As a native speaker of one of the above, I’m sometimes confused when people online use “he” for a generic duck or cat or other animals that are female in my native language
This is not true anymore as we have all moved to de-gender our language according to the teachings of the late Hermes Phettberg by which gender-specific endings are replaced by the letter Y.
So, i.e. the German word for a person operating a bakery is now “Bäcky” instead of “Bäcker” (m) and “Bäckerin” (f).
You know, that’s really close to the original way gendering was done in German.
There used to be separate word endings for male and female, and if you don’t care you’d just skip the ending. IIRC it was “Bäcko” for male, “Bäcka” for female and “Bäck” for “I don’t care as long as I get good bread”.
The vovel shift then changed -o and -a both to -e, and then there was no gender marking at all. The modern -in ending for female forms only originated in the 16th century to make women more visible in the language.
That’s why German doesn’t have symmetric male/female variants but only a generic and a female form. As in, if you say “Bäckerin” it’s clear you are specifically only referring to women, while “Bäcker” doesn’t clearly mean you are only referring to a man.
What’s your preferred default pronoun? As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a universally accepted replacement, since any pronoun comes with drawbacks. ‘he’ & ‘she’ are gendered, ‘it’ typically refers to non-sentient things, and ‘they’ can cause confusion about number. Of course, there’s also neopronouns, but people have come up with a billion, and there’s no consensus or standard, so I can’t confirm the person I’m talking to will understand.
I find it annoying when ‘he’ is used as a default pronoun for an entity of unknown gender.
you must find it really annoying to learn Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, and a bunch of other languages that have gendered nouns.
As a native speaker of one of the above, I’m sometimes confused when people online use “he” for a generic duck or cat or other animals that are female in my native language
I believe in English you would use it if you don’t know an animal’s gender. But it’s not my first language either so
This is not true anymore as we have all moved to de-gender our language according to the teachings of the late Hermes Phettberg by which gender-specific endings are replaced by the letter Y.
So, i.e. the German word for a person operating a bakery is now “Bäcky” instead of “Bäcker” (m) and “Bäckerin” (f).
I'm totally serious about this
not 🤪
You know, that’s really close to the original way gendering was done in German.
There used to be separate word endings for male and female, and if you don’t care you’d just skip the ending. IIRC it was “Bäcko” for male, “Bäcka” for female and “Bäck” for “I don’t care as long as I get good bread”.
The vovel shift then changed -o and -a both to -e, and then there was no gender marking at all. The modern -in ending for female forms only originated in the 16th century to make women more visible in the language.
That’s why German doesn’t have symmetric male/female variants but only a generic and a female form. As in, if you say “Bäckerin” it’s clear you are specifically only referring to women, while “Bäcker” doesn’t clearly mean you are only referring to a man.
Damn I had no idea who this guy was. What a legend.
The difference between those and English is that they use grammatical gender, but English takes it literally
Yeah not relevant to english tho as there actually is a solution for the problem unlike other languages
Yeah, you use whichever you want and just worry about it less.
No
German works. We have more than enough options for non-genered language.
Yeah, those languages are awful
we’re talking about a fucking bear.
of course he’s a man.
What, you think momma bear would ignore someone who needs help?
Fun fact: 3rd person is literally just a letter in turkish: O
In Finnish it’s just one pronoun: hän
What’s your preferred default pronoun? As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a universally accepted replacement, since any pronoun comes with drawbacks. ‘he’ & ‘she’ are gendered, ‘it’ typically refers to non-sentient things, and ‘they’ can cause confusion about number. Of course, there’s also neopronouns, but people have come up with a billion, and there’s no consensus or standard, so I can’t confirm the person I’m talking to will understand.
Ri for singular, ili for plural. 🏳️🟩⭐🟩
Oh, hello weird emoji ligature parsing.
Singular they has been used since Shakespearian times to refer to people of unknown gender. You’ve probably used it yourself.
Singular they
As in “just ask them to review your PR”.
It’s not new either. It’s been in use since the 14th century.
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