On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 7:09 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:

To top it off, Hindi has a form for inanimate objects.

What I would like to learn is if Bishanka has an opinion about being addressed as a woman in her mother tongue.

My mother tongue is Bengali, which is genderless - it does not have 'gendered' nouns or other aspects of gender like Hindi. So a man and a woman are addressed in the same way in Bengali. This is what I grew up with, am used to, and what I like. But that's just my personal preference, not necessarily my opinion on how women should be addressed in their mother tongues. (I can't speak for other women on this; I imagine it would differ from woman to woman.)

Cheers
Bishakha