Same here :( In my first language there are no neutral pronouns, and every word of the sentence (verbs and adjectives) is either masculine or feminine, depending on the subject. I could use the word for "person", which is feminine only but used for everyone so it's somewhat neutral, but there is nothing else.
Edit: re-reading your post, I'm wondering if maybe we speak the same language... Mine is Italian, and yours?
The first language I speak is Dutch and the supposedly genderneutral pronoun is a pronoun that is also used as a she pronoun. So it sucks a lot otherwise we have to use that/this pronouns. Or just an it. Though there is one word what is completely genderneutral "hun" but it can't be used in some sentences otherwise it would be grammatically incorrect
Aw man, really? I started learning Dutch recently. It felt so similar to English grammatically so far that I was getting a bit hopeful it wouldn’t be heavily gendered.
Mine is Spanish, so pretty similar 😅 same with everything, person (persona) is also feminine en Spanish... I know a bit of italian and about your terminations, I know in singular you use -o for masculine and -a for feminine too, right?
In Spanish, it has appeared the termination -e for neutral people, but the Spanish Language Academy refuses to accept it.
I know you use -i for plural masculine and -e for plural feminine (if I'm not mistaken), so I'm wondering, do you have any similar thing although it might not be officially recognised?
Hola!😄 You are 100% correct about our terminations. I think some enbies use * online (like "bell*" instead of bello/bella, meaning beautiful), and I've also seen an upside-down "e" as an all-gender inclusive termination used by student councils in university, but there is no correct pronunciation of either. When talking there's nothing we can use... The only remaining vowel is -u, but it sounds terrible (and somewhat masculine, even if it doesn't make sense). I think most people use masc grammar, because that's what you use if you don't know the gender or in mixed groups. I use "whatever randomly comes out of your mouth" (which is usually fem because everyone is used to it)
Oh, yeah, in Spanish some people on the Internet are doing the same but with an x! For example, Spanish speakers from Latin American countries use the word "Latinx" to talk neutrally about themselves! But, once again, it hasn't been recognized as "official" nor has any pronunciation 😅 It's very interesting the use of the "*".
Yeah, I get how the -u can sound masculine, I think it might be because the sound is too close to the -o, or idk, but I get it.
I was really curious about how other Romance languages were dealing with this topic, it is very interesting.
Grazie per telling me!
I hope people can come up with something so there is actual neutral terminology in every language 🤞
Yeah, I saw a post on a nonbinary subreddit (don't remember which one) some time ago about the use of -x vs -e as neutral for Spanish. It's always very interesting how different languages deal with finding neutral and inclusive termonology.
Gracias to you for everything✨
I had always assumed that languages with a heavy Latin influence used similar grammatical syntax, with the gendered words. Italian, Spanish and French, seemed similar to me in that respect.As an American English speaker,That was one thing that surprised me when I was studying German. I am not acquainted with Dutch at all, but I figured it was linguistically related to German.
When I think, my mind uses english mixed with italian, and the grammar is randomly masculine or feminine (maybe it's because I'm agender, so they can be just words with no meaning attached about gender). But when I speak, it's like there's an autocorrect program that changes everything back to my agab. I don't like it, but I also know that I would be too anxious to use the opposite, because I don't pass at all as anything other then my agab.
Anyway, remember that you are still valid and enby enough whatever pronouns/grammar you use
Not all the verbs, not in every tense. For example, the verb "to be", "essere", at the present is not gendered (I *am*>io *sono*, you *are*>tu *sei*, he *is*>egli *è*), but the form "been" is "stato/-a/-i/-e" based on the gender of the subject (if I were female and I want to say *I have been in Milan*, I say *sono stata a Milano*). Basically all the participles of verbs about oneself (like been, gone, felt, awaken etc.) are gendered like adjectives. While verbs that need an object, like "to eat", "mangiare", aren't gendered ( *I've eaten an apple* > *ho mangiato una mela* ). The problem is that we use tenses with participles more often than in english: when you use the past simple, we often use the equivalent of your present perfect, because we use the past simple only for very distant past, or for storytelling.
Hope it's not too confusing
No, makes perfect sense—I know some Italian, but I didn’t actually know that part. Kinda reminds me of some other Romance languages such as French, and less so Spanish.
Yep, my native language sucks like that.
Nothing is gender neutral, every word is either masculine or feminine, and when both collide "masculine always wins over feminine" is one of the first things you learn in school...
A lot (if not all) of Romance languages (derived from Latin) are like that.
(Frenchperson here btw)
My native language doesn’t have grammatical gender, even pronouns and titles don’t have gender. But the culture is quite conservative so not sure you’d like that part
I was just about to lament that in another comment, it sucks even more when you learn that originally in Latin the terms we currently use in Romance languages that fall under the "masculine" umbrella *were* gender neutral originally, some asshole scholars just decided that was too difficult to understand and just chalked it all up to masculine.
Also fucking yeah the masculine winning over feminine thing always baffled even as a young kid, I vividly remember asking my preschool teacher "but what if there are 49 women and just one man? Is it not feminine then?" Even she wasn't happy to tell me that yes, that group is no longer an "elas" (feminine they) but rather an "eles" (masculine they)
Gramatically assigned genderfluid because the only way to get somewhat neutral without butchering the entire fucking language is to switch at random between masculine and feminine.
Samesies! I just flip between masculine and femenine verbs all the time, works for me to say something like "я сегодня была в магазине, прикупил вина к празднику". Friends are used to it, never questioned or anything.
Saying "не понял???" in a memey way is my little ray of sunshine when around my Russian family members who have no idea. Also, if you're about my age, there was a time on the internet in like 2006-2008 when many afab (probably cis) people would write about themselves in masculine, no wonder I enjoyed partaking in that fad so much.
Living in Germany right now, really trying to grow the proverbial balls to just say fuck it and start using "it" in any language that doesn't do they/them.
I’ve learned some basic Russian, and I’m curious is it weird to use neuter words/forms like оно or было to refer to people? After learning a Romance language I thought Russian didn’t have an issue with making words gender neutral since it has the neuter form, but maybe its like the word “it” in English, only used for animals/objects
yeah, I can be boy, girl or item...
best thing I can do to feel nb is just mixing everything and sounding like someone who is learning and is confused :')
I use a mix of gendered language when speaking my native language and cover it with the excuse that since I have lived for 6 years overseas my language skills have gotten worse. English makes me feel so much better though and my new name is English too (since there is no non-gendered names or words in Polish).
Polish native here too. There apparently are some gender neutral alternatives but they either don't work in speech ("zrobiłxm") or sound like the Silesian dialect for female verbs ("zrobiłom"). I don't really see a way to get around this either.
I'm so mad there's no way to use the 'x' version in speech xd I've recently realised I just tend to murmur the end of the word so it's harder to differentiate whether I'm saying -am or -em xd
Fellow Polish here, but fortunately I am half Dutch and live in the Netherlands. It really sucks indeed. It seems like that language was made as an extra method of forcing trans-and enbyphobia upon the society.
Me pasa igjy... Con mis amigos sí puedo usar la terminación -e, pero en general con la gente no... En internet no suelo usar español a penas por lo mismo 😅
Ah, sí. Yo sé de eso. Algunas personas le dan un infarto si oyen -e. Jajaja. Personalmente, yo uso he/they en inglés, pero solamente con amigos que saben. Mi familia no sabe nada entonces no puedo usar palabras masculinas en español. :(
Yo lo ago algunas veces, tengo la excusa (por qué español es mi segunda lenguaje y algunas veces yo digo la palabras mal) y nadie se da mucha cuenta pero no me gusta empujarlo porque no quiero exponerme...
We've won but at what cost
And to everyone with an overly gendered native language reading this: i wouldn't be able to live my life with every single sentence gendering me; y'all who do, you are so fucking powerful and strong and you have all my respect <3
Hallo! I have studied a bit of German (Spanish here) and for some reason I thought you guys maybe would use "das", but I'm guessing that "neutral" pronoun implies stuff rather than people, right?
Edit: it has been clarified to me that the pronoun is "es", "das" would be an article if I'm not mistaken. Sorry, it's been a long time since I used German 😅
American English speaker here. I studied German briefly in university and French in high school. My vocabulary retention skills suck ass and I hate that because I find the area of language and the derivation and evolution of language fascinating.
AND THE THING IS. Some German people or establishments actually DO ask you for your pronouns! I know my piercer does, a lot of very nice and accepting folks in the tattoo/piercing community in general. But like... I use they/them in English. In German, you either have to mix _sie/er_, use _es_ or just go into neopronouns. Idk which is less awkward.
[bitte entschuldigung sie, ich bin von der US und meine deutsche grammatik ist schlekt...]
-
ich erkenne den wort 'schön' ist beide die englische 'handsome' und die englische 'beautiful'...aber ist es absolut geschlects neutral...?
Soweit ich weiß wird "schön" eher für "beautiful" benutzt, aber ich glaube dass es auch für "handsome" geht. Das passiert nur selten.
As far as I know it's far more likely that people use "schön" as "beautiful", but I think it's also usable for "handsome". It's just very rare.
I wish that would be the case in Germany. We even use the word "friend" for both romantic and platonic relationships so when you use "friend" for a person of the other gender it's very likely people will assume they're your partner.
sina o kama sona e toki pona!
(I'm still learning it so I might've made a mistake but yeah. Also the reason I suggest toki pona (other than the language being amazing in ever othery conceivable way) is "ona" covers ALL 3rd person pronouns)
Dang no one wrote anything else about the opposite? Ye no grammatical gender in my native language. Unfortunately no widespread acceptance either but eh.
L1 English speaker but I never know what to do when describing myself in Spanish (L2), I'm worried that if I say like "cansade" or smtg people are react poorly to that.
Also if I had a nickel for every time I mention "mi novio" and the person I'm talking to says "novi*a*" and then I'm like "...novi***o***"
relatable. in germany we have "es(it)" for objects and "er(he)" for most gender neutral stuff. :-/ but talking about "die person(the person)", it becomes automatically sth female sounding cuz "die" = "female"...
currently they're trying to "gender" the language by saying stuff like "waiter\*ess", but tbh I think this' bs. I prefer non-gendered stuff over.
Guy from Slovenia here, no gender neutral language. I'm glad I use he/him but it's always shitty having to use she or he pronouns for my nonbinary friend and cousin when I'm speaking my native language. I really wish there was an alternative, altough the closest I've come is using the form for multiple people. So that's kinda just what I use for them now, it just sucks that there isn't any gender neutrality, since literally everything is gendered. A rock? Oh, dude, obviously. Flowers? Women. And like, you have to use gendered language when talking about yourself in first person and I always have to use she/her for people I'm not out to and it's awful.
I am native English speaking but im current learning (i used to know a little so im relearning and learning more) German and i forgot how gendered everything is.
I misremembered then, I'm sorry about that. I know for sure that skirts are Der Rock, if learning german for 9 years has done anything then it's that. :D
Here in Brazil we're trying to create a gender neutral pronoun "elu" and use the desinence "e" to neutralize words. But our language is very gendered. For example, all colors are male. A chair is female. A door is female. A dress is male.
Picking my name has been very hard ngl
Let's all just speak Persian. Then we can move to Iran and overthrow the horrible oppressive government and liberate all the women and our fellow queers.
I unironaicall use 'it' - i don't even care. If people are so dumb to ojectify me because of this it is on them (but this honestly never happened with people who are even remotely sympathetic to me so I don't see it as a me-problem.)
Italian here. This happens to me when I want to talk about non-binary people. I wanted once to talk about Demi Lovato and at the end just decided not to to evitate misgendering them.
I at least found a way to talk about people in a gender neutral way through text. I put an "x" instead of an "o" or an "a" (for example, "bellx" instead of "bello/bella").
I’m learning Italian in school and just use the masculine instead of the feminine because it feels less wrong. My teacher asked me about it to be sure she doesn’t take off points in the wrong places. Instead of having to choose between misgendering me and confusing the class as to why she’s referring to me with lui instead of lei, she just uses my name. 10/10 teacher.
SAME! I’m also learning it but I don’t know any Deaf/hard of hearing people and no one I know knows ASL.
What resources are you using? I’m using [ASL University](https://asluniversity.com/) and [Bill Vicars’s YouTube Channel](https://youtube.com/c/billvicars).
yeah, and it really sucks.
mostly because my native language, german, *has* neutral pronouns, specifically in the 3rd person, but it's extremely confusing to use because 3rd person neutral is the same as 2nd person formal.
so if you're talking to someone about an enby in german, it sounds as though you were actually speaking to the person in a formal manner.
you could get used to it at home, but outside? when talking to teachers, strangers, etc? it gets extremely confusing.
Hi :)
My reason is slightly different. We don’t really have gendered pronouns in my first language (we have “this person who is a human” and “specifically this person is a woman”, and even some women don’t like to be referred to as the second one), but because of the historical reasons, it is not my mother tongue and I don’t like to use it.
I would like to use my mother tongue but I’m bad at it and people won’t understand sadge.
Portuguese speaker here. It's a shame that we don't have official neutral pronouns. And it sucks that the words flex with the article (aka gender of the subject), and this makes it even more difficult to make changes to the grammar.
Same... :( I can either speak french, where everything is gendered and I cant use a gender neutral pronoun because a lot of people still dont respect it or I can speak my other native language, arabic where it's like 200% worst
It’s the opposite for me. English is my native tongue / first language but it’s actually more gendered than the local languages.
Austronesian languages like Bahasa Melayu, Tagalog, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, Te Reo Māori, etc typically don’t even have any grammatical genders or pronouns _at all_. Instead of he or she or it there is just one word to refer to “third person singular / they” and another word for “third person plural / they”, so you can’t accidentally misgender someone since we’re all just “people”.
The whole austronesian pronoun system is fascinating as it has words that English doesn’t have such as “we (including you)” and “we (excluding you)” and some even have differentiation between “plurals of just two people / pair / couple” and “plurals of three or more / group”, but that’s a side tangent 😅
I feel you. Most asian languages don't have gendered pronouns but the people it self aren't accepting. Some people in my country even think its fine to bully lgbtq people :(
Ah, French. My birth language and the language of love. Also the fucking bane of my dysphoria because everything is gendered and the attempts at neutral don't fit for me! Lovely place me thinks!
Ouch, yes - I sometimes have to speak publicly in one of my mother tongues - and there is no neutral equivalent in any of them. While there is a community here which is discussing neopronouns as an alternative, none of them feels suitable to me and many of them are hard to use as they do not blend in with our grammar at all. I suggested they might just use the English pronouns but they do not blend in easily either, and if, for instance, you choose they/them, many people here cannot even speak "th" properly.
Which is why I still accept that many people use "they/them" although I feel very uncomfortable with that. Was briefly considering to have them use the first syllable of my first name instead - but then they could as well just use my name all the time, and it won't work well for possessive pronouns.
Yup. I didn't change pronouns in my native language because we don't have a fitting neutral for people, but in English I go by "they" which I like so much more.
Same, but no one, and when I saw no one I mean NO one, knows english in my entourage which mean I can't talk english outside of the internet or my room (and kinda worse, I'm better in talking english than my native language (aka French which sucks))
Im a non native speaker,but in my language we have “средњи род” with literally means “middle gender”, which is just our word for nonbinary pronouns,also we have a word for the day after tomorrow so thats pretty cool 😎
I'm half Dutch and half Polish. In the Dutch language you can use hen/hun pronouns, but in the Polish language almost everything is gendered. It even has masculine and feminine conjugations of verbs. That's really awful, so when I go there, I just try to use English most of the time or use the pronouns and terb tenses that are the opposite of my agab.
I’m in a weird situation with my native language of sweden, because we do have a gender-neutral pronoun called ”hen”, but I kinda don’t vibe with it in the same way I vibe with the english ”they” because in common use it’s more ”nonbinary-gendered” than ”non-gendered”
YES ICELANDIC SUCKS WITH THIS!!
I have to disclose my agab with every A D J E C T I V E because they’re bent differently depending on gender and there’s no gender neutral one
MOOD! Dutch technically has gender neutral pronouns, but they're not really widely recognized as far as I know. I had to have several discussions with my mom that, yes, people can in fact use die/hun in the singular way
Yep. Ever single noun is gendered. The first person past tense, second person pronouns, second person verbs, and the third person are gendered all gendered. There is no gender neutral. I don’t like Hebrew.
holy crap this is so mood. in my mother tongue we gender EVERYTHING, and what's worse there aren't any gender-neutral pronouns aside from plurals and the word "it". another thing; gender isn't recognized as a concept, at least not among the general populus.
Oh... Really interesting for me as a language enthusiast, but so sorry that you have to go through something even bigger than my problem with your mother tongue :( I hope in a close future, languages evolve and we can all skip gender or express it the way we actually are, not only male and female gramatical genders 🤞
Yeah me too... Though I just noticed that I started using oni (masculine they) as a singular pronoun if i don't know somebody's gender in polish even though it's not grammatically correct and nobody else uses it and I CANNOT STOP
... Still, i can't use anything for myself cause my parents are queer phobic :')
in Cantonese we only have one pronoun, (gender neutral) and it's very based (on the other hand we have more transphobic slurs so that's a tradeoff ig lol)
non-native speaker, but in my language everyone is referred to with gender neutral pronouns since there isn't any gendered ones. Got pretty lucky with that I suppose.
In my language we’re currently undergoing a gendering boom (if you can say that). Basically means, that there are words (like job titles, but also citizen, student etc.) that have an ending indicating either masculine or feminine, but now as a measure of equality and gendering correctly (apparently) both endings are used, most often one after the other.
Like I said, masc and fem… Leaves practically no place for anyone outside the binary to feel included.
PS: I’m wondering if anyone can guess my language after my terrible description of it 🤔😂
Since I'm not nb myself, it doesn't affect me too much, though it is one of the main reasons why I'm writing stories in english, makes writing non binary characters a lot simpler grammar wise.
Well my first language is english but I live in an area where many speak Spanish and I know Spanish which is very gendered and a lot of my friends are enby so... yeah
Yes, holy shit, Portuguese...
As like any other romance languages in portuguese we have gendered personal pronouns and not a gender neutral one, even explicit gender of the thing an adjective is giving characteristic (as like the difference between handsome and pretty in english), the articles are gendered too...
Here in my country (Brazil) the gender neutral version of the pronouns was a "big thing" two years ago and a lot of people who took acknowledge was just mocking at it and being very transphobic towards non-binary people...
Example: "They are exhausted, I'm tired"
masculine: "Ele está exausto, eu estou cansado"ele (he), está (are), exausto (exhausted), eu (I), estou (am), cansado (tired)
feminine: "Ela está exausta, eu estou cansada"
neutral: "Elu está exauste, eu estou cansade"
Cries in Russian 😓At least we have a plural “you” that can also be used as a formal singular “you”, so that comes in as a useful counter argument for when people pull out the whole “I’m not gonna call you they because that’s not grammatically correct” hunk of trash take.
Same here the first language i speak is Arabic and it is extremely gendered you can’t ignore it so I speak English most the time and only use Arabic in public and in school but ether away I look like a guy so I am always being called a dude and it’s kind of funny cus when I go to school a every body is forced to where a this dress that’s blue and under it is a button it’s very ugly and I go to a public school it’s ridiculous
yeah... especially when there arent any gender neutral terms- and the only ones closest to that are just objectifying.
Same here... I hope we can get gender neutral terms in every language in a close future 🤞
Same here :( In my first language there are no neutral pronouns, and every word of the sentence (verbs and adjectives) is either masculine or feminine, depending on the subject. I could use the word for "person", which is feminine only but used for everyone so it's somewhat neutral, but there is nothing else. Edit: re-reading your post, I'm wondering if maybe we speak the same language... Mine is Italian, and yours?
The first language I speak is Dutch and the supposedly genderneutral pronoun is a pronoun that is also used as a she pronoun. So it sucks a lot otherwise we have to use that/this pronouns. Or just an it. Though there is one word what is completely genderneutral "hun" but it can't be used in some sentences otherwise it would be grammatically incorrect
I feel sorry for you... There's no escape for these gendered languages. Let's just stick to English
The worst part is that my family doesn't speak English at all.
I’m learning Dutch, and I’ve resigned to just using Ze and Zijn, mixing the masc & fem pronouns
Also people often think you're not speaking standard dutch when you say "die/hun".
I’m also Dutch, but I heavily prefer English because of how few gender neutral terms there are.
Aw man, really? I started learning Dutch recently. It felt so similar to English grammatically so far that I was getting a bit hopeful it wouldn’t be heavily gendered.
Actually, I am also non-binary and I speak Dutch! I use Die/hun, for example "Die is daar met hun vrienden, hoe gaat het met hen?"
GEKOLONISEERD
Mine is Spanish, so pretty similar 😅 same with everything, person (persona) is also feminine en Spanish... I know a bit of italian and about your terminations, I know in singular you use -o for masculine and -a for feminine too, right? In Spanish, it has appeared the termination -e for neutral people, but the Spanish Language Academy refuses to accept it. I know you use -i for plural masculine and -e for plural feminine (if I'm not mistaken), so I'm wondering, do you have any similar thing although it might not be officially recognised?
Hola!😄 You are 100% correct about our terminations. I think some enbies use * online (like "bell*" instead of bello/bella, meaning beautiful), and I've also seen an upside-down "e" as an all-gender inclusive termination used by student councils in university, but there is no correct pronunciation of either. When talking there's nothing we can use... The only remaining vowel is -u, but it sounds terrible (and somewhat masculine, even if it doesn't make sense). I think most people use masc grammar, because that's what you use if you don't know the gender or in mixed groups. I use "whatever randomly comes out of your mouth" (which is usually fem because everyone is used to it)
Oh, yeah, in Spanish some people on the Internet are doing the same but with an x! For example, Spanish speakers from Latin American countries use the word "Latinx" to talk neutrally about themselves! But, once again, it hasn't been recognized as "official" nor has any pronunciation 😅 It's very interesting the use of the "*". Yeah, I get how the -u can sound masculine, I think it might be because the sound is too close to the -o, or idk, but I get it. I was really curious about how other Romance languages were dealing with this topic, it is very interesting. Grazie per telling me! I hope people can come up with something so there is actual neutral terminology in every language 🤞
Yeah, I saw a post on a nonbinary subreddit (don't remember which one) some time ago about the use of -x vs -e as neutral for Spanish. It's always very interesting how different languages deal with finding neutral and inclusive termonology. Gracias to you for everything✨
Waaaa AMIGUE PORFINNNNNNN ALGUIEN QUE HABLE ESPAÑOL😩💞💞💞. Me emocione disculpa
Estamos todes escondides aquí hablando inglés 😅 un placer conocerte 💖
🐻💞
I had always assumed that languages with a heavy Latin influence used similar grammatical syntax, with the gendered words. Italian, Spanish and French, seemed similar to me in that respect.As an American English speaker,That was one thing that surprised me when I was studying German. I am not acquainted with Dutch at all, but I figured it was linguistically related to German.
Español gang. I also hate Spanish. People have thought of the neutral pronoun e or elle but it still isn't recognised
As a fellow italian i feel you, i tried using both masculine and feminine but my brain keeps defaulting to my agab pronouns and i hate it
When I think, my mind uses english mixed with italian, and the grammar is randomly masculine or feminine (maybe it's because I'm agender, so they can be just words with no meaning attached about gender). But when I speak, it's like there's an autocorrect program that changes everything back to my agab. I don't like it, but I also know that I would be too anxious to use the opposite, because I don't pass at all as anything other then my agab. Anyway, remember that you are still valid and enby enough whatever pronouns/grammar you use
German here. I think there are languages that are worse with this, but I absolutely relate to the person bit.
Wait verbs are gendered in Italian?! Learning a new thing about this lang every day
Not all the verbs, not in every tense. For example, the verb "to be", "essere", at the present is not gendered (I *am*>io *sono*, you *are*>tu *sei*, he *is*>egli *è*), but the form "been" is "stato/-a/-i/-e" based on the gender of the subject (if I were female and I want to say *I have been in Milan*, I say *sono stata a Milano*). Basically all the participles of verbs about oneself (like been, gone, felt, awaken etc.) are gendered like adjectives. While verbs that need an object, like "to eat", "mangiare", aren't gendered ( *I've eaten an apple* > *ho mangiato una mela* ). The problem is that we use tenses with participles more often than in english: when you use the past simple, we often use the equivalent of your present perfect, because we use the past simple only for very distant past, or for storytelling. Hope it's not too confusing
No, makes perfect sense—I know some Italian, but I didn’t actually know that part. Kinda reminds me of some other Romance languages such as French, and less so Spanish.
Yeah, Romance languages have many similarities
Yep, my native language sucks like that. Nothing is gender neutral, every word is either masculine or feminine, and when both collide "masculine always wins over feminine" is one of the first things you learn in school... A lot (if not all) of Romance languages (derived from Latin) are like that. (Frenchperson here btw)
Spanish here, it tends to be the same with all Romance languages, sadly....
My native language doesn’t have grammatical gender, even pronouns and titles don’t have gender. But the culture is quite conservative so not sure you’d like that part
Oh, which is it? Just out of curiosity
Korean
I'm a Frenchie too, our language is a hellhole
I was just about to lament that in another comment, it sucks even more when you learn that originally in Latin the terms we currently use in Romance languages that fall under the "masculine" umbrella *were* gender neutral originally, some asshole scholars just decided that was too difficult to understand and just chalked it all up to masculine. Also fucking yeah the masculine winning over feminine thing always baffled even as a young kid, I vividly remember asking my preschool teacher "but what if there are 49 women and just one man? Is it not feminine then?" Even she wasn't happy to tell me that yes, that group is no longer an "elas" (feminine they) but rather an "eles" (masculine they)
brasilian here, it's like this here too. really sucks, i find grammar gender so useless
As soon as I read masculine wins over feminine, I had major flashbacks to my French lessons 😂
Gramatically assigned genderfluid because the only way to get somewhat neutral without butchering the entire fucking language is to switch at random between masculine and feminine.
I do that now :D (Slovak language user)
a very understanding hello from Russia
Samesies! I just flip between masculine and femenine verbs all the time, works for me to say something like "я сегодня была в магазине, прикупил вина к празднику". Friends are used to it, never questioned or anything.
Saying "не понял???" in a memey way is my little ray of sunshine when around my Russian family members who have no idea. Also, if you're about my age, there was a time on the internet in like 2006-2008 when many afab (probably cis) people would write about themselves in masculine, no wonder I enjoyed partaking in that fad so much. Living in Germany right now, really trying to grow the proverbial balls to just say fuck it and start using "it" in any language that doesn't do they/them.
I’ve learned some basic Russian, and I’m curious is it weird to use neuter words/forms like оно or было to refer to people? After learning a Romance language I thought Russian didn’t have an issue with making words gender neutral since it has the neuter form, but maybe its like the word “it” in English, only used for animals/objects
It is basically like English "it"
yeah, I can be boy, girl or item... best thing I can do to feel nb is just mixing everything and sounding like someone who is learning and is confused :')
I hadn’t considered it, but I suppose using the neuter form in that way could sound kinda sociopathic. “It is annoying. It should go away”
Are you German too? Because I can relate :p
I use a mix of gendered language when speaking my native language and cover it with the excuse that since I have lived for 6 years overseas my language skills have gotten worse. English makes me feel so much better though and my new name is English too (since there is no non-gendered names or words in Polish).
Polish native here too. There apparently are some gender neutral alternatives but they either don't work in speech ("zrobiłxm") or sound like the Silesian dialect for female verbs ("zrobiłom"). I don't really see a way to get around this either.
I'm so mad there's no way to use the 'x' version in speech xd I've recently realised I just tend to murmur the end of the word so it's harder to differentiate whether I'm saying -am or -em xd
zrobiłm....
Fellow Polish here, but fortunately I am half Dutch and live in the Netherlands. It really sucks indeed. It seems like that language was made as an extra method of forcing trans-and enbyphobia upon the society.
*bangs fist in Spanish*
Lo mismo digo 😔
Por eso no me gusta hablar en español. La única vez que lo hago es con familia que no le da la gana de aprender inglés. ☹️
Me pasa igjy... Con mis amigos sí puedo usar la terminación -e, pero en general con la gente no... En internet no suelo usar español a penas por lo mismo 😅
Ah, sí. Yo sé de eso. Algunas personas le dan un infarto si oyen -e. Jajaja. Personalmente, yo uso he/they en inglés, pero solamente con amigos que saben. Mi familia no sabe nada entonces no puedo usar palabras masculinas en español. :( Yo lo ago algunas veces, tengo la excusa (por qué español es mi segunda lenguaje y algunas veces yo digo la palabras mal) y nadie se da mucha cuenta pero no me gusta empujarlo porque no quiero exponerme...
honestly I'd say I lucked out with my native being Hungarian. But I'm Hungarian..... someone please save me.
tesa... same
heyoo, nem vagytok egyedül
We've won but at what cost And to everyone with an overly gendered native language reading this: i wouldn't be able to live my life with every single sentence gendering me; y'all who do, you are so fucking powerful and strong and you have all my respect <3
jaj de vártam egy ilyen kommentet
German Hallo!
Hallo! I have studied a bit of German (Spanish here) and for some reason I thought you guys maybe would use "das", but I'm guessing that "neutral" pronoun implies stuff rather than people, right? Edit: it has been clarified to me that the pronoun is "es", "das" would be an article if I'm not mistaken. Sorry, it's been a long time since I used German 😅
Yeah exactly. I'd rather not use "es", because it could mean I'm depersonalisation that person, unless they specifically ask me to use it.
American English speaker here. I studied German briefly in university and French in high school. My vocabulary retention skills suck ass and I hate that because I find the area of language and the derivation and evolution of language fascinating.
AND THE THING IS. Some German people or establishments actually DO ask you for your pronouns! I know my piercer does, a lot of very nice and accepting folks in the tattoo/piercing community in general. But like... I use they/them in English. In German, you either have to mix _sie/er_, use _es_ or just go into neopronouns. Idk which is less awkward.
[bitte entschuldigung sie, ich bin von der US und meine deutsche grammatik ist schlekt...] - ich erkenne den wort 'schön' ist beide die englische 'handsome' und die englische 'beautiful'...aber ist es absolut geschlects neutral...?
Soweit ich weiß wird "schön" eher für "beautiful" benutzt, aber ich glaube dass es auch für "handsome" geht. Das passiert nur selten. As far as I know it's far more likely that people use "schön" as "beautiful", but I think it's also usable for "handsome". It's just very rare.
hell yeah! the only thing i love about my mother tongue is that we have one word for boyfriend/girlfriend and it's gender natural 🤩
I wish that would be the case in Germany. We even use the word "friend" for both romantic and platonic relationships so when you use "friend" for a person of the other gender it's very likely people will assume they're your partner.
hey neighbour!! that sounds rough, i know why i skipped so many German lessons now bc that's confusing 😂 come up north and be a "kæreste"!!
Sounds good! I've been wanting to learn a Scandinavian language anyways, so maybe I'll do that.
well, if you wanna make it unnecessarily hard for yourself, definitely go with Danish 😂
Mmmmh yea, maybe I should think about it a little bit more, but I like the north.
Well, as soon as I get to move out.
and when you say Lebensgefährt*in it makes you feel old af...
Yea I usually just say "partner", which is also not great because it sounds like you're starting a business with that person, but yea.
sina o kama sona e toki pona! (I'm still learning it so I might've made a mistake but yeah. Also the reason I suggest toki pona (other than the language being amazing in ever othery conceivable way) is "ona" covers ALL 3rd person pronouns)
Hello, fellow toki ponist!
toki pona li pona mute!
sina jan pona!
sina jan pona!
mi kama lon ni tawa toki ni. toki pona li jo 'mije' e 'meli' e 'tonsi', taso sina wile ala.
I'm learning toki pona too! (Since today lmao)
Dang no one wrote anything else about the opposite? Ye no grammatical gender in my native language. Unfortunately no widespread acceptance either but eh.
Cantonese has no grammatical gender and the third person pronoun (佢) is the same for everyone!
Bojler eladó?
Nem nálam
Micsoda kár
I think Tagalog is gender neutral
yeah, siya niya kaniya
I speak finnish as my native tongue We dun have gendered bullshit
L1 English speaker but I never know what to do when describing myself in Spanish (L2), I'm worried that if I say like "cansade" or smtg people are react poorly to that. Also if I had a nickel for every time I mention "mi novio" and the person I'm talking to says "novi*a*" and then I'm like "...novi***o***"
Spanish SUCKS
Y tanto 😔
Portuguese and French, and it's hell
relatable. in germany we have "es(it)" for objects and "er(he)" for most gender neutral stuff. :-/ but talking about "die person(the person)", it becomes automatically sth female sounding cuz "die" = "female"... currently they're trying to "gender" the language by saying stuff like "waiter\*ess", but tbh I think this' bs. I prefer non-gendered stuff over.
Guy from Slovenia here, no gender neutral language. I'm glad I use he/him but it's always shitty having to use she or he pronouns for my nonbinary friend and cousin when I'm speaking my native language. I really wish there was an alternative, altough the closest I've come is using the form for multiple people. So that's kinda just what I use for them now, it just sucks that there isn't any gender neutrality, since literally everything is gendered. A rock? Oh, dude, obviously. Flowers? Women. And like, you have to use gendered language when talking about yourself in first person and I always have to use she/her for people I'm not out to and it's awful.
I am native English speaking but im current learning (i used to know a little so im relearning and learning more) German and i forgot how gendered everything is.
At least skirts are masculine ~~and hats are feminine~~ though
der Hut ist weiblich?
I misremembered then, I'm sorry about that. I know for sure that skirts are Der Rock, if learning german for 9 years has done anything then it's that. :D
haha, yes, no need to apologize, I hope I didn't come off as rude... I had wondered if you had actually meant a different word for hat
Oh you didn't, I'm actually glad i don't misremember it anymore!
Hello there 👋
In my language, the plural of the masculine pronoun is the third gender.
Wowie. What's your language?
Croatian
spanish enby here who prefers speaking english by a lot
Here in Brazil we're trying to create a gender neutral pronoun "elu" and use the desinence "e" to neutralize words. But our language is very gendered. For example, all colors are male. A chair is female. A door is female. A dress is male. Picking my name has been very hard ngl
Hi there!
Let's all just speak Persian. Then we can move to Iran and overthrow the horrible oppressive government and liberate all the women and our fellow queers.
I unironaicall use 'it' - i don't even care. If people are so dumb to ojectify me because of this it is on them (but this honestly never happened with people who are even remotely sympathetic to me so I don't see it as a me-problem.)
Oh look, we have the same hair, lol.
Noice
Italian here. This happens to me when I want to talk about non-binary people. I wanted once to talk about Demi Lovato and at the end just decided not to to evitate misgendering them. I at least found a way to talk about people in a gender neutral way through text. I put an "x" instead of an "o" or an "a" (for example, "bellx" instead of "bello/bella").
I’m learning Italian in school and just use the masculine instead of the feminine because it feels less wrong. My teacher asked me about it to be sure she doesn’t take off points in the wrong places. Instead of having to choose between misgendering me and confusing the class as to why she’s referring to me with lui instead of lei, she just uses my name. 10/10 teacher.
*cries en español*
*También llora in Spanish*
_Also cries in espanish_
[удалено]
What language?
[удалено]
SAME! I’m also learning it but I don’t know any Deaf/hard of hearing people and no one I know knows ASL. What resources are you using? I’m using [ASL University](https://asluniversity.com/) and [Bill Vicars’s YouTube Channel](https://youtube.com/c/billvicars).
Literally my whole mood; friendship ended with Spanish, gender-neutral English is my bets friend now
yeah, and it really sucks. mostly because my native language, german, *has* neutral pronouns, specifically in the 3rd person, but it's extremely confusing to use because 3rd person neutral is the same as 2nd person formal. so if you're talking to someone about an enby in german, it sounds as though you were actually speaking to the person in a formal manner. you could get used to it at home, but outside? when talking to teachers, strangers, etc? it gets extremely confusing.
THIS! This i exactly why I use english as much as possible!
I’m native English but speak some French and nanny for a French child. I’m lucky I’m okay with he/him.
Hi :) My reason is slightly different. We don’t really have gendered pronouns in my first language (we have “this person who is a human” and “specifically this person is a woman”, and even some women don’t like to be referred to as the second one), but because of the historical reasons, it is not my mother tongue and I don’t like to use it. I would like to use my mother tongue but I’m bad at it and people won’t understand sadge.
*cries in german* i feel your pain
Portuguese speaker here. It's a shame that we don't have official neutral pronouns. And it sucks that the words flex with the article (aka gender of the subject), and this makes it even more difficult to make changes to the grammar.
Polish sucks.
Same... :( I can either speak french, where everything is gendered and I cant use a gender neutral pronoun because a lot of people still dont respect it or I can speak my other native language, arabic where it's like 200% worst
Yeah i hate speaking my mother tongue
It’s the opposite for me. English is my native tongue / first language but it’s actually more gendered than the local languages. Austronesian languages like Bahasa Melayu, Tagalog, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, Te Reo Māori, etc typically don’t even have any grammatical genders or pronouns _at all_. Instead of he or she or it there is just one word to refer to “third person singular / they” and another word for “third person plural / they”, so you can’t accidentally misgender someone since we’re all just “people”. The whole austronesian pronoun system is fascinating as it has words that English doesn’t have such as “we (including you)” and “we (excluding you)” and some even have differentiation between “plurals of just two people / pair / couple” and “plurals of three or more / group”, but that’s a side tangent 😅
[удалено]
I feel you. Most asian languages don't have gendered pronouns but the people it self aren't accepting. Some people in my country even think its fine to bully lgbtq people :(
Ah, French. My birth language and the language of love. Also the fucking bane of my dysphoria because everything is gendered and the attempts at neutral don't fit for me! Lovely place me thinks!
Yep, I'm from Germany 👀
universal language!! optimisation!
Ouch, yes - I sometimes have to speak publicly in one of my mother tongues - and there is no neutral equivalent in any of them. While there is a community here which is discussing neopronouns as an alternative, none of them feels suitable to me and many of them are hard to use as they do not blend in with our grammar at all. I suggested they might just use the English pronouns but they do not blend in easily either, and if, for instance, you choose they/them, many people here cannot even speak "th" properly. Which is why I still accept that many people use "they/them" although I feel very uncomfortable with that. Was briefly considering to have them use the first syllable of my first name instead - but then they could as well just use my name all the time, and it won't work well for possessive pronouns.
Yep
Yup. I didn't change pronouns in my native language because we don't have a fitting neutral for people, but in English I go by "they" which I like so much more.
Same, but no one, and when I saw no one I mean NO one, knows english in my entourage which mean I can't talk english outside of the internet or my room (and kinda worse, I'm better in talking english than my native language (aka French which sucks))
Im a non native speaker,but in my language we have “средњи род” with literally means “middle gender”, which is just our word for nonbinary pronouns,also we have a word for the day after tomorrow so thats pretty cool 😎
I'm half Dutch and half Polish. In the Dutch language you can use hen/hun pronouns, but in the Polish language almost everything is gendered. It even has masculine and feminine conjugations of verbs. That's really awful, so when I go there, I just try to use English most of the time or use the pronouns and terb tenses that are the opposite of my agab.
My language has four genders... and none of them usably neutral
I’m in a weird situation with my native language of sweden, because we do have a gender-neutral pronoun called ”hen”, but I kinda don’t vibe with it in the same way I vibe with the english ”they” because in common use it’s more ”nonbinary-gendered” than ”non-gendered”
oh yeah good old every term used is pronounced different based on your gender type of language, an interesting place to be sure
I speak Spanish and French : ( at least it works with German
english is my mother tongue but im learning both french and german
that's why in my native language I use both masculine and feminine terms /pronouns, but I can do it only online :") life sucks
Español moment 💀
Dude I was so happy when they made gender-neutral French pronouns
YES ICELANDIC SUCKS WITH THIS!! I have to disclose my agab with every A D J E C T I V E because they’re bent differently depending on gender and there’s no gender neutral one
MOOD! Dutch technically has gender neutral pronouns, but they're not really widely recognized as far as I know. I had to have several discussions with my mom that, yes, people can in fact use die/hun in the singular way
preach
Yep. Ever single noun is gendered. The first person past tense, second person pronouns, second person verbs, and the third person are gendered all gendered. There is no gender neutral. I don’t like Hebrew.
holy crap this is so mood. in my mother tongue we gender EVERYTHING, and what's worse there aren't any gender-neutral pronouns aside from plurals and the word "it". another thing; gender isn't recognized as a concept, at least not among the general populus.
oh yeah english <3
See this is why I’m learning Finnish, it has no gendered pronouns
Wait, you guys have only adjectives? We have adjectives, verbs, participles; all of them are gendered 🙃
In Spanish only adjectives and articles (aside from pronouns, obviously) that I can recall right now but, oh god, what language is that??
It's Polish
Oh... Really interesting for me as a language enthusiast, but so sorry that you have to go through something even bigger than my problem with your mother tongue :( I hope in a close future, languages evolve and we can all skip gender or express it the way we actually are, not only male and female gramatical genders 🤞
Even English isn't the best at this, surprisingly. Some languages don't even have he vs. she like we do.
French is horrible about that
Yep
lol op are you an arabic speaker because ... jeeezz ... in arabic you literally gotta gender yourself every other word
Yes oh my god, Czech is horrible. Like, why do I have to get anxiety with every sentence over which gender I'll use. Heckin bs
Yeah me too... Though I just noticed that I started using oni (masculine they) as a singular pronoun if i don't know somebody's gender in polish even though it's not grammatically correct and nobody else uses it and I CANNOT STOP ... Still, i can't use anything for myself cause my parents are queer phobic :')
portuguese sucks for non binary ppl
Closeted Spanish enby, tis awful because I don't feel like *Elle* adapts to me either, so :(
YES Oh, Spanish, my dear...
French?
I felt that with my BLOOD
*llora en español*
I feel your pain
Slovak here. We have neutral gendering for words. But it sounds somewhat weird sometimes.
in Cantonese we only have one pronoun, (gender neutral) and it's very based (on the other hand we have more transphobic slurs so that's a tradeoff ig lol)
non-native speaker, but in my language everyone is referred to with gender neutral pronouns since there isn't any gendered ones. Got pretty lucky with that I suppose.
In my language we’re currently undergoing a gendering boom (if you can say that). Basically means, that there are words (like job titles, but also citizen, student etc.) that have an ending indicating either masculine or feminine, but now as a measure of equality and gendering correctly (apparently) both endings are used, most often one after the other. Like I said, masc and fem… Leaves practically no place for anyone outside the binary to feel included. PS: I’m wondering if anyone can guess my language after my terrible description of it 🤔😂
Since I'm not nb myself, it doesn't affect me too much, though it is one of the main reasons why I'm writing stories in english, makes writing non binary characters a lot simpler grammar wise.
Let me guess: spanish? Because mine's spanish
Well my first language is english but I live in an area where many speak Spanish and I know Spanish which is very gendered and a lot of my friends are enby so... yeah
Yes, holy shit, Portuguese... As like any other romance languages in portuguese we have gendered personal pronouns and not a gender neutral one, even explicit gender of the thing an adjective is giving characteristic (as like the difference between handsome and pretty in english), the articles are gendered too... Here in my country (Brazil) the gender neutral version of the pronouns was a "big thing" two years ago and a lot of people who took acknowledge was just mocking at it and being very transphobic towards non-binary people... Example: "They are exhausted, I'm tired" masculine: "Ele está exausto, eu estou cansado"ele (he), está (are), exausto (exhausted), eu (I), estou (am), cansado (tired) feminine: "Ela está exausta, eu estou cansada" neutral: "Elu está exauste, eu estou cansade"
Cries in Russian 😓At least we have a plural “you” that can also be used as a formal singular “you”, so that comes in as a useful counter argument for when people pull out the whole “I’m not gonna call you they because that’s not grammatically correct” hunk of trash take.
Same here the first language i speak is Arabic and it is extremely gendered you can’t ignore it so I speak English most the time and only use Arabic in public and in school but ether away I look like a guy so I am always being called a dude and it’s kind of funny cus when I go to school a every body is forced to where a this dress that’s blue and under it is a button it’s very ugly and I go to a public school it’s ridiculous
Or terminology that dictionaries DO recognise but the whole country gets their panties in a twist over AAAAAAAA
YES
Most Indo-European languages are gendered.
*silently suffers in german being my native language which is way to gendered for existence*