"Aye, I agree. These s'rfs art attempting to destroyeth the beauty yond is the english language with newfangl'd phrases and t'rms. In earnest, upon which hour shall people und'rstandeth yond using "romboyle" & "fizzle" to be simply grammatically inc'rrect. Tis a well known fact yond language hast nev'r hath changed aft'r the timeth of our ad'rn'd playwrit'r, william shakespeare. Nay w'rds aft'r yond art real and i refuseth to concede to this woke mob attempting to useth these unnatural, hilding w'rds to describeth new ideas and practices. All these w'rds art a directeth attempteth to silence us all. This is light'rally 1498!"
Is it okay for me to drop the "they" from pronouns that I accept, in regards to the majority of people I interact with? I'm a GNC man; I like being referred to with both masculine and neutral pronouns, but I don't pass and over this last semester, I've been misgendered so much.
Lots of she/her'ing from people who have only known me within the duration that I've been out, which has been two entire ass years, followed by reluctant they/them'ing. A few of them had even been around while I was talking about it to others, and then kept it up.
I've had my pronouns on all public and private servers this entire time. Up on zoom. Up everywhere.
The kind folks I'm working with at my internship are better at gendering me properly by far, and this seems to be, for many of them, the first time they've worked with trans people.
I just can't anymore. I get that everyone wants people to just "be who you are and be proud," etc, but how can I do that when they immediately, to quote TikTok, "forcibly feminize" me at almost every chance. I'm damn proud of who I am,
but they aren't. I don't pass, and it almost seems like I'm constantly being tested for how much I'll put up with before my toxic masculinity gets the best of me, which just. isn't.
It isn't toxic masculinity to just be masculine and not want to be, again, constantly feminized when it makes one severely uncomfortable.
And I know this isn't my own internalized bullshit, either, because of all of the she/her'ing and awkward, deliberate thinking pauses before she/her'ing or they/them'ing. My mother recently made it worse by asking me, "But it seems to me like it would be more fun to just be fully nonbinary. The ~mystery~" which, coming from her, just sounds like more weird fetishization, but that aside was just really shitty.
There's really only, like, 2-3 people, I now realize, outside of work, that I'm comfortable with using "they" in reference to myself. I hardly even get to see them, though I'd like to much more often and hopefully will be able to if our schedules align better this coming term.
I just. aaa. Is this okay? Is it okay to just remove "they" until I pass?
https://preview.redd.it/625rd2wjcqz71.png?width=594&format=png&auto=webp&s=9c63d57f182918ab16b7b6c555550564d18b3b00
A friend 1 and me talked about Friend 2 who came out as Nonbinary, so my Friend 1 saied "ah today I learned Friend 2 is NB" i sayed "yes" but I wanted to say "yes they is" but it sounded weird, english isn't my first language, and i am not sure if i use singular or plural here. I mean we are talking about one person so it would be "is" but 'they' indicates plural, so "are" but they aren't or they isn't multiple. I am confused.
In Japanese, ๅ, boku, is one of the many ways to say I and it is apparently related to the word, ใใใน, shimobe, which means servant. Coincidentally, in Burmese, แแปแฝแแบแแฑแฌแบ, kyanau, is derived from แแปแฝแแบ, kywan, which means slave. Now I realize that Japanese uses a lot of Chinese loanwords and Burmese is related to Chinese. My question is how widespread is this in either East or Southeast Asia? Do they come from a common root? Are they common pronouns used in the modern language, or are they archaic words? Is it specifically a Sino Tibetan thing, or does it also occur in Tai Kadai, Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Indo European, Turkic, Mongolian, Koreanic, Siberian, etc?
Is it fine to drop the pronoun like instead of saying โmais ils sont trรจs fatiguรฉs,โ I could just say โmais sont trรจs fatiguรฉsโ ? Will it make me sound more native/fluent like it will in Spanish when you drop the pronoun?
Is there a term for the tendency in some British English accents to drop off the pronoun at the end of a sentence? Example: "The bread has butter on" as opposed to the American "the bread has butter on it".
Also, does this phenomenon only occur in particular British accents? I can only remember tv characters doing it who have stereotypical London or cockney accents.
"Alright, so, in this language, he means temno-goluboj and she means svetlo-siniy."
"I have a question. I feel like I should ask this now while I still have the chance: Does this language also contain genderneutral pronouns?"
"Genderneutral pronouns? You mean like for objects? We'll talk about those later."
"No, I am still talking about people."
"Oh, you mean like if you talk about a group of both men and women?"
"No, I mean in the singular form..."
"Oh, you mean like if you're talking about a person whose gender you don't know?"
"Um, that might be an example..."
"Or a person whose gender is a superposition of a man or a woman?"
"Yes! That's exactly what I'm talking about! Is there really an example sentence featuring such a person?"
"Oh, yes, there's an example sentence right here! It's really great! You wanna see it?"
"Yes!"
"I went to the wedding and then the husband or the wife showed me ____ wedding ring. I don't remember which one of them it was."
"That's just a sentence featuring a man and a woman?"
"Yes, but the person with the wedding ring is a single person whose gender is not specified to be fully male or fully female."
"OK, so what pronoun goes into the ____?"
"Let me just look up the solution...ah, here it is: his or her."
"That's...not really what I mean.........."
"Then what do you mean?"
"I mean a pronoun for specifying a single person whose gender is neither male nor female."
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"Well..."
"Oh, now I know what you mean! Like when Steven and Connie from Steven Universe fused together into Stevonnie! Yeah. I know this character is fictional, but a language must also be able to talk about fictional characters so I can totally see your concern!"
"Urgh!"
/uj There are more intersex people than gingers so how did humanity ever start thinking that there are only 2 genders?!
/uj There must be a lot of fantasy languages with words for he and she but nothing else because their creator did not know about non-binary people. One day, after all living languages have found a way to address people in a genderneutral way, these languages will remain unchanged. I feel bad for all the neopronominal people who will never be able to really enjoy engaging with those languages.
/uj If you are a conlanger, please add a way to address people in a genderneutral way to your published conlangs, even if you have otherwise abandoned them years ago!
Hi, i'm quite confused with the usage of they/them tbh. As it can make problem with the usage of plural pronoun.
For example : "They used to love cat but not anymore". Is they here a plural pronoun? Or non binary pronoun? It's so confusing there's no definitive answer
Other exampe : eventually they gave up the money they held so long to them. Ok, which one is the plural, which one is non binary pronoun? Or both of them are plural, or even non-binary
When my english teacher (from USA) taught us this new pronoun, it makes the whole class confused. Let alone using it during speaking.
I have also heard that there other lgbtq pronoun like zie, sie, and others (i dont even remember what those are, let alone when to use it and to whom i use those pronoun).
Eventually many of my friends just gave up memorizing those numerous pronouns, so we just simply use "that person" as substitute for 17 pronouns.
Don't mention the confusion of genderfluid pronoun that can changes from day to day
Tbh i'm not against this use of custom gender, i'm quite liberal in my country. But this they /them & 17 pronoun is so confusing. Eventually my teacher just gave up and asked us to just stick to they/them for now.
So in conclusion, is there anyway to simplify the pronouns? The they/them contradict with they/them plural pronoun and we dont want to memorize 17 pronouns tbh
I am Italian, NB and prefer to use they/them even if I "still" use she/her from time to time (I am AFAB). However, being referred to with female pronouns, nouns and qualifiers every day may makes me genuinely sad.
I can't reconcile it with my gender, everyone just sees me as an androgynous woman and I have barely any recourse.
Even if there's some talk about gender neutral endings in progressive circles and even a few attempts at trying to use them, most of them are difficult to translate to spoken language and they're wildly unpopular amongst the general population.
I know I should put this behind me but somedays it's very hard for me to accept. Anyone else in a similar situation? How do you deal with it?
Sorry for this silly question, Iโm a beginner in French. Can you drop the personal pronouns in French just like in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian?
eg. Spanish- Quiero hacer esto (I want to do this)
Notice the โYoโ is dropped- โYo quiero hacer estoโ is not said.
Can you do the same in French? Instead of saying โJe veux faire รงaโ can I say โVeux faire รงaโ?
A coworker of mine goes by "it/its" pronouns or "het", which is Dutch for "it". Now, the moment I heard this, I felt a little uneasy. Why would someone willingly want to be referred to as an object. Then again, Dutch doesn't have a singular "they/them", which would've been much better imo. Still, referring to someone as an "it" just feels uneasy for me.
So, what do you guys think? Are it/its pronouns, or the langauge's equivelant of it/its, appropiate to use for a person if said language doesn't have a singular they/them? Because I still feel uneasy calling a person an "it"...
Esta es mรกs una pregunta para quienes saben de lenguaje, yo ya hablo espaรฑol pero no sรฉ dรณnde preguntarla. Gracias por sus respuestas.
One of my enby friends said I should share this on here.
I live in South Africa and my family speaks Zulu (I'm an informal speaker) and typically when you refer to a person, you'd say "lomuntu" or "yena" which just means "that person". To refer to a specific person, like someone named Thomas, you'd say "uThomas". "u" being a pronoun you use as a prefix to the name.
Again, I'm a pretty informal speaker, but I've never encountered gender specific pronouns. I just think it would be cool to be non binary and speak Zulu.
(Sorry for my English, it's like my third language lol)
In modern English, some non-binary people take the pronoun "they", which has the interesting consequence that verbs will inflect differently for the same subject, just depending on whether that subject is represented as a noun or a pronoun.
"Alex eat-s food"
"They eat-ร food"
Both verbs are inflecting for 3rd person singular neuter present tense, but one has a suffix and one doesn't.
Are there any other languages that do this?
Comparing English to languages like Mandarin where even if a personal pronoun is the subject or object of a sentence it is still the same, does English have benefits from this? If we used the same pronoun no matter if it were the subject or object of a sentence would it affect the practicability of the language? Some purposes for this could be distinguishability in more complex sentences but I canโt think of any examples off the top of my head, this was just something curious I was thinking about at lunch but any answers would be appreciated!
This will be interesting
I donโt actually know ASL, but I know that the pronouns are literally just pointing. You point at the person. If they arenโt physically there you pick a direction to represent them and point the same way each time you refer to them in the conversation. You do exactly the same thing when talking about an object. โIโ is pointing to yourself, โyouโ is pointing to the listener. If you want to use plural โtheyโ you point in a sweeping motion. Same idea for plural โweโ. For some reason the plural โyouโ has a finger gun shape, but whatever.
Possessives like โhisโ, โherโsโ, โtheirsโ, etc are similar but with an open palm facing whoever it is rather than a pointing finger.
Isnโt that so wonderfully intuitive, and completely neutral? If only that were possible with spoken words.
For reference this was a comparative linguistics lecture, where they were talking about the words for the first person singular pronouns commonly having an โmโ sound (me, mich, etc), and the same for words for โwhatโhaving sounds like โmaโ Struck me as odd because Iโd never encountered words or endings like this in Korean, but figured maybe I hadnโt learned it yet?
I recently read this webcomic which takes place in a language that is more gendered than English. Apparently, even the word "you" is gendered. I don't know what language this is because, while I am aware of some gendered languages, I don't know any language where the word "you" is gendered. Do you know what languages this applies to?
Furthermore, how would I ask the question "What are your pronouns?" in such a language? I mean, I don't speak the language so it might seem strange that I would want to know this, but I just want to know in case I ever learn such a gendered language and don't have the opportunity to ask this.
I would assume that there must be at least some standard way of what to say if you're speaking to a person you don't know the gender of.
Perhaps something like "he or she" but for the 2nd person? But wait: What if the person uses neither he/him nor she/her? Neopronouns certainly exist in non-English languages.
Is there even a solution for this in every language? Or are there some languages where this would simply be impossible?
OK, so I've been wanting to share some insight and perspective on this.
Spanish is my first language but I've spoken English as long as I can remember. I was raised in a Latin American country but went to college in the US. While in college, I was introduced to gender-neutral pronouns when referring to non-binary or genderfluid folks and I was taken aback at how long it was taking me to get used to the idea. Fellow Spanish-speaking foreigners shared the same problem. (Interestingly, Spanish-speaking locals not so much).
Of course I don't mean getting used to it in a socio-political way. We Spanish-speaking foreigners understood it when a person identified as non-binary or genderfluid, but it was common for us to accidentally slip out a gendered pronoun before immediately apologizing. It happened way too often. And then it hit me.
Spanish, unlike English, utilizes gendered nouns and adjectives to match pronouns. For example, "he is small" translates to "รฉl es pequeรฑo" and "she is small" becomes "ella es pequeรฑa." The word "small" can denote gender like the article (the) or pronoun can. In Spanish, even inanimate objects like pillows, doors, carrots, magic, and movies are described as "female." Things like couches, bridges, lipstick, theatres, and love are "male." We Spanish-speakers are hardwired by language to see the world in binary. (There's an interesting Ted Talk about it too, Lera Boroditsky.)
So when English introduces gender-neutral concepts, our Spanish-speaking brain works a bit harder to try and match any English noun with its Spanish counterpart, and therefore, a gender. When it comes to pronouns, our brain subconciously searches for context clues and will automatically choose either a masculine term or a femenine one. Again, this is not an excuse to excuse ourselves from respecting gender-neutrality, instead it's something we Spanish-speakers need to become aware of and overcome so that we too can respect everyone's identities.
It also explains why gender-neutrality in communication is (unfortunately) less accepted in Latin American countries. Unlike English, which already is (mostly) gender-neutral, we would have to create a whole new way of speaking, reading and writing that would end up revolutionizing the Spanish language entirely, creating whole new lists of pronouns, nouns, and adjectives.
For example, instead of using the vowel "a" to express femenine nouns or the letter "o" for masculine ones, people have introduced the lett
... keep reading on reddit โกThis happens in Hindi/Urdu. We use 'hum' which is 'we', a first personal plural pronoun, but in many regions, people use it very commonly as 'I'. Although we do have a distinct pronoun for 'I'(i.e. mai).
Does anyone know of any other language where this may be seen?
Check out this 1 min read: French nonbinary pronoun sparks debate (WONKedition)
- r/NewsForTeens
So i like a lot the they/them pronouns in english, but i hate how they sound in my native language. It is ok for mw to use them only in one language or should i do not use them?
