ANSWER: Blonde on blonde

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Why shouldn’t you describe male characters as "blonde"?

The short answer is "Latin."



English is an old language with a long and storied history of beating up other languages and stealing their lunch money borrowing words from other languages, especially Latin and French, as both Rome and France occupied England for significant chunks of history.

Latin gave birth to French, which, like many other languages throughout the world, likes to assign its nouns gender. Everything has a gender: the car (feminine), the table (also feminine), your eyes (masculine).

The adjectives that describe those words also have gender, so a man with yellow hair is blond, and a woman with the same hair is blonde (an added 'e' at the end of the word usually indicates the feminine in French, like in fiancé and fiancée). Both words are pronounced the same way, which can make it harder to remember the difference.

"Yeah, she was gorgeous," Gojyo said. "Tall and blonde, with legs up to here--"

"To where?" Goku asked.

"I've always wondered that," Hakkai mused, thoughtfully.

"Anyway, turns out she was engaged. Her fiancé's some trader up north."

In both cases, girls get the extra 'e' and boys don't-- it's that simple!

Comments

[pumpkingelatin.livejournal.com]

*whisper* a table is feminine in french ;D

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Snot, someone caught an earlier French error and missed that one! Thanks, it's been a while. :D

[amedia.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the -e on the end of "table" is not an added e! ;-)

But yes ... all those neat little rules like "words ending in e are feminine" break down pretty quickly when they come up against reality! That's why it had to be "added e" and "usually"!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Mais oui!

[lauramcewan.livejournal.com]

Believe me, we see this error in Starsky & Hutch fandom a lot. Hutch is not blonde. No, really.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I confess, I took this answer 'cause Sanzo is not blonde, either!

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

As my daddy, who attended a Jesuit high school said, "Pumpkin, everybody has to take Latin."

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Ha!

[diebirchen.livejournal.com]

Yup -- and so I reached adulthood having learned no living language other than my own. I went to live in Germany for the first time with only third-rate Latin under my belt. It was a struggle as an adult and with no classes, but I learned German and learned it well.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I took a semester of Latin and it was great, but...not as the only language, oh dear Good for you!

[campylobacter.livejournal.com]

It's rare to see the word "brunet" in English to describe a male, although I had a French beta-reader tell me that a woman with dark hair is described as "brune", not "brunette", en français.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Je ne me souviens pas, and in fact am not sure that's right, so I'll trust your beta reader!

[amedia.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, she was gorgeous," Gojyo said. "Tall and blonde, with legs up to here--"

"To where?" Goku asked.

"I've always wondered that," Hakkai mused, thoughtfully.


*snickering uncontrollably*

Thank you thank you thank you for this feature! I may have to pimp it to my Tin Man fan friends. After all, it isn't slash anymore if the hot blond guy turns into a "blonde"!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Though I am fond of genderswap....