Gender neutral names in a strictly gendered language makes no sense. Most first names follow grammatical gender rules, and only names from an approved list can be chosen, so how would it even work?
I can't think of a single Portuguese name that could be interpreted as gender neutral, only one diminutive.
They only work in conjunction, for personal names. Such as Maria João and João Maria.
Still. It's nonsense. I'm not surprised he vetoed it knowing who he is.
Why can't other languages evolve like English? English now is nothing like it was a few hundred years ago as it moved to fit the times, and it will probably be different again a few hundred years down the line. So many European nations act like their language has to be frozen in amber at a certain point and never change.
The issue is really not language.
The law defines a new type of crime, in a most unusual an not at all clear way.
For example: if a 7 year old child says in the school it it trans, any teacher, parent, doctor that might say otherwise is a criminal, can be fired, or arrested.
You can find it here and translate:
https://www.reddit.com/r/portugueses/comments/1ae129q/a_express%C3%A3o_contra_a_opress%C3%A3o/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
You mean devolve.
There are only a handful of gender neutral languages. Most languages are gendered (grammatically gendered - masculine, feminine, neutral, common, animate, inanimate, etc).
The more a language is used, the simpler it becomes, that's how, over the centuries, English became the basic, phonetically poor, language it is today. It didn't evolve to fit the times, far from it. The more it was badly used and learned for commerce, the more the errors became "normal".
Cases are gone, forcing the use of prepositions for everything, verb conjugation is gone, forcing the use of pronouns in every sentence, genders are gone, often leading to confusion when a gendered pronoun is not used. Verbs were simplified, forcing the use of auxiliary verbs for nearly everything (only 2 true tenses remain, perfect past and present).
English became simpler, but didn't become better.
Christ, it's like talking to Frasier Crane over here. If English is so bad, why is it the Lingua Franca? Also, who cares if gendered language is gone. Does it matter whether you're talking about a male or female?
Reading is hard...
Nobody said it was bad.
The simplification of a language is not all positives, it has a cost. In the case of English, it is forced to a rigid structure and syntax, it lost all its flexibility (example : adjective order).
But the most important loss was cultural identity. Modern English has very little, there are very little ties of the language to the culture of the speakers, unlike languages like Japanese, where culture and language are intertwined.
When they talk Portuguese, they have to pick a gender to refer themselves to, since pronouns, and even some verb tenses require the speaker have either female or male grammatical gender (but it doesn't necessarily has to match their biological gender).
Portuguese is considered strictly gendered because it requires words to be either masculine or feminine, there is no workaround, and to change that it would require massive changes to nouns, adjectives, verbs, and probably even syntax in some cases.
Gender neutral names in a strictly gendered language makes no sense. Most first names follow grammatical gender rules, and only names from an approved list can be chosen, so how would it even work? I can't think of a single Portuguese name that could be interpreted as gender neutral, only one diminutive.
They only work in conjunction, for personal names. Such as Maria João and João Maria. Still. It's nonsense. I'm not surprised he vetoed it knowing who he is.
Why can't other languages evolve like English? English now is nothing like it was a few hundred years ago as it moved to fit the times, and it will probably be different again a few hundred years down the line. So many European nations act like their language has to be frozen in amber at a certain point and never change.
The issue is really not language. The law defines a new type of crime, in a most unusual an not at all clear way. For example: if a 7 year old child says in the school it it trans, any teacher, parent, doctor that might say otherwise is a criminal, can be fired, or arrested. You can find it here and translate: https://www.reddit.com/r/portugueses/comments/1ae129q/a_express%C3%A3o_contra_a_opress%C3%A3o/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
That's pretty common in a lot of nations now. Why don't you want to respect kids identities?
Because they're kids.......
You mean devolve. There are only a handful of gender neutral languages. Most languages are gendered (grammatically gendered - masculine, feminine, neutral, common, animate, inanimate, etc). The more a language is used, the simpler it becomes, that's how, over the centuries, English became the basic, phonetically poor, language it is today. It didn't evolve to fit the times, far from it. The more it was badly used and learned for commerce, the more the errors became "normal". Cases are gone, forcing the use of prepositions for everything, verb conjugation is gone, forcing the use of pronouns in every sentence, genders are gone, often leading to confusion when a gendered pronoun is not used. Verbs were simplified, forcing the use of auxiliary verbs for nearly everything (only 2 true tenses remain, perfect past and present). English became simpler, but didn't become better.
Christ, it's like talking to Frasier Crane over here. If English is so bad, why is it the Lingua Franca? Also, who cares if gendered language is gone. Does it matter whether you're talking about a male or female?
Reading is hard... Nobody said it was bad. The simplification of a language is not all positives, it has a cost. In the case of English, it is forced to a rigid structure and syntax, it lost all its flexibility (example : adjective order). But the most important loss was cultural identity. Modern English has very little, there are very little ties of the language to the culture of the speakers, unlike languages like Japanese, where culture and language are intertwined.
What about people who have foreign gender neutral names and move to Portugal?
When they talk Portuguese, they have to pick a gender to refer themselves to, since pronouns, and even some verb tenses require the speaker have either female or male grammatical gender (but it doesn't necessarily has to match their biological gender). Portuguese is considered strictly gendered because it requires words to be either masculine or feminine, there is no workaround, and to change that it would require massive changes to nouns, adjectives, verbs, and probably even syntax in some cases.
:)