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Languages with gendered nouns/being agender


Pinball Wizard

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Pinball Wizard

I'm curious to know if those who go by they/them in a language that has gendered nouns, and different endings for the he/she/they conjugation, what that's like (speaking, writing, being addressed, etc). I suppose if you're saying "The flower" in french, it doesn't matter to you personally what gender is being said here. I also know there's pushes to make gendered languages un-gendered or dual gendered...

 

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There's no equivalent of they/them in my language, sadly. I somewhat grudgingly tolerate female pronouns, simply because I prefer "going with the flow" to making things unnecessarily complicated.

Since you mentioned gendered nouns: I find it quite interesting to compare different languages. For instance, the grammatical gender of the German word for "flower" is feminine, and so are the words "love", and "silence" and "sun", while the last three words are male words in Spanish. From a psycholinguistic viewpoint that's pretty intriguing, because, you know. Language shapes our perception of reality.

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I'm from Greece and my mother tongue is Greek, which is a very gendered language. It has "he", "she" and "it" equivalents, but no "they" equivalent. The "it" equivalent is used primarily for objects, but is also used for small children and for the word "individual". The word "human" is gendered though. (he/him).

 

Many Greek enbies either use the opposite gendered pronoun, use both he/she pronouns interchangeably or use the pronouns used for their AGAB for convenience. Some choose to go by it/its though, (as in "individual", not as in "object"), out of necessity to avoid being gendered, but transphobes use "it/its" as an insult against all trans people and reclaiming it is really difficult.

 

When I refer to myself (agender/genderless), I try to formulate my sentences in a way that no gendered suffixes are required. I also sometimes say a word referring to myself crearly but mumble the gendered suffix in the end, so that people don't know if I gendered myself "he", "she" or "it". When I'm with another trans friend of mine, I feel comfortable enough using "it/its", because I know that my friend won't misunderstand me. We also talk to each other in English, because English has terms that make our conversations easier, and because then we can use "they/them" for me.

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@Pinball Wizard french? ^^

 

 I try to formulate my sentences in a way that doesn't gender me, like you @Life Of Tass, for example by using passive voice copiously...

For those who know french, ''inclusive writing'' can work, for lack of a better alternative... but I really do hope feminists won't gender ''doctor'' because no, that wouldn't help gender equality. And the feminine form of doctor is just ugly. 

But, as for pronouns... our ''it'' is not even usable as a pronoun. All objects have a gendered pronoun. Even the rain is a she. I really don't know what enbies can use as pronouns. 

English is much better at that, and I sometimes switch to that language as well. Only in written, though, because my accent is shite. 

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@Pinball WizardThey've got 'iel' instead of il/elle now in French. There are some people who use that.

Here's a video on that. The description has links to more resources on how to make gender neutral adjectives. I hope you speak French though, otherwise this'll be hard to follow for you.

Spoiler

@NoelciMeta tagging you because it might be useful for you too, though I assume that if you speak French you probably already know this, but still tagging just in case :) 

 

In Spanish they've got elle instead of el/ella, and they put e's instead of o's or a's at the end of words, much simpler than what they've got in French imo. If you want more info on that, you can google 'pronombres no binarios' 'lenguaje inclusivo' 'lenguaje neutro' etc and you'll find it. They also used to put '@' at the end of words to signify an 'a' and an 'o' at the same time (which is absolutely brilliant in my opinion), and sometimes an 'x' was used (latinx) to replace the 'o' and 'a', but that only works in writing.

 

In Dutch (which is about as gendered as English) we've got some neopronouns:

she = zij

he = hij

they = die/ie

 

her = haar

him = hem

them = hen/hun

 

her = haar

his = zijn

their = van (name)  (<- for this one you have to reconstruct your sentence a bit. Neutral pronouns don't work in all cases.)

 

And that's where my language skills sadly end.

 

Edit: well no actually I also speak Mandarin Chinese, but that's just about the least gendered language in existence so it didn't pop into my mind. 她 = she and 他 = he, but both are pronounced the same way 'ta'.

They've only got different forms in writing because when they invented written vernacular Chinese (as opposed to Classical Chinese, which is basically the Chinese equivalent of Latin) around the 1910's to 20s, they emulated western languages that had gendered pronouns.

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Pinball Wizard

@NoelciMeta I want to learn French since I have basic knowledge from grade school, pretty much so I can say I am bilingual haha. But, I got hung up the genderedness of things. The languages I am also interested in like Finnish and Hungarian don't have gendered stuff my their maze of grammar rules make up for it 😑 

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Thanks @Laurann! I wasn't aware of the '' iel'' pronoun but quite frankly... it sounds awkward... and almost ugly, no one would think of it as a pronoun... *sigh* guess I'm bound to emigrate :P

 

@Pinball Wizard Haha, I wanna learn languages too, but I only got English ^^' I dont count French cuz I'm native, and it's so gendered. Ugh. That's a major reason why I wanna move to a country where I can speak a less gendered language. 

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Strange-quark
1 hour ago, NoelciMeta said:

That's a major reason why I wanna move to a country where I can speak a less gendered language. 

*Innocent face* Basque?

[Only the familiar speech is gendered, and many native speakers don't use it at all anyway.]

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11 minutes ago, Strange-quark said:

*Innocent face* Basque?

[Only the familiar speech is gendered, and many native speakers don't use it at all anyway.]

It's just a ''I wish I could''. I have enough trouble with just science as it is. 

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Strange-quark
Just now, NoelciMeta said:

It's just a ''I wish I could''. I have enough trouble with just science as it is. 

But it's in the same country!

[I totally get it, though. I bet my French is super rusty by now :blink:]

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2 minutes ago, Strange-quark said:

But it's in the same country!

[I totally get it, though. I bet my French is super rusty by now :blink:]

That may be so, but then what? I learn Basque and move there? 

... 

Not exactly a great plan... 

And I'm getting sick of France. 

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