I’m learning Russian and I don’t know what it is for that, but in German I’ve seen “xier”, “sier”, and “dey”. I might use “dey/dem”.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    6 hours ago

    Portuguese[1] doesn’t have that. People will use a variety of alternatives, like elu/eli/el@/elx, which frankly sound super dumb. It doesn’t help that almost everything in the language is gendered.


    1. Ele = he; Ela = she; Add an ‘s’ to the end and both become plural while keeping it gendered. Under normal circumstances, “eles” is used for ambiguous gender plural ↩︎

  • Lemuria@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    Tagalog: siya. 3rd person singular.

    Nandito siya. He is here. She is here. They are here.

  • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website
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    2 days ago

    English and Swedish are common examples of where gender neutral pronouns have developed that sometimes meet ideological opposition from conservative thinkers but otherwise work largely fine in common parlance. They don’t make a lot of people look up and wonder what was said. They and hon don’t cause a fuzz because they are established to a sufficient degree. Now imagine that wasn’t the case and in English we wanted to land on “shup” as a pronoun. I talked with Billy and shup didn’t want to go fishing. You hear that and you’re almost taken out of the conversation because it doesn’t feel natural-in-the-language. Language being a cultural construct. (Don’t misconstrue me here as saying members of the LGBTQ+ are not natural. Because they are perfectly natural.)

    German is not only a three-gender grammatical clusterfuck but also a language where different neo-pronouns (similar to “shup” which I invented just to make this point) exist, none of them feeling as natural-in-the-language when in use, and none of them getting majority support from the relevant LGBTQ+ community. So the general suggestion is to use the name when known or to ask for the pronouns when required. In my very limited experience, German speakers who don’t want to risk mis-pronouning people will sooner adapt their speech to avoid any use of third-person singular pronouns than to use “dey” or “sier.” Which in itself might be an indication of where this road is going. German has a larger gap than English between societal progress and understanding and having that reflected in the language. German has embarked on a journey to get rid of a masculine-as-default mode since the 70s just to include the other majority gender in speech and visibility. And more than 50 years later the conventions around that are still subject to change and adherence to those still piss off conservative thinkers. So that gives you an idea of a timeframe until gender-neutral language can cement itself in the German language.

    Another language that may have an easier time with gender-neutral speech is Japanese. People are more used to using the name of the person as a stand-in where an indoeuropean tongue screams for a pronoun. And most nouns that are titles to give to people, such as a professions, are never gender-neutral by default.

  • e_chao@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Swahili has 10 different “genders,” called “noun classes” or “ngeli,” and none of them correlate with sex. Instead, the third-person singular pronouns are:

    • he/she and him/her: yeye
    • his/her: wake
  • TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Swedish isn’t exactly “my language”, but it is the language I know best after English. Plural they is de and singular they is hen (to contrast with hon for she and han for he). It’s been in use for decades, but only got officially added in the 2010s.

    And Finnish just uses hän for everyone, which is supreme.

  • VoxAliorum@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    In German there is nothing established. The most common one I have heard which is still unknown by most is “en/en” (not sure if written correctly).

  • NorthWestWind@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Instead of having different words for plural of pronouns, in Chinese we append a character after single pronouns to make them plural.

    • 我 (me) -> 我們 (us)
    • 你 (you) -> 你們 (you all)
    • 他 (him) -> 他們 (them (male))
    • 她 (her) -> 她們 (them (female))

    You get the idea. We also have pronouns for animals (牠), inanimate objects (它) and God (祂), and you can similarly add 們 to make them plural (except for god, I haven’t seen the character being used in plural). Using they/them as pronoun for a person doesn’t make sense in Chinese.

    Chinese used to have no gender pronouns. Everyone is referred to as 他 (Mandarin) or 佢 (Cantonese). It’s in last century when 她 (“she”) is “invented”, and no new gender pronouns in Cantonese. However, in terms of speaking, they are all pronounced the same way (ta1 in Mandarin, keoi5 in Cantonese), so it’s literally impossible to use the wrong pronoun if you’re speaking or typing in Cantonese.

  • MissingGhost@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    In French we have “iel”. It’s a mix of the male and female pronoms “il” and “elle”.

    • ReallyZen@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      Don’t forget that other contraption : for “those” we have “celles” + “ceux” = “celleux” (and probably celle + celui into cuielle or something)

      Then let’s have fun with everybody : “toutes” and “tous” is an easy one - toustes !

      Checking wikipedia on the matter, TIL that until the XII century French had neutrals “al” or “el”, and these are proposed for a comeback

      I am sincerely 100% for the transformation of language towards eradication of the default masculine and the new pronouns, but changing habits is hard.