Thank you b3ta.
You have won and lost a bet for me. I was arguing with a friend earlier about the reasons for the declining standards of written English. I said it was because of the liberalisation of English teaching in the seventies and the abolition of the grammar school system. He said it was because people don't really care about language.

I came up with the idea of this post. The bet was that there would be some discussion of the semantics of the word gender, and that someone would correct the mangled grammar of the first line of my original post. So, I win and lose.

For anyone who's interested, the reason some people say you can't use gender to describe sex is because of it's Latin root genus meaning type or kind, because the type being described would have been masculine, feminine or neuter, and there are only two sexes, a group of linguists argued against the use of gender to describe sex at the turn of the 18th century.

Insert lady-boy joke here.

I think this argument is interesting yet flawed. Gender is an English word, and it's semantics should be based around modern common usage, not a prescriptive set of rules thought up by men in tweeds with too much time on their hands. These are the same people who said you can't split the infinitive, because the infinitive declension in Latin doesn't use a clitic.

English is English, not Latin. It doesn't change the fact that the plural of octopus is octopuses and not octopi, because octopus is a third declension noun in Latin, unlike hippopotamus and cactus which are second declension. I'll fight anyone who says differently.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Wed 6 Jan 2010, 19:54, 4 replies)

octopi/octopuses
I thought if it was a third declension noun then it should be octopodes?
( SteamedCleaner, Thu 7 Jan 2010, 0:21, closed)

You are right.
Octopodes in Latin, but octopus has a regular plural in English. Hippopotamus and cactus don't because they are second declension in Latin. I guess what I'm saying is that you can't apply the reason for the irregular plurals of hippopotamus and cactus to octopus.

Maybe it's time octopus was changed in the OED, as most people would say octopi, but I like it as it is, because I get the chance to discuss declension, and I'm a geek.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Thu 7 Jan 2010, 5:13, closed)

your an education troll?
i thought the reason that people continue to use sex for the physical and gender for the identity is cos they are sometimes different in the same person so it helps to have two separate terms.

also i would say that your mate has lost the bet though that doesn't prove that you are right.
( tickle I was away, Thu 7 Jan 2010, 1:49, closed)

Ooh, it's like Trading Places
but naffer.

By the way, tweed is awesome. And also, the posessive 'its' has no apostrophe, which you've done twice. I bet you don't care about grammar.
(Land of Green Ginger It's dreamy weather, Thu 7 Jan 2010, 9:30, closed)

Hahahahaha NO.
"Acutally it's meant to be like that."

"It was a JOKE. Dur!"

"Actually my mum's dead."

Sorry, but you have failed, and we have every right to take the utter piss out of you for it.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 7 Jan 2010, 10:47, closed)