she-lawyer’ or 'a manageress' still used nowadays? And how do they sound? |
"She-doctor" and "she-lawyer" sound very derogatory, as if they refer to animals of some kind. I have never seen or heard them. Until I visited the UK, I thought that "manageress" was a figment of the non-native-speaking imagination. I'd never heard it from the lips of a native speaker. However, in London I did hear a person or two use the word. I don't know how common it is there, but in North America it is absolutely never used. I fequently have to tell one of my friends in the Czech Republic to stop calling a female director a "directrice". That's another one that's in the dictionary but sounds odd in real life.
Here's an indication of how much the world has changed over the years: About 20 years ago, people in America were uncomfortable referring to a man as a nurse. If they talked about a man who was a nurse, they would always say "male nurse". This year I finally heard someone talk about a "female nurse". The fact that she said this means that people now assume that a nurse might be a man. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5334
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #7 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 11:59 am She is an heir/heiress |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
"She-doctor" and "she-lawyer" sound very derogatory, as if they refer to animals of some kind. I have never seen or heard them. Until I visited the UK, I thought that "manageress" was a figment of the non-native-speaking imagination. I'd never heard it from the lips of a native speaker. However, in London I did hear a person or two use the word. I don't know how common it is there, but in North America it is absolutely never used. I fequently have to tell one of my friends in the Czech Republic to stop calling a female director a "directrice". That's another one that's in the dictionary but sounds odd in real life.
Here's an indication of how much the world has changed over the years: About 20 years ago, people in America were uncomfortable referring to a man as a nurse. If they talked about a man who was a nurse, they would always say "male nurse". This year I finally heard someone talk about a "female nurse". The fact that she said this means that people now assume that a nurse might be a man. |
Apparently, the use of the suffix ‘ess’ is becoming less common. Curiously enough, though, a Google search on the nouns ‘heiress, millionairess, actress, waitress, stewardess and priestess’ (can you think of any more ‘esses’?) resulted in the following: only ‘heiress’ and ‘millionairess’ (out of this list) are less used than their masculine counterparts. Thus a woman is more likely to be called an heir/millionaire. Doesn’t all this suggest that only the more glamorous occupations are ‘worth’ masculinising? I wonder what feminists have to say about this. In the end, it all comes down to money and power, doesn’t it? |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| #8 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:41 pm She is an heir/heiress |
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| Conchita wrote: |
| Apparently, the use of the suffix ‘ess’ is becoming less common. Curiously enough, though, a Google search on the nouns ‘heiress, millionairess, actress, waitress, stewardess and priestess’ (can you think of any more ‘esses’?) resulted in the following: only ‘heiress’ and ‘millionairess’ (out of this list) are less used than their masculine counterparts. Thus a woman is more likely to be called an heir/millionaire. Doesn’t all this suggest that only the more glamorous occupations are ‘worth’ masculinising? I wonder what feminists have to say about this. In the end, it all comes down to money and power, doesn’t it? |
The feminists have been trying to eradicate "-ess" and other feminine suffixes for a couple of generations now, but it only works on certain words. When I was in art school, there were still some people saying "sculptress", but there were already people berating us for saying it, and the word has now pretty much disappeared.
More recently, they have been trying to eliminate the word "actress", but it doesn't work. Even feminists and other leftists can't talk about an actress without making some gender distinction, so instead of "actress", you hear them saying "woman actor", which is the same thing, but sounds stupider.
What your search might also suggest is that there are far fewer heiresses and millionairesses than there are stewardesses and waitresses, and that we talk about them less. The other thing is that when Americans want to make "stewardess" gender neutral, we don't say "steward", but "flight attendant". When we don't want a gender distinction between waiters and waitresses, we call them "servers". The mailman is now often a woman, but we don't say "mailwoman", and "mail lady" sounds informal and a bit childish. So all of them are now "mail carriers" or "postal carriers".
Now there are some lady garbage men in my city. The funniest thing, though, is that we don't have a term "garbage woman" or "garbage lady", and I never saw any newspaper articles or TV reports trumpeting the fact that women have broken through the gender barrier that kept them out of the profession of garbage collection. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5334
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #9 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 13:05 pm Battle of the sexes |
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Interesting, as ever, Jamie.
| Quote: |
| feminists and other leftists |
I wasn't aware of the fact that feminists were necessarily leftists. Oh, well, this gives you an idea of the extension of my knowledge of politics.
| Quote: |
| I never saw any newspaper articles or TV reports trumpeting the fact that women have broken through the gender barrier that kept them out of the profession of garbage collection. |
Maybe it's because women have always done this job, traditionally. Only, at home and unpaid  . Or because men don't see it as an intrusion or feel in any way threatened in their manliness, due to the lack of prestige of the job? |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| #10 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 13:25 pm Ess |
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Hi Conchita,
What about the aristocracy? Count and Countess - Duke and Duchess - Baron and Baroness.
Incidentally did you intend to say manliness? Or am I being flippant?
Alan
_________________
English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Don't bank on it |
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Alan
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Joined: 27 Sep 2003
Posts: 9205
Location: UK
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| #11 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 13:30 pm Ingrained |
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Hi,
What's all this about?
| Quote: |
| Again, this is only because people who speak continental European languages feel an ingrained need for everything to have a gender |
Alan
_________________
English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story Are you a Persuader? |
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Alan
Co-founder
Joined: 27 Sep 2003
Posts: 9205
Location: UK
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| #12 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 13:57 pm Ingrained |
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| Alan wrote: |
Hi,
What's all this about?
| Quote: |
| Again, this is only because people who speak continental European languages feel an ingrained need for everything to have a gender |
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This is about something I've witnessed many, many times. A large percentage languages on the European continent mark for grammatical gender, and not just natural gender. They also mark for natural gender in situations where English doesn't. Because of this, many people who speak languages of this type are so used, from their native languages, to marking anything human for gender, that they feel uncomfortable not doing so when they speak English. This is one reason you get repeated utterances like, "My student...um...my girl student..." or, "that...um... woman doctor..." in situations where gender is irrelevant to English speakers. I have seen people correct themselves and say "girl student", "woman doctor" and similar things many times, even when the person's gender has already been amply established.
Naturally, this happens most among people with lower-levels of fluency, but even people with a better command of English will sometimes show a subtle preference for gender marking where a native speaker wouldn't. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5334
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #13 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 14:32 pm Ess |
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| Alan wrote: |
| Incidentally did you intend to say manliness? Or am I being flippant? |
Gosh, aren't I talented  !
(Er, no, actually, that was totally unintentional). |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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| #14 (permalink) Mon Apr 10, 2006 14:44 pm Ingrained curiosity |
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| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| people (...) will sometimes show a subtle preference for gender marking where a native speaker wouldn't. |
I'm not sure it has to do with grammar. Or, if you want, our grammar is a consequence of our way of thinking (or so I'd rather believe!). As it is, we are always (too?) curious about gender. |
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Conchita
Language Coach
Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 2826
Location: Madrid, Spain
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Avant
I'm new here and I like it ;-)
Joined: 20 Apr 2006
Posts: 10
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| Trouble in pronouncing English words | Beer in Slovakia |
