When i was much younger, and by 'much' i mean when i did not even know my first four letter word, (which is saying something), we had this exercise in English. We would be given a noun and we had to write down the counterpart masculine or feminine noun of the supplied word. I was, to say the least, VERY good at it. One of the words in the countless lists was "poet". Unsurprisingly enough, my friends, who even with their limited intelligence, were able to answer it correctly as 'poetess'. Imagine my surprise when an acquaintance of mine who occasionally happened to write poems of doubtful virtue (her virtue being even more doubtable) declared herself to be a 'poet'. I with the pomposity of a respectable guardian of the English language, went up to her and told her in the politest possible terms that she must mean poetess. She gave me a scornful glare and proceeded with obscene accuracy to deflate my ego and informed me that poetess was sexist and no longer used. I, with my ego duly punctured, dragged my sexist behind away.
Indeed, the absence of the word poetess has bothered me since. Granted the English tongue is evolving at an exponential rate, granted that words like 'bloody' and 'damn' have been elevated from being vulgar to merely informal, granted that Indlish has no space for archaic 'sexism'. But must we do away with beautiful and elegant polysyllabic words? Communicativeness is all very fine, but there is something about the way long words roll off the tip of your tongue which gives you a passing and albeit very temporary satisfaction. Just because some plebeian cretins who are vocabularily challenged cannot keep up with those who are blessed with a better grasp of the language (i do not count myself among them), does not mean that the world needs to become linguistically barbaric!
And i do not call the word 'poetess' sexist, i call it a great salute, a perpetual testament to women who compose verses. Think of the poor creatures who do not have any feminine terms, antelopes, cheetahs, hyenas, none of these blessed creatures of our creator has a female counterpart. and here are the poetesses of today, sorry the women poets of today scorning such an honor! I mean don't get me wrong, I love a poet as much as the next person, but a poetess is always so much more welcome.......;)
[the image is of Sylvia Plath]
Bleh!
ReplyDeleteWHat do u mean bleh?? its meant to be bleh!!!!
ReplyDeleteHmmmmmmm.....
ReplyDeletelets see........ @rohan .. dude this is a topic which strikes at the right point so dont blow it away ....@gama dude i think from the past ages (for as long as human beings can remember ) men lifestyle or umm let me say the life which men usually lead is more free more open maybe because we are stronger but that's not all ..so our counterpart thinks that why shouldn't they be happy like us to .maybe they r weaker and this and that etc etc.... its the nature of humans to think that they are not happy cause they need some more things...materialistic life ... :/ still i think that wanting this lifestyle they started following our way and ultimately they are now a duplicate us like some Chinese counterpart of a American goods.. :P am being "sexist" here but i dnt gv a damn ....there life style can never match ours and i would like to point out the difference in our organs tooo.... i am being a pervert now but i dnt care :/........female mind is too complicated like a 3 dimensional hexagonal maze .... thinking too much caring about oneself too much .........so why shouldn't they protest if someone calls them a "poetess" they r "POET"s ...........so i think humans should eradicate this GENDER thing cause one part is trying to become something which can never be achieved and as for the English language i can nuke America for fouling the language if they think its too difficult they should change their tongue they shouldn't mess up a clean spot...... @dumb-ass Americans IF UR BRAINS R TOO PUNY THEN TRY SOME INDIAN LANGUAGES U WILL SE WHAT IS TOUGH!!
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