• no_name_dev_from_hell@programming.dev
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    6 months ago

    As a person who learned English as a 2nd language, I would like it if you could transform the language into gender neutral and end this insanity.

    I still get classic genders wrong, this whole LGBTQ movement is confusing me even more when I’m trying to type/speak.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      English is gender neutral. You have to deliberately apply a gender to something unless that word is gender specific, like cow or bitch referring to female animals.

      In my brief forays learning other languages one of the more frustrating things to learn is that you can have female refrigerators, male buses, and gender neutral roofs. That is not gender neutrality.

      So I don’t get your issue with genders, seeing as they have nothing to do with English language neutrality and everything to do with how you address a specific individual at their request.

      • Farid@startrek.website
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        6 months ago

        In one of the languages I know, there isn’t a different pronoun for each gender; there’s just one pronoun to indicate ‘they’ in the singular form. Maybe that’s what they meant.

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        In what fucked up language are refrigerators female? They’re obviously male.

      • no_name_dev_from_hell@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        In Persian we don’t have genders for anything. No words, no pronouns, nothing. So having gendered pronouns for me is not gender neutral. I would rather call everyone equally “they” than get into this game of what are you identifying yourself because it makes the language more complex for me.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          How is it more difficult? If someone’s name is Joe Smith, you would commonly expect to refer to them as Joe. But say they ask you to refer to them as Mr. Smith. Ok, no big deal, right?

          Referring to someone by their preferred pronoun is no different. If Joe wants to be “they”, it’s no big deal.

          The apparent issue is with gender and people’s personal hang ups with it. People change how they address others all the time, formally, informally, professionally, familiar, marriage name change, etc. So all I’m getting here is resistance to what…? LBGTQ people?

      • ddkman@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        The fuck you are talking about? You didn’t have to explicitly say your forays of language studying were brief, anyone could tell that after a second of reading this. English is a gendered language. Obviously. It has gendered pronouns. My native language doesn’t have genered pronouns AS SUCH. It is a non genderd language. They are rare but they do exist. The fact that nouns can have pronouns that apply to specific Nouns, like das Külschrank, doesn’t make it a more gendered language. This is just factually wrong, and is so poorly researched it is amusing.

          • ddkman@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Yes the ‘grammatical’ in the term ‘grammatical gender’ is the operative word. A GENEDERED language, has pronouns. Because I happen to be able to speak one of the few ungendered languages in the world I know what the term means.

            • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              In English, when we say “gendered language”, we mean “grammatically gendered language”, not just “language has gendered pronouns”.

              • ddkman@lemm.ee
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                6 months ago

                Except somehow a Gender-neutral language is one that has no gender the way I described. So what is the opposite of a Gender-neutral language? Gender-inclusive? Gender-bias?

                • sparkle@lemm.ee
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                  6 months ago

                  A language doesn’t “have gender” in any way other than noun class. Gender is cultural and exists outside of the confines of language. So “gendered language” would likely be referring to grammatical gender and not gender.

                • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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                  6 months ago

                  The original commenter who used the term “gender neutral language” meant “non-grammatically gendered language”, that much is clear from context. It was a semantic mistake. Hopefully things are cleared up for you now. If you have a point beyond semantics, feel free to make it.

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          From zero to insult in one post? C’mon man, your incorrect use of terms isn’t my problem. I don’t need a PhD in linguistics to meet your unstated requirements to have an opinion on this.

          If you want gender neutral pronouns in order to avoid the inconvenience of having to address the groups of people you singled out, like LGBTQ, that’s what you should have said instead of clearly specifying an entire language’s use of gender. You obviously know the difference in your ragepost, so next time spend some effort to get your message across correctly the first time and don’t have a fit when people can’t read your mind.

          I think you should also understand that even if gender neutral informal pronouns like “they” do develop and become common usage, you’re still going to have to learn to address people in their preferred pronoun if they ask.

          • ddkman@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Yeah on the insult bit, my bad. I was angry because of unrealed issues. Soz.

      • EvilCartyen@feddit.dk
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        6 months ago

        The thing about grammatical gender is that it doesn’t really have much to do with sex or gender identity. In German, for instance, ‘mädchen’ (girl) is neuter. Gender in French is 98% assigned based on the pronunciation of the three final syllables. In Danish, living things tend to be ‘common gender’ and inanimate objects tend to be ‘neuter’.

        It’d be more accurate to call it ‘noun classes’ than gender.

        • Rozaŭtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          It’d be more accurate to call it ‘noun classes’ than gender.

          And that’s exactly what they’re called in other languages like Hawaiian and Swahili.

          • EvilCartyen@feddit.dk
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            6 months ago

            Well, yes. But not for Indo-European languages which is… mostly a historical artifact. But we’re still sticking to teaching traditional grammar using traditional terminology, which is super frustrating. Imagine if you kept teaching maths in a manner which you knew was fundamentally wrong, but it was just too much work to reeducate all maths teachers.

        • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
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          6 months ago

          Well, as a German, I wouldn’t agree. Generally, nouns describing men are masculine and nouns describing women are feminine. “Das Mädchen” is just an odd one out because it’s the diminutive (always neuter in German) of “die Maid”, which in turn is feminine.

          Yes, this doesn’t really apply to objects, but it mostly does for people.

          • EvilCartyen@feddit.dk
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            6 months ago

            Sure, there’s some correlation - but when 99% of words in a noun class can’t have a biological gender it seems weird to name it after the 1%.

            • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
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              6 months ago

              Well, you’re arguing terminology. But the original commenter’s point was about the association of grammatical gender with gender, and that is definitely a thing in German.

              Der Arzt (Male doctor) -> die Ärztin (female doctor) is an example where the grammatical gender changes with the gender of the person, and that’s almost always the case.

          • SLfgb@feddit.nl
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            6 months ago

            Child - das Kind - grammatical gender: neuter. Referred to in context using the gender-neutral pronoun ‘es’ (it). The pronoun used correlates with the grammatical gender of the noun used, not the gender of the person referred to.

            Eg Ein Kind lacht. Es hat etwas gesehen. (transl: A child laughs. He/she/they saw something.)

            • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
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              6 months ago

              I know. But generally, the gender of the noun describing a person correlates with the gender of the person described strongly.

              • SLfgb@feddit.nl
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                6 months ago

                Ok but my point is that when it doesn’t correlate, it becomes clear how grammatical gender is independent from the person’s gender.

                It becomes even clearer when you consider all nouns by definition have a grammatical gender - inanimate objects, abstract concepts, etc, even though the thing described clearly doesn’t have a gender. Eg die Tür ist offen. Ich schliesse sie. (transl.: the door is open. I close it.) ‘Sie’ being the female pronoun used to refer to the grammatically female door.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@reddthat.com
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      6 months ago

      Honestly biggest reason I list they/them is just because I don’t think we should gender language in general. Any pronouns are fine, as long as you aren’t trying to be dehumanizing with it. I use they/them a lot when referring to other people and most people don’t care, but a few cissies thought a hissy fit over singular they.