OT, but Aliette, I enjoy the writing here at SF Novelists so much that I gave it a blog award. It can be picked up here http://wp.me/ssAeI-2091

And, congratulations on your wedding!

By strange and fortuitous coincidence, I happened across an article that discusses similar language differences, in this case the different thought processes between speakers of different languages. It’s an article referencing a Stanford study (which I haven’t read yet, but there’s a link at the bottom.)

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/06/the_tools_of_languag.html

Anyway, it was an interesting read.

Also, I wish that I spoke French, because that series sounds very interesting. I can see how an English translation could achieve a similar effect, but it would take a lot more work for a lot less impact. For example, some professions (lawyer, doctor, pilot, etc.) are habitually referred to as “he,” while more auxiliary professions (nurse, flight attendant) are thought of as female; also, the English “gender-neutral” pronoun is “he.” The only way I can think of to imitate the gender-shift would be to switch that up. And, now that I think of it, I have a story in mind that would require that…

Speaking of gender, I think that the effect would be even more pronounced in Latin, which has several would-be feminine nouns (poeta “poet” and agricola “farmer” leap to mind) which are declined like most feminine nouns, but are stubbornly masculine; similarly, most abstracts speaking of (shall we say) weaker morals are feminine nouns. Latin is a very sexist language. But I wonder, to achieve that effect in Latin, would one go ahead and change the declensions of nouns (i.e. 2nd-declension “gladius,” sword, to 1st-declension “gladia”) or keep the endings and just treat them like a noun of another gender? (Hope that all made sense like it did in my head.)