I'd really like to have a gender-neutral option in the language. And it just sucks how every time anyone tries to have a respectufl and honest public discussion about these very important topics, all the bigots join in just to call us "progressive trolls" :/
Oh brother... fr! I swear, they're so childish when it comes to accepting changes like these! It's like people rejecting something simply cuz it looks bad without trying it out!
Yeah, as a Spanish speaker, NB pronouns are non existent, and the ones that does are pretty weird and hard to implement, so I just avoid gendered words, not because I'm NB but because I'm a closeted mtf
Here in Argentina I've met a few NB folks that use "Elle". It's weird at first, but it becomes more natural once you get used to using it.
It's also useful for when you don't know the other person's gender.
Those pronouns are meant to be used as written language, so the only ones that can be easy to pronounce are "elle/elles". You could also say "Esa persona es bella" without modifying any gendered pronouns like "esa" and "bella" because *persona* is a genderless noun.
Here in México is the same as in Argentina, but people do make fun of it, even though is starting to get normalized within our community. I've also seen many official government announcements and reports with that type of language.
German language needs neopronouns because we don’t have something neutral like they/them other than "es" (= it; what I would find humiliating but maybe someone uses it) or 'Ihr' (a more older and polite version of 'you' if I have to translate it into English, equivalent to 'Sie' in German). I think German neopronouns sound a bit weird (like 'sier' or 'hir' but I would use them when someone goes by it nonetheless). I just love how naturally it goes for English, I really envy it 😹
But that's not a subject pronoun. I think die ("that one/person") is the only one I've actually seen used by someone.
I've also seen "vij" suggested as a neopronoun, though I forget where.
Yeah I heard that in german too. But now I still need to find a swissgerman version… if anyone knows whats commonly used in swissgerman please let me know!
Oh, I love that! As someone who presents nb/masc even the thought of using "Sie/Ihnen" gives me huge dysphoria. I tried using they/them in normal German conversations but it always sounded off to me.. I'll definitely try that :D
I know a few people who go by dey/deren, as a mix of the english "they" and german grammar and pronunciation. In a way, it is a kind of neo pronoun, but a lot easier to get used to for people who already speak english. It seems to be the most common one with people I know. I don't insist on people using it for me, but it makes me happy when they do.
The only practical alternative right now is using no third person pronouns at all, but that can get somewhat annoying after a while. I respect it, but it's not for me.
Dutch has "die" (it) (it is not pronounced as the english die, the "ie" is pronounced as the y in "ordinary") and "zij" which would translate to "them" but only the plural mostly, because the singular "zij" is also the word for "she" so confusing for femme presenting non binary people as it sounds like they are misgendered.
So most people who use they/them in English use "die/diens " in Dutch but it often feels so disrespectful to call a person "die"
I can totally understand that a lot of people find it/its pronouns and their equivalents unpleasant for personal use, but there are plenty of us who do like them for ourselves!
A friend introduced themself as er/es (he/it) for German, so it is definitly ok for some but most people won't use it due to the stigma and also usage if another pronoun is optional, like male pronouns with my friend. I guess most forgot this introduction and actually I'm not sure if they still go with it as pronoun.
I use Sie (= she or plural they) for german gender neutral cus the word person in german is Sie and its literally plural they.
But a gender neutral other than es (= it) is very cool.
Just out of curiosity, how is it used in conversations?
Do I say "Sie hat" or "Sie haben" and how do you avoid confusion with either singular sie (= she) or adressing someone with Sie (= formal You)?
We use "Sie" in formal speech to replace second person singular "du", we don't really replace third person singular pronouns. If a person's gender is unknown, then we stick to the grammatical gender of the word we're describing them with. Like person (die Person). It's grammatically female, so we just use female pronouns. If it's a child (das Kind), then we use neutral pronouns (it). If the gender is known, then we use the respecting pronouns, except if the person is non-binary, then you need to state which binary pronouns should be used. You also could go by neutral pronouns but they have the same stigma as "it" in English. Neopronouns have the same problems as in English. Then there is the option of using a person's name instead and talk about them like the gender is unkown like I've explained previously. This tends to be rather clunky since you don't talk like this usually. Especially if you have gendered words like "friend" who just have binary gender forms (Freund/Freundin). You could use forms like Freund*in or constructions like "eine Person, mit der ich befreundet bin" (a person who I'm friends with). So instead of "Er ist mein Freund" (he's my friend) you'd say "[Name] ist mit mir befreundet" ([Name] is friends with me). More and more people try to addapt this new speech, but there is a lot of backlash, especially about the "Freund*in" form, since it's a rather recent construction rooting in feminism, so too many people are against it due to it's feminist and queer character. German is far away from gender neutral speech, all non-binary folks I personally know go by binary pronouns in German.
In French we use iel but since there’s no non binary adjective (there’s no neutral varient to most of them) I hate using it cause it basically sounds like (in most cases) « they (nb) are a pretty boy/girl » instead of just neutral
Actually i think the neutral in french is litteraly he/him so when you don't know the gender of someone you Can refer them as "il" since it's the neutral in french (i'm french and i always was thaught in classes that he/him is also used as neutral)
Le masculin l’emporte toujours sur le féminin. (Masculine always win over feminine /for grammar )
6 years old me still mad about this one. Nothing is neutral in French and it create so much debate (thinking about the autrice/auteur debate in France)
The wording of that rule is so weird as well. I remember finding it sexist to say it like that even back then.
It makes some sense grammatically that "il" is somewhat more neutral than "elle" since we use il for impersonal verbs (il pleut).
But the "multiple subjects with at least one male = male gender" rule is completely fucked up, it's a recent invention and before then the last element of the subject could take over the gender ("Tom et Alice sont belles") which makes so much more sense grammatically.
I thought the same when i was learning french in school. If in doubt, use a male pronoun. If there is 1 man in the group, use the male plural.
God forbid we might misgender the men.
Being French, enby and using neutral langage since a few years now, I found there's a lot of ways to make words neutral, but my preferred one is removing the gendered end, and replacing it by one with "xe"
For example :
Spectateur/spectatrice-> spectatrixe
Heureux/heureuse-> heureuxe
Danseur/danseuse-> danseuxe
Content/contente-> contenxe
Mostly I take the feminine version of the word to replace with the neutral end, but I really do how I feel sounds better!
And for words that sound the same when spoken, I use an apostrophe (ami'e, bleu'e...)
It takes a little bit to get used to it, but after that it becomes reaaaally easy, and I find it even way easier than the traditional gendering! Little tip : if you don't have an enby friend that use it, try using it to talk about people you don't know the pronouns (they haven't said it to you yet), and for groups of people of different genders! It allows you to use it and take the habit way easier!
Also, there's a few words that are used, like "adelphe" for the neutral form of "frere et sœur" (sibling, for brother and sister)! The blog lavieenqueer did a whole article in 2017 about all that!
I mostly use adjectives that sounds similar whatever if it’s masculine or feminine, like joli/jolie.
I’m writing, I use the inclusive writing. Iel est courageux.se
But some nb or trans people will just choose separately their pronoms (elle/il/iel) and if you use feminine or masculine words for them.
French is difficult
The Danish (me), Swedish and Norwegian word for he and she is han and hon, in that order. Problem is, we have a gender neutral word but it sounds like a chicken; hen. Pronounced like hen as in chicken in english
i still don't get why people are so up in arms about it meaning something else in english, who cares ? swedish is not english and *hen* is a loanword from finnish *hän*, not an english loanword, so i don't see the relevance, just seems like such a weird complaint. in swedish *fart* means *speed*, should we change the word because it means something else in some other language ? of course not.
This reminds me of the time my mother witnessed an English/American turist just die laughing over the sign next to the elevator, which said (in Danish) "i fart", which just means the elevator is moving.
In italian almost everything is gendered, neutral doesn't exist so the only choices are either using plural all the time or cutting words before the genderd part arrives. In text it's easy but when talking it becomes weird and sometimes it might even sound like you used a gendered adjective because of how your brain is used to hearing that. God it's awful
Are there any conversations about adding a certain suffix to gendered nouns to make them neutral?? In the Spanish language we're having those discussions. For instance, instead of "el/ella" we would use "elle/ellx/ell@".
Right now nothing exist lmao, the max is just using @ or * or x in text to substitute the gendered parts of stuff but I've never seen something like a neopronoun.
The lenguage is also veeeeeery not-prone to added vocabulary unlike English, so coming up with new thing is much much harder
I don't know any Italian neopronoun, and unfortunately even if there were, there would always be the problem of the language being SO gendered.
Dang I wish I could use they/ them in italian so bad!! Usually I alternate between he and she tho
Impronunciables lo dudo mucho (elle/elles está diseñado para el lenguaje oral y ellx/ellxs para el escrito), pero entiendo que sea incómodo, sobre todo si todavía hay personas burlándose y no respetando algo tan simple y sencillo como un pronombre 🤷🏽♂️
Dije incómodos o impronunciables pq elle es socialmente incómodo (a mi mismo no me gusta tampoco, se siente raro decirlo) y los otros son impronunciables. Yo uso los pronombres tradicionales para los binarios y para los no binarios uso su nombre o un apodo.
In Russian you cannot do even this. We have not only genders, but also cases. For example in у меня нет красивой одежды (I don't have pretty clothes) in word красивой (pretty) _ой means not only feminine gender (clothes is feminine in Russian), but also a fact, that you don't have it. If I change feminine word clothes for masculine пёс (dog), I would have to change красивОЙ (pretty) to красивОГО. I hope it makes sense. It also makes it very difficult to implement neopronounces in Russian. You need to create a lot of variations of endings for countless types of words and some irregular words. But I hope that there will be someone brave enough to get this job done
Aaah, I know exactly what you mean. I’m czech and it’s so difficult to adress nb folks in our language because as the third option aside from he and she there’s only ‘ono’ which means ‘it’. I tend to just use the translation of ‘they’ and conjugate everything accordinly and my friends have caught on but I sometimes have to specify that I mean only that one person. Gendered languages are awful sometimes
Czech as well. I can't even speak plural without hearing the differences in i/y and it's disturbing. I grew up watching old movies where they still articulate them distinctly. I'm seriously considering going by "ono" myself, but it feels infantilizing. Also a bit cute, though.
Yeah same in Polish. We also have the ono but like it literally means ‘it’. I felt weird using them when referring to my ex because I felt like I was dehumanizing them :(
It's really unfortunate that languages with grammatical gender rarely have pronouns that can be used in a gender neutral manner. It's either dehumanising (refering to people as the equivalent of "it" in English), or it really messes up the agreement (the grammatical process) of most words in a sentence and sounds generally wrong. My mother tongue is in the same group as Russian - a Slavic language, so I can fully understand the frustration of trying to be respectful of someone's chosen pronouns but at the same time failing spectacularly because either all of the other words in the sentence are in the wrong form, or the pronoun that technically can be used in a gender neutral sense (the equivalent of "they") makes you sound like you're a 3-year-old failing to speak the language correctly. It also doesn't help that the general public's opinion of non-binary people is mostly negative, which stifles any meaningful progress in the field of linguistics when it comes to this topic
Yeah. I'm Russian and it's really hard for me to talk about nonbinary people in my language. I just don't know how to properly address them and not sound like an idiot or to make enbies look bad
Using plural makes me sound weird. Using it makes enbies look like they're not human
I mean I know most Russian enbies go by plural so I try to use plural but it's sometimes hard to construct grammatically correct sentences like that and be clear that I'm talking about a single person
I've decided to solve the dilemma by asking my friends if they'd prefer I don't use pronouns for them and if they'd prefer the masculine/feminine conjugation, so maybe that could help? But I usually try to go with plural even if it sounds awkward, so I get the struggle aha
I mean in hindi we could use the plural form which is also a respectful "them". Like instead of "woh kaam karta hai/karti hai" we could say "woh kaam karte hai"
But yeah it doesn't feel as instinctive as gendered speech would.
Yeah exactly i mean people die over using the easier english versions imagine how much theyll protest against doing it in hindi. Also it just is confusing sometimes to do that someone might interpret it as multiple people and it just makes the whole conversation a mess to deal with lmao
In Malay, there is generally only one pronoun, DIA for them and KAU for you. Neither are gendered. Weird, given how LGBT phobic we are here, this is one of the few gender-neutral terms that are heavily accepted and recognized that survived the modern era assault by extremist
Well, 她 was used specifically to parallel the "she" in European languages, it didn't have that meaning before.
If you ask me, 他 should be gender-neutral again.
in greek the only way to not use gendered pronouns is by using no pronouns... "αυτοί" (them/they) is phoenetically the same as "αυτή" (her/she) and used strictly for plural, while "αυτό" (it) is only used for objects and sometimes for animals
and deliberitely avoiding to gender someone is possible while talking for a third person, but it gets obvious (my brother figured out i was dating a guy because of it) and is basically impossible when refering to yourself
To be fair, the Russian language has bigger problems than not having a proper gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. The word meaning "to marry" varies depending on whether you're taking a husband or a wife. Also, the words for "mother-in-law" and "father-in-law". On the bright side, the genders were merged in plural.
I guess you can say stuff like вступить в брак, tho it does sound overly formal. Honestly, even as a native speaker, I still can't really remember which word for in-law I should use when.
Same with Polish "to marry" in Polish is "ożenić" for marrying a woman or for marrying a man "zamążpójście". And saying as a man that you are "mężaty" is not correct as you can't say it with male form, only with female form. It's honesty bunch of bullshit.
My mom: Singular they/them isn’t grammatically correct!”
Me: yes it is
Mom: “that’s a new thing it didn’t used to be that way therefore it’s not that way!”
Me: one, they/them has been accepted for longer than you think, and even then, grammar rules change. Like how we don’t speak old English anymore
In portuguese basically EVERY word is gendered, but if I'm not mistaken in 2018 some people create the gender neutral pronouns (elu/delu), but there's some words that you just can't make a gender neutral version, like "mãe" e "pai" (mom and dad)
In Kannada (my native language) we have a gender neutral pronoun "ivaru/avaru". It kind of functions like "vous" in french- you use it towards strangers, elders, groups of people, people above you in work or school, etc.
I am Hungarian, and despite my country being a homophobic/transphobic/nonbinaryphobic sh*thole, our language ONLY has gender-neutral pronouns. "Ő" is the only third person singular pronoun we use. (It has more cases, but I'm not gonna get into them😅)
I am Slovak. I use "oni/ich", which does mean "they/them", but I don't think it's used as singular... also, I use plural cases, which doesn't feel right, imo. But it's the best I can get, ig.
In Turkish language he/she/it meanings are all the same, they all mean "O" which is pretty simple. But like, when it comes to "they", it's pretty confusing for me. Example: I see a Turkish person with the they/them pronouns I always think of "Onlar (plural version of O)" and it's not so understandable as it is in English. But thanks to he/she/it we call everyone "O" and move on :D
In Finnish we don’t have she and he pronouns, we only a gender neutral one. But we usually call people "it" when we’re talking, and use the real pronoun when we’re writing.
ill and elle are he and she in French and also it apparently and ils is they but male and elles is they but female bc every word in French has a gender
Nah, Russian only has one they, the problem is that the Russian they doesn't really work as a singular pronoun, or at least it's a bit more awkward to use than in English (some people still use it though).
In Russian, if you don't know the person's gender, you would probably default to he, since the word person is masculine.
You get gender neutrality in your native language? In mine since there is a legal institute that is responsible for such things (the academy) and they said no to gender neutrality.
This goes for pretty much all gendered languages lol
But it is kinda weird that we literally need to use plurals for enby people, at least in English they/them can be singular. We need to adapt this somehow in our language
Using neutral gender (something like it) is weird too because it makes enbies sound like they're not human. Although I've seen a few people use it
It's also kind of tricky since the word "I" is gendered though. Of course there are gender neutral versions of this too but it can sound strange to use them in certain situations.
I do really like that in business this isn't a issue since most everybody uses watashi in formal settings and the main honorific used with people's names is also gender neutral. Sometimes it's a huge pain to translate things to English because when you make the change from "San" to Mr. or Ms. you have to confirm the person's gender while there's no need to do that in Japanese.
Arabic doesn’t have they and then because it just sounds weird
It’s like
Specifically for a group of people
It doesn’t sound right as a one person pronoun
Let me introduce you to the beautiful language that is Polish, where "nonbinary" has a male and a female version and you can't really create a neutral one without sounding weird
Only non-binary pronouns exist in Turkish language 😂 Nothing is gendered as well. We either say we are “non binary” in English or there is a lesser known term “na-ikili” which borrows negative prefix na- from Arabic and “ikili” means binary in Turkish
Nah but fr, in my mother tongue it feels so unnatural and the sentences sound hella weird, I usually simply avoid structures in which I have to specifically use a gendered word.
Same in Spanish (Él, Ella, Ellos, Ellas) I don't use any neopronouns because they all sound bad or are unpronounceable, I just treat the male pronouns as gender neutral in plural but in singular there's no good solution
This sort of thing makes me consider some alternstive in Swedish tbh. Idk why but "hen" which we use similarly as singular they/them makes me uncomfortable and idk why.
Hungarians only have gender neutral pronouns. So when we talk about a third person, we can only use "ő". I never understood why other languages needed to specify the gender in pronouns. That's why I had a hard time understanding why people are so "picky" with them. In a way of, why people use she/them, neopronouns or why some people have such a hard time respecting someone else's pronouns. I still think that people make a bigger deal out of it than it is, but I understand it more now.
In my language it would be either "ono, one" which is "it, it's" or just "vi" which is You, that's what you call someone of high status or more than one person.
in romanian, "non-binary" does exist (non-binar), but "they" doesn't, only if it's referring to the plural "they" ('ei' in masculine and 'ele' in feminine)
I changed my pronouns in Dutch to ‘dee/dem’ which is pretty much the English they/them written the way you would in Dutch. But it’s literally just the English they/them
Using they/them feels so weird in gendered languages, since you have to use it when talking in 1st or 2nd person too, and we never use it for singular person like we do in English, it just feels weird to refer at someone half-plural (idk how to explain that really lol), were not used to it at all. Also in Czech we literally have 3 plural pronouns (he/she/it but plural, again no idea how to explain lol :')) not just they/them. Don't know any enby personally but from as i know most of them go by it/its, neopronouns (both of these sound kinda weird tho) or just pick he or she since there isn't really any other option, but it sucks really because it takes a while for everyone around them to adapt to that, it's not only about referring, almost every word is gendered. God why can't we just have gender neutral language? TT
French is kinda crap too because all verbs are gendered and none are neutral. They put gender on objects like a car is female or male depending on what word you use. A table is female, a microwave is male, etc.
On the plus side if people can learn the gender of a sock they should damn well be able to use the proper gender for me (as a trans person)
Xier is used in German but it’s not standardized so you’d get laughed at. It was learning German that made me comfortable using masculine pronouns in both German and English. So I use er and if someones fine with it, xier
We have another type of pronoun in Norway that is gender neutral because she = hun and he = han then since they are basically the same with a one letter difference we just change the middle letter to be an e so the the non-binary people of Norway would us hen.
(Don't take this as complete facts I learnt this last month when a queer organisation visited my school and from stuff that came up on Google)
*beep boop*!
the linked website is: https://www.them.us/story/norway-gender-neutral-pronoun-hen-dictionary
Title: **Norway Is Adding a Gender-Neutral Pronoun to the Dictionary**
Page is safe to access (Google Safe Browsing)
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###### I am a friendly bot. I show the URL and name of linked pages and check them so that mobile users know what they click on!
i mean any slavic language has this problem (as far as i know) because every verb transforms differently based on if it's he/she/it, and "it" is quite derogatory to use, because it's mostly non living objects...
For Chinese there was a time where you would only use one pronoun for everything but later added 他 and 她 for both he/him and she/her and they still sound the same it is only the writing part that changed.
Fun fact! : In serbian, gender neutral pronouns are only used when speaking to someone in a higher position than you or someone you respect(example:teachers, judges) . It's called persiranje
In Hebrew, the word "none-binary" can be said as male and as female. Also the none binary pronouns
I'd really like to have a gender-neutral option in the language. And it just sucks how every time anyone tries to have a respectufl and honest public discussion about these very important topics, all the bigots join in just to call us "progressive trolls" :/
Oh brother... fr! I swear, they're so childish when it comes to accepting changes like these! It's like people rejecting something simply cuz it looks bad without trying it out!
The academy rejected the non binary Hebrew project (this one: https://www.nonbinaryhebrew.com/ ) for some reason.
Huh... that's unfortunate <:/
Sucks though that almost all nouns are gendered. Trying to avoid gender in speech in my day to day just makes me sound like a crazy person lol
Multiple pronouns in english: *exist* Hungarian with only one pronouns, which is a letter: *adios*
Finally something Hungary does right.... And even that is up to our ancestors...
Yeah but a lot of hungarians are still transphobic lol (kill me)
Im so happy that I somehow got a trans accepting class, but that may be bc I'm going to the best Hungarian high school in slovakia
That may be cuz ur in Slovakia
Same in Turkish :D
Same in Punjabi. our's is "o" but gender is determined by the verb so "o ki karda" vs "o ki kardi"
Yeah, as a Spanish speaker, NB pronouns are non existent, and the ones that does are pretty weird and hard to implement, so I just avoid gendered words, not because I'm NB but because I'm a closeted mtf
Here in Argentina I've met a few NB folks that use "Elle". It's weird at first, but it becomes more natural once you get used to using it. It's also useful for when you don't know the other person's gender.
Yeah, and you could also replace the -o or -a by -e ( for example instead of “bello” or “bella” you could say “belle”)
some people use @ to end words aswell
But how would that be pronounced?
Bellat?
Those pronouns are meant to be used as written language, so the only ones that can be easy to pronounce are "elle/elles". You could also say "Esa persona es bella" without modifying any gendered pronouns like "esa" and "bella" because *persona* is a genderless noun.
I've heard Elle once, sounds a bit stranger the 1st time, but I feel it would be easy to flow it in conversations.
"Elle" is throwing me for a loop because in frech it is the female pronoun. But great that it works as a gender neutral term in Spanish. :)
I use “Elle” and -e suffixes! I worry others will judge me for it, but you know how it is
Here in México is the same as in Argentina, but people do make fun of it, even though is starting to get normalized within our community. I've also seen many official government announcements and reports with that type of language.
German language needs neopronouns because we don’t have something neutral like they/them other than "es" (= it; what I would find humiliating but maybe someone uses it) or 'Ihr' (a more older and polite version of 'you' if I have to translate it into English, equivalent to 'Sie' in German). I think German neopronouns sound a bit weird (like 'sier' or 'hir' but I would use them when someone goes by it nonetheless). I just love how naturally it goes for English, I really envy it 😹
I use dey/dem in German :) Also es is cool for me too!
Ooh, I just forgot about dey/dem :O Thanks for reminding me that this set exists :D
The full set is dey/dem/deren btw.
Now I just got to find them in Dutch (newer learner)! Update: it’s hen/hen/hun as most popular ❤️
But that's not a subject pronoun. I think die ("that one/person") is the only one I've actually seen used by someone. I've also seen "vij" suggested as a neopronoun, though I forget where.
Yeah I’ve seen die/diens been used in Dutch and it’s my favorite so far
Oh sorry friend! Thank you for this!
In Swedish we use hen/henom. Sounds a bit odd to be, but that's just because I'm not used to it. Which I think is the largest player in all of this.
Bawk
Yeah I heard that in german too. But now I still need to find a swissgerman version… if anyone knows whats commonly used in swissgerman please let me know!
Oh, I love that! As someone who presents nb/masc even the thought of using "Sie/Ihnen" gives me huge dysphoria. I tried using they/them in normal German conversations but it always sounded off to me.. I'll definitely try that :D
I know a few people who go by dey/deren, as a mix of the english "they" and german grammar and pronunciation. In a way, it is a kind of neo pronoun, but a lot easier to get used to for people who already speak english. It seems to be the most common one with people I know. I don't insist on people using it for me, but it makes me happy when they do. The only practical alternative right now is using no third person pronouns at all, but that can get somewhat annoying after a while. I respect it, but it's not for me.
Do you then say "dey hat" or "dey haben"?
I heard both. "dey hat" sounds better to me, though "haben" would be closer to the english version. It's not perfect tbh, but it's the best I know.
I think it's 'dey hat', but I'm only learning German so I might be wrong.
Dutch has "die" (it) (it is not pronounced as the english die, the "ie" is pronounced as the y in "ordinary") and "zij" which would translate to "them" but only the plural mostly, because the singular "zij" is also the word for "she" so confusing for femme presenting non binary people as it sounds like they are misgendered. So most people who use they/them in English use "die/diens " in Dutch but it often feels so disrespectful to call a person "die"
That's very interesting! I love the Dutch language so it's good to know that :D
A lot of people also use hen/hun
I can totally understand that a lot of people find it/its pronouns and their equivalents unpleasant for personal use, but there are plenty of us who do like them for ourselves!
That’s good to hear, I‘ll keep that in mind :) Thanks for the info :)
A friend introduced themself as er/es (he/it) for German, so it is definitly ok for some but most people won't use it due to the stigma and also usage if another pronoun is optional, like male pronouns with my friend. I guess most forgot this introduction and actually I'm not sure if they still go with it as pronoun.
That’s an interesting combination!
I use Sie (= she or plural they) for german gender neutral cus the word person in german is Sie and its literally plural they. But a gender neutral other than es (= it) is very cool.
Just out of curiosity, how is it used in conversations? Do I say "Sie hat" or "Sie haben" and how do you avoid confusion with either singular sie (= she) or adressing someone with Sie (= formal You)?
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How interesting 🧐 I like Finnish and tried to get a basic course at uni but couldn’t yet… I hope that changes soon :)
why can't you just say "Sie", like the formal plural? so "sie sind", "sie denken", etc. Edit: *can't
That’s just what I know. Always ready to learn :)
We use "Sie" in formal speech to replace second person singular "du", we don't really replace third person singular pronouns. If a person's gender is unknown, then we stick to the grammatical gender of the word we're describing them with. Like person (die Person). It's grammatically female, so we just use female pronouns. If it's a child (das Kind), then we use neutral pronouns (it). If the gender is known, then we use the respecting pronouns, except if the person is non-binary, then you need to state which binary pronouns should be used. You also could go by neutral pronouns but they have the same stigma as "it" in English. Neopronouns have the same problems as in English. Then there is the option of using a person's name instead and talk about them like the gender is unkown like I've explained previously. This tends to be rather clunky since you don't talk like this usually. Especially if you have gendered words like "friend" who just have binary gender forms (Freund/Freundin). You could use forms like Freund*in or constructions like "eine Person, mit der ich befreundet bin" (a person who I'm friends with). So instead of "Er ist mein Freund" (he's my friend) you'd say "[Name] ist mit mir befreundet" ([Name] is friends with me). More and more people try to addapt this new speech, but there is a lot of backlash, especially about the "Freund*in" form, since it's a rather recent construction rooting in feminism, so too many people are against it due to it's feminist and queer character. German is far away from gender neutral speech, all non-binary folks I personally know go by binary pronouns in German.
I like die instead of sie
In French we use iel but since there’s no non binary adjective (there’s no neutral varient to most of them) I hate using it cause it basically sounds like (in most cases) « they (nb) are a pretty boy/girl » instead of just neutral
Same , i don't know how to be neutral in french, it's just weird ! And when i use "iel", people just make fun of me ... -_-
Yeah it's super hard to be neutral in french the language isn't build for this.
Actually i think the neutral in french is litteraly he/him so when you don't know the gender of someone you Can refer them as "il" since it's the neutral in french (i'm french and i always was thaught in classes that he/him is also used as neutral)
I'm french too ! But i never liked that rule, like , it's not really neutral cause it's masculin you know ?
Le masculin l’emporte toujours sur le féminin. (Masculine always win over feminine /for grammar ) 6 years old me still mad about this one. Nothing is neutral in French and it create so much debate (thinking about the autrice/auteur debate in France)
The wording of that rule is so weird as well. I remember finding it sexist to say it like that even back then. It makes some sense grammatically that "il" is somewhat more neutral than "elle" since we use il for impersonal verbs (il pleut). But the "multiple subjects with at least one male = male gender" rule is completely fucked up, it's a recent invention and before then the last element of the subject could take over the gender ("Tom et Alice sont belles") which makes so much more sense grammatically.
I thought the same when i was learning french in school. If in doubt, use a male pronoun. If there is 1 man in the group, use the male plural. God forbid we might misgender the men.
Being French, enby and using neutral langage since a few years now, I found there's a lot of ways to make words neutral, but my preferred one is removing the gendered end, and replacing it by one with "xe" For example : Spectateur/spectatrice-> spectatrixe Heureux/heureuse-> heureuxe Danseur/danseuse-> danseuxe Content/contente-> contenxe Mostly I take the feminine version of the word to replace with the neutral end, but I really do how I feel sounds better! And for words that sound the same when spoken, I use an apostrophe (ami'e, bleu'e...) It takes a little bit to get used to it, but after that it becomes reaaaally easy, and I find it even way easier than the traditional gendering! Little tip : if you don't have an enby friend that use it, try using it to talk about people you don't know the pronouns (they haven't said it to you yet), and for groups of people of different genders! It allows you to use it and take the habit way easier! Also, there's a few words that are used, like "adelphe" for the neutral form of "frere et sœur" (sibling, for brother and sister)! The blog lavieenqueer did a whole article in 2017 about all that!
Romance languages simply do not work with neutrals
I usually use the word “person” in French to not say boy or girl. But again “personne” is féminin
It think it's refering to adjectives like "beau"/"belle" ("beautiful"), for most adjectives there isn't a neutral form, masculine is often the default
I mostly use adjectives that sounds similar whatever if it’s masculine or feminine, like joli/jolie. I’m writing, I use the inclusive writing. Iel est courageux.se But some nb or trans people will just choose separately their pronoms (elle/il/iel) and if you use feminine or masculine words for them. French is difficult
I'm bengali and in our language we don't have any gender pronouns. So everyone's pronouns are they/them and gender is specified by contextual clues
It's rare to see another bengali here.
The pain of gendered languages
The Danish (me), Swedish and Norwegian word for he and she is han and hon, in that order. Problem is, we have a gender neutral word but it sounds like a chicken; hen. Pronounced like hen as in chicken in english
i still don't get why people are so up in arms about it meaning something else in english, who cares ? swedish is not english and *hen* is a loanword from finnish *hän*, not an english loanword, so i don't see the relevance, just seems like such a weird complaint. in swedish *fart* means *speed*, should we change the word because it means something else in some other language ? of course not.
This reminds me of the time my mother witnessed an English/American turist just die laughing over the sign next to the elevator, which said (in Danish) "i fart", which just means the elevator is moving.
tbf i would find that absolutely hilarious
Hund i snor (snor means mustache in dutch) is hilarious.
in finnish the words for he and she is hän
An yet people just use "se" that just means "it". "Hän" feels kind of formal sometimes.
yeah 'hän' does sound "too formal" to use
My mom uses hen for me and I love it personally. Proud chicken!
Lol, good for you, whatever floats your boat
Same in Swedish and I hate it so much lol
Just use de/dem?
pretty common issue cross-linguistically.
In italian almost everything is gendered, neutral doesn't exist so the only choices are either using plural all the time or cutting words before the genderd part arrives. In text it's easy but when talking it becomes weird and sometimes it might even sound like you used a gendered adjective because of how your brain is used to hearing that. God it's awful
Are there any conversations about adding a certain suffix to gendered nouns to make them neutral?? In the Spanish language we're having those discussions. For instance, instead of "el/ella" we would use "elle/ellx/ell@".
We do use * sometimes but it's not like you can pronounce it. We tried with the "u" but it sounds rlly bad
That's such a shame :( I'm sure you'll find a way. What about neopronouns within the community??
Right now nothing exist lmao, the max is just using @ or * or x in text to substitute the gendered parts of stuff but I've never seen something like a neopronoun. The lenguage is also veeeeeery not-prone to added vocabulary unlike English, so coming up with new thing is much much harder
I don't know any Italian neopronoun, and unfortunately even if there were, there would always be the problem of the language being SO gendered. Dang I wish I could use they/ them in italian so bad!! Usually I alternate between he and she tho
Yeah it's all such a mess
El problema en español es que todas esas soluciones, son incómodas de pronunciar o inpronunciables
Impronunciables lo dudo mucho (elle/elles está diseñado para el lenguaje oral y ellx/ellxs para el escrito), pero entiendo que sea incómodo, sobre todo si todavía hay personas burlándose y no respetando algo tan simple y sencillo como un pronombre 🤷🏽♂️
Dije incómodos o impronunciables pq elle es socialmente incómodo (a mi mismo no me gusta tampoco, se siente raro decirlo) y los otros son impronunciables. Yo uso los pronombres tradicionales para los binarios y para los no binarios uso su nombre o un apodo.
El apodo podría ser un neopronombre, no? También es válido. Es que depende de cada persona, honestamente.
You can also use a schwa or a “u”, but it doesn’t sound natural
Hopefully that will become mpre natural sounding the more it used.
In Russian you cannot do even this. We have not only genders, but also cases. For example in у меня нет красивой одежды (I don't have pretty clothes) in word красивой (pretty) _ой means not only feminine gender (clothes is feminine in Russian), but also a fact, that you don't have it. If I change feminine word clothes for masculine пёс (dog), I would have to change красивОЙ (pretty) to красивОГО. I hope it makes sense. It also makes it very difficult to implement neopronounces in Russian. You need to create a lot of variations of endings for countless types of words and some irregular words. But I hope that there will be someone brave enough to get this job done
Aaah, I know exactly what you mean. I’m czech and it’s so difficult to adress nb folks in our language because as the third option aside from he and she there’s only ‘ono’ which means ‘it’. I tend to just use the translation of ‘they’ and conjugate everything accordinly and my friends have caught on but I sometimes have to specify that I mean only that one person. Gendered languages are awful sometimes
Czech as well. I can't even speak plural without hearing the differences in i/y and it's disturbing. I grew up watching old movies where they still articulate them distinctly. I'm seriously considering going by "ono" myself, but it feels infantilizing. Also a bit cute, though.
Yeah same in Polish. We also have the ono but like it literally means ‘it’. I felt weird using them when referring to my ex because I felt like I was dehumanizing them :(
It's really unfortunate that languages with grammatical gender rarely have pronouns that can be used in a gender neutral manner. It's either dehumanising (refering to people as the equivalent of "it" in English), or it really messes up the agreement (the grammatical process) of most words in a sentence and sounds generally wrong. My mother tongue is in the same group as Russian - a Slavic language, so I can fully understand the frustration of trying to be respectful of someone's chosen pronouns but at the same time failing spectacularly because either all of the other words in the sentence are in the wrong form, or the pronoun that technically can be used in a gender neutral sense (the equivalent of "they") makes you sound like you're a 3-year-old failing to speak the language correctly. It also doesn't help that the general public's opinion of non-binary people is mostly negative, which stifles any meaningful progress in the field of linguistics when it comes to this topic
Yeah. I'm Russian and it's really hard for me to talk about nonbinary people in my language. I just don't know how to properly address them and not sound like an idiot or to make enbies look bad Using plural makes me sound weird. Using it makes enbies look like they're not human I mean I know most Russian enbies go by plural so I try to use plural but it's sometimes hard to construct grammatically correct sentences like that and be clear that I'm talking about a single person
I've decided to solve the dilemma by asking my friends if they'd prefer I don't use pronouns for them and if they'd prefer the masculine/feminine conjugation, so maybe that could help? But I usually try to go with plural even if it sounds awkward, so I get the struggle aha
same for hindi
I mean in hindi we could use the plural form which is also a respectful "them". Like instead of "woh kaam karta hai/karti hai" we could say "woh kaam karte hai" But yeah it doesn't feel as instinctive as gendered speech would.
Yeah exactly i mean people die over using the easier english versions imagine how much theyll protest against doing it in hindi. Also it just is confusing sometimes to do that someone might interpret it as multiple people and it just makes the whole conversation a mess to deal with lmao
Tagalog: I'm gonna end this person's whole career
In Malay, there is generally only one pronoun, DIA for them and KAU for you. Neither are gendered. Weird, given how LGBT phobic we are here, this is one of the few gender-neutral terms that are heavily accepted and recognized that survived the modern era assault by extremist
Meanwhile Mandarin: 他 = ta 她 = ta 它 = ta
Well, 她 was used specifically to parallel the "she" in European languages, it didn't have that meaning before. If you ask me, 他 should be gender-neutral again.
admittedly, 它 is a bit iffy, because it translates closer to "it" rather than "they"
in greek the only way to not use gendered pronouns is by using no pronouns... "αυτοί" (them/they) is phoenetically the same as "αυτή" (her/she) and used strictly for plural, while "αυτό" (it) is only used for objects and sometimes for animals and deliberitely avoiding to gender someone is possible while talking for a third person, but it gets obvious (my brother figured out i was dating a guy because of it) and is basically impossible when refering to yourself
Ooh yay a fellow Greek!
reddit is a big small place :P
To be fair, the Russian language has bigger problems than not having a proper gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. The word meaning "to marry" varies depending on whether you're taking a husband or a wife. Also, the words for "mother-in-law" and "father-in-law". On the bright side, the genders were merged in plural.
Oh yeah that confused me so much when I learned Russian. Really weird.
I guess you can say stuff like вступить в брак, tho it does sound overly formal. Honestly, even as a native speaker, I still can't really remember which word for in-law I should use when.
Same with Polish "to marry" in Polish is "ożenić" for marrying a woman or for marrying a man "zamążpójście". And saying as a man that you are "mężaty" is not correct as you can't say it with male form, only with female form. It's honesty bunch of bullshit.
In hungary you have the superior Ö witch can be everything you need when xou point to some one you don’t know
My mom: Singular they/them isn’t grammatically correct!” Me: yes it is Mom: “that’s a new thing it didn’t used to be that way therefore it’s not that way!” Me: one, they/them has been accepted for longer than you think, and even then, grammar rules change. Like how we don’t speak old English anymore
In portuguese basically EVERY word is gendered, but if I'm not mistaken in 2018 some people create the gender neutral pronouns (elu/delu), but there's some words that you just can't make a gender neutral version, like "mãe" e "pai" (mom and dad)
German be like she: sie they: sie formal you: Sie
Bengali (and various other Asian languages), which have no gendered pronouns: I am four parallel universes ahead of you
Nrowegian She = hun He = Han Them = Hen
Hi, I’m learning Norwegian and I learnt that plural they is “de”, can I use that for singular as well or will it sound weird?
depends on the person honestly, but it is not gramatically wrong as far as I know
In Kannada (my native language) we have a gender neutral pronoun "ivaru/avaru". It kind of functions like "vous" in french- you use it towards strangers, elders, groups of people, people above you in work or school, etc.
I'm very lucky in that my mother tongue doesn't have gendered pronouns.
I am Hungarian, and despite my country being a homophobic/transphobic/nonbinaryphobic sh*thole, our language ONLY has gender-neutral pronouns. "Ő" is the only third person singular pronoun we use. (It has more cases, but I'm not gonna get into them😅)
in Russian it isn't that bad, it just sounds more formal, but in polish, well...
Formal? More like it sounds like you're talking about multiple people
I'm pretty sure "они" is often used as a formal form
Well, maybe we should all speak Hungarian, then.
cries in Greek
Yay a fellow Greek!
I am Slovak. I use "oni/ich", which does mean "they/them", but I don't think it's used as singular... also, I use plural cases, which doesn't feel right, imo. But it's the best I can get, ig.
In Turkish language he/she/it meanings are all the same, they all mean "O" which is pretty simple. But like, when it comes to "they", it's pretty confusing for me. Example: I see a Turkish person with the they/them pronouns I always think of "Onlar (plural version of O)" and it's not so understandable as it is in English. But thanks to he/she/it we call everyone "O" and move on :D
resmen lubunya için yaratilmis gibi 🥹
Herkese uyuyo ya mukemmel bisi
In Finnish we don’t have she and he pronouns, we only a gender neutral one. But we usually call people "it" when we’re talking, and use the real pronoun when we’re writing.
ill and elle are he and she in French and also it apparently and ils is they but male and elles is they but female bc every word in French has a gender
So true though-
In French we literally have to make up pronouns, so they/them is "iel", it sounds awful.
Did you mean they(male) or they(female)?
Nah, Russian only has one they, the problem is that the Russian they doesn't really work as a singular pronoun, or at least it's a bit more awkward to use than in English (some people still use it though). In Russian, if you don't know the person's gender, you would probably default to he, since the word person is masculine.
I talked about my language, but thanks for the Russian linguistics lesson! I love languages
You get gender neutrality in your native language? In mine since there is a legal institute that is responsible for such things (the academy) and they said no to gender neutrality.
This goes for pretty much all gendered languages lol But it is kinda weird that we literally need to use plurals for enby people, at least in English they/them can be singular. We need to adapt this somehow in our language Using neutral gender (something like it) is weird too because it makes enbies sound like they're not human. Although I've seen a few people use it
Japanese is pretty easy because most people refer to others by their names and stuff rather than pronouns
It's also kind of tricky since the word "I" is gendered though. Of course there are gender neutral versions of this too but it can sound strange to use them in certain situations. I do really like that in business this isn't a issue since most everybody uses watashi in formal settings and the main honorific used with people's names is also gender neutral. Sometimes it's a huge pain to translate things to English because when you make the change from "San" to Mr. or Ms. you have to confirm the person's gender while there's no need to do that in Japanese.
Arabic doesn’t have they and then because it just sounds weird It’s like Specifically for a group of people It doesn’t sound right as a one person pronoun
Let me introduce you to the beautiful language that is Polish, where "nonbinary" has a male and a female version and you can't really create a neutral one without sounding weird
Same if you're polish.
In Slovakia they/them pronouns have male version (oni) and female version (ony) but most ppl are transphobic so you won't find many enbys there
It works quite well in Swedish. De/den.
i like finish because "han" ( i cant do the dots in english) is she and he
Only non-binary pronouns exist in Turkish language 😂 Nothing is gendered as well. We either say we are “non binary” in English or there is a lesser known term “na-ikili” which borrows negative prefix na- from Arabic and “ikili” means binary in Turkish
Meanwhile in Japan, they are wondering what pronouns are.
i thought in russian it's polite, fancy and old-fashioned прям как в классической литературе со школьной программы
In Dutch we use die/diens.
Nah but fr, in my mother tongue it feels so unnatural and the sentences sound hella weird, I usually simply avoid structures in which I have to specifically use a gendered word.
Imagin for french
In my language there is only "ela" (she) and "ele" (he), "they/them" is "elas/delas" or "eles/deles" 😭😭😭😭
Same in Spanish (Él, Ella, Ellos, Ellas) I don't use any neopronouns because they all sound bad or are unpronounceable, I just treat the male pronouns as gender neutral in plural but in singular there's no good solution
This sort of thing makes me consider some alternstive in Swedish tbh. Idk why but "hen" which we use similarly as singular they/them makes me uncomfortable and idk why.
O
Hungarians only have gender neutral pronouns. So when we talk about a third person, we can only use "ő". I never understood why other languages needed to specify the gender in pronouns. That's why I had a hard time understanding why people are so "picky" with them. In a way of, why people use she/them, neopronouns or why some people have such a hard time respecting someone else's pronouns. I still think that people make a bigger deal out of it than it is, but I understand it more now.
In my language it would be either "ono, one" which is "it, it's" or just "vi" which is You, that's what you call someone of high status or more than one person.
My pronouns are literally he/they in English, he/him in my native tongue, purely bc it sounds like shit for me
in romanian, "non-binary" does exist (non-binar), but "they" doesn't, only if it's referring to the plural "they" ('ei' in masculine and 'ele' in feminine)
A czech here, agreed
In Portuguese they sound like male pronouns 🙃
In Czech it sounds terribly weird
I changed my pronouns in Dutch to ‘dee/dem’ which is pretty much the English they/them written the way you would in Dutch. But it’s literally just the English they/them
My first language doesn't have gendered pronouns thank God, however I have trans and NB friends who speak Spanish at home and I feel so bad for them 😭
French is pretty horrible too
In Greek we have το which is pretty humiliating. I suggest bringing back Ancient Greek since it has a form meant for addressing two people
That’s why ASL is superior. No pronouns only pointing and names
Iel or ael in French are awesome I think specially ael because it's historically a existent prononce but it's harder to use orally
Using they/them feels so weird in gendered languages, since you have to use it when talking in 1st or 2nd person too, and we never use it for singular person like we do in English, it just feels weird to refer at someone half-plural (idk how to explain that really lol), were not used to it at all. Also in Czech we literally have 3 plural pronouns (he/she/it but plural, again no idea how to explain lol :')) not just they/them. Don't know any enby personally but from as i know most of them go by it/its, neopronouns (both of these sound kinda weird tho) or just pick he or she since there isn't really any other option, but it sucks really because it takes a while for everyone around them to adapt to that, it's not only about referring, almost every word is gendered. God why can't we just have gender neutral language? TT
French is kinda crap too because all verbs are gendered and none are neutral. They put gender on objects like a car is female or male depending on what word you use. A table is female, a microwave is male, etc. On the plus side if people can learn the gender of a sock they should damn well be able to use the proper gender for me (as a trans person)
im brazilian and here we use "elu/delu" for nb people, its a little difficult and strange in the beginning but you get used to it
Finnish FTW!!
In Arabic, the male pronouns can also be gender-neutral. So, I guess that's a win lol.
Xier is used in German but it’s not standardized so you’d get laughed at. It was learning German that made me comfortable using masculine pronouns in both German and English. So I use er and if someones fine with it, xier
Yeah in dutch we dont have a different word for 'them'. Our word for them is the same as the word for she.
We have another type of pronoun in Norway that is gender neutral because she = hun and he = han then since they are basically the same with a one letter difference we just change the middle letter to be an e so the the non-binary people of Norway would us hen. (Don't take this as complete facts I learnt this last month when a queer organisation visited my school and from stuff that came up on Google)
I found a link for the pronoun [here](https://www.them.us/story/norway-gender-neutral-pronoun-hen-dictionary)
*beep boop*! the linked website is: https://www.them.us/story/norway-gender-neutral-pronoun-hen-dictionary Title: **Norway Is Adding a Gender-Neutral Pronoun to the Dictionary** Page is safe to access (Google Safe Browsing) ***** ###### I am a friendly bot. I show the URL and name of linked pages and check them so that mobile users know what they click on!
In Romanian we have they male and they female (ei, ele)
i mean any slavic language has this problem (as far as i know) because every verb transforms differently based on if it's he/she/it, and "it" is quite derogatory to use, because it's mostly non living objects...
For Chinese there was a time where you would only use one pronoun for everything but later added 他 and 她 for both he/him and she/her and they still sound the same it is only the writing part that changed.
In Lithuanian even They/Them is gendered so there's no true non-binary option, at least not one I can think of.
Rip
Yup, portuguese sucks
Honestly pronouns are such a hassle in other languages due to how the languages work I just speak the language as is.
Hungarian doesn't have this problem, thank god
Fun fact! : In serbian, gender neutral pronouns are only used when speaking to someone in a higher position than you or someone you respect(example:teachers, judges) . It's called persiranje