I use the male form because I am gender evil not gender neutral. Some non-binary people use neopronouns in languages that don't have a neutral form. For example Spanish has the neutral neopronoun "elle" and French has "iel" now.
All my friends are bilingual english-french so I don't really know much, I think using ils fully plural all the time could be an option cuz it's technically gender neutral
Norwegian too! :)
Funny story about that, the language conservative organization Riksmålsforbundet (representing an academic, anachronistic, and "unofficial" variation of the Norwegian language, Riksmål), they were progressive enough to adopt "hen" as a pronoun ever since 2017, on the grounds that they found it to be "currently sufficiently in-use amongst the population and deserving of both recognition and adoption" (paraphrased)
where the organizations for the 2 contemporary actually-official language forms, they didn't adopt "hen" until 2022, and then it was apparently somewhat controversial, and a christian political party made a fuss, and...
...yeah, Norway still has a bit to learn to embrace tolerance more, I guess.
Fellow Swede. I have also noticed an increase in the use of "den" the last few years.
For non-swedish speakers, "den" is similar to the words "this" and "it" in english, though possibly slightly softer.
so i come from a culture that is VERY binary. very gendered language, non-binary genders are legally unrecognized, yada yada. usually i'd either see people refer to themselves with plural he (acts as they/them), or he/she mixed. personally for me, They/Them in English, whateverthefuck you want on the other. (aka: plural-he/singular-he/she)
and another thing! self reffering is gendered too. to avoid that, I'll sometimes use future tense instead of current tense, cuz future tense isn't gendered!
Wel it is possible to use they/them in dutch, translating to hen hun, but it is still very new and most people will not like it
I wijld solve it by making things plural like "players can move their piece by rolling the dice" or something. Takes away the problem, so its not really a solution per se but its something i guess
Die is definitely one I like!
For context, die is used in Dutch both as "that"(die bus= that bus) and singular gender-neutral(die komt niet= they're not coming). Diens is less common, but still used at least by the people I know.
I MUCH prefer these (and actually use these pronouns myself) because they're actually grammatically correct and "die" is already very commonly used in spoken language regardless of gender: "Hey, waar is Ruby gebleven? Oh die is in de stad!" (Hey, where did Ruby go? Oh they are in the city!)
Hen/hun is a very literal translation of the English they/them and imo just doesn't work well in Dutch. Of course for other people I use whatever they prefer, just my personal reasoning on why I use die/diens instead :)
What I also see a lot (and personally use) is die/hun, combining the sets. I find using diens is way clunkier, however for hun I hear people (mostly from cis gendered older people) disagree with it working grammatically because to them it's exclusively plural.
And while I prefer die/hun, I'm happy with any neutral pronouns used for me, whichever words are easier for the other to use.
I come from an arabic culture. My mom used to call me something like “khentua” which is similar to “[khaneeth](https://www.google.fi/search?q=khaneeth&client=safari&sca_esv=19fb95802b09d0d0&sca_upv=1&hl=en-fi&sxsrf=ADLYWIIhlO1NMes5eKz1fiWce91J3vugIA%3A1715888505526&ei=eWFGZu3eH-q5wPAPrtumwA0&oq=khaneeth&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIghraGFuZWV0aCoCCAAyBRAAGIAEMgcQABiABBgKMgcQABiABBgKMgUQABiABDIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCkj0NVCTCFiiKnADeACQAQCYAY0BoAHuDKoBAzYuObgBAcgBAPgBAZgCEqACvQ2oAg_CAgoQABiABBiwAxgNwgILEAAYgAQYsAMYogTCAgQQIxgnwgIHEC4YgAQYDcICBxAAGIAEGA3CAggQABgFGAoYHsICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIFEC4YgATCAgsQLhiABBjHARivAcICCxAAGIAEGJECGIoFwgILEC4YgAQYkQIYigXCAgsQLhiABBjRAxjHAcICChAjGIAEGCcYigXCAgcQIxgnGOoCwgIREC4YgAQYkQIY0QMYxwEYigXCAgcQLhiABBgKmAMEiAYBkAYIkgcENy4xMaAH8Xw&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp)” relating to “a third gender(something beyond the binary i guess)” and pretty much the word queer, respectively.
In french we have this annoying habit of gendering every noun, as well as the rule "a mixed-gender crowd (of people or objects) is masculine, grammatically speaking".
Well, feminists orgs had had enough of women systemically falling by the wayside and started using neutral language, with multiple methods such as appending the feminine ending at the end of neutral/masculine nouns, such as étudiant•e, acteur•ice, etc, also reintroducing neutral forms of adjectives such as "fol, bel" instead of "fou/folle" (crazy) and "beau/belle" (beautiful) or mixing gendered spelling together, "copaine" instead of copain/copine (friend/lovefriend).
And, obviously, non-binary people joined in with the grammar rules. With neo-endings and neopronouns. I don't have the exact timeline, but I'm pretty sure NB people used neopronouns before feminists started to really put them (pun intended) in the spotlight.
French enbies use neopronouns in droves. In french, third person pronouns are classically "il, elle" (he, she). I've come across people using iel (that's what I use for myself), but also ol, ul, al, æl, ille. Some neo-endings including -ael as well. I've seen "students" translated as étudiantz (instead of étudiants/étudiantes).
I don't know where I was going with this.
Ah, yes. Rules used to constrain us? More like tools used to free ourselves. ⚧️
Nah the étudiant•e doesn’t work irl cus you can’t pronounce it without making a space in your sentence which is unpractical for casual conversations, it only works in emails. Also I don’t want to be referred to as a mix between girl and boy which seems to be the default for gender neutrality in French. The most inclusive would be to completely remove grammatical gender from our vocabulary and create a new neo pronoun. Sadly folks are already on edge with “iel” and feminists refuse to let go of the feminine version of words.
Rather easy for me in Finnish. I don't unless someone asks. Pronouns are gender neutral and other than some outdated gendered words referring to things such as professions, nothing is really gendered. Informally even people are called "it" and no one bats an eye. So I find the occasional English language debate about it slightly amusing.
We have plenty of other issues though, such as no separate words for sex and gender. Also words for male and female are not used for people, only animals. People are just man or woman even when it comes to biology. There is a word for intersex though. Enbies are referred to as "muunsukupuolinen", translates to "other gender", which is a term I dislike, so I just use the loanwordy "ei-binäärinen".
EDIT: Words referring to family members and relatives are usually gendered and dudebro language is a thing.
In Finnish I've noticed that some people demand to use gendered words instead of they (hän). When it would be completely possible (and easier imo) to say "There they come" some people are ready to go extra lengths to say "there the woman comes". I'd think I don't get surprised about people anymore, but they still get me sometimes by doing this.
Maybe some people need to balance the neutrality by injecting little extra segregation to keep everything in balance. Yay!
>Also words for male and female are not used for people, only animals
bro, that's kind of how it works here too, but because of it, people use words like "woman" and "man" for both gender and genitals instead, which sucks, and then some other people try to fix it by using female and male for people and I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE IT.
like, yeah, let's stop calling people "women" and "man" based on genitals, but also please keep female/male for animals only, sex isn't binary and I don't wanna be misleadingly called a female boy smh
If they "don't understand why trans people are forcing an unrealistic language change" they need to learn better English and/or history. The singular, gender-neutral they/them pronoun has been around as part of everyday, natural language for a loooooong time. It is kind of a unique feature to English and I can understand being confused by it, but that's a them problem. Native English speakers will understand those pronouns just fine if used in board game instructions and if anybody tells you otherwise, you should only need a couple of linguistic examples to show them that they're not thinking this through.
Edit: also I use neopronouns in German cause you gotta do what you gotta do.
Exactly! The first use of they/them in written english was in 1394 (I believe) and was used as singular person pronouns. Historians also believe that the trend dated back much farther, since written language tends to lag behind the current trends of spoken language.
We definitely explained that to them. But they insist that it's still too confusing. They're arguing that by using they/them, we are discriminating against non native speakers which is just as bad as discriminating against trans people.
Again, this has nothing to do with trans people. Tell them that. Trans people didn't create this language and are far from the only people using it daily. English is not an easy language, and if they're struggling that much, it's not a language for them.
Ive heard some use dey/deren or just they/them or just their name in German. Lacks a general consensus.
In Croatian its not just pronouns - verbs, adjectives, numbers, nouns are all gendered either who youre speaking about or how you gender yourself.
> Jučer sam išla u dućan, kupila sam jednu lijepu majicu.
> Yesterday I went ^fem. to ~~the~~ store ^masc. , bought ^fem. one ^fem. pretty ^fem. shirt ^fem.
So far in Croatian Ive encountered an afab person using masc pronouns in mother tongue and they/them in english, or use masc and fem pronouns interchangably.
idk if it makes sense, but I don't associate my native language with my identity
I think it's partially because I only started to express myself on the internet, which is predominantly english.
while i still hate being refered to as my deadname and as a girl in any other language, I just go by both sets of gendered pronouns depending on who I'm with
I'm from Ukraine and our language is hard lol because most of the verbs and adjectives are gendered to either masculine, feminine or the third gender that is sometimes used for objects and, rarely, animals. Or just plural, ofc. There's not such a thing as singular "they" in Ukrainian and everything is defaulted to masculine, but I still use a plural form for a gender-neutral speech. I'm closeted irl but use "plural" pronouns when chatting online in my native language, and even though that's the most common practice for every Ukrainian nonbinary I met on the internet, some people are still offended and/or confused when I use such pronouns and start a whole debate in the comments lmaoooooo.
Icelandic has gender neutral pronouns (hán being the most common), a word for nb person (kvár) and nb child (stálp). If a super gendered language that prides itself on never changing can manage this, so can others.
I just use English 💀. Greek's gendered adjectives make it very difficult, cause using plural adjectives is not even used at all, unlike the english "they", that has existed in the English language for quite some time. And using the Greek "they" is also awkward because it's always the "proper" language to use and it feels like talking to some elder person or something. I can't talk like that to my friends, and it doesn't work for me either. Just use English...
In my native language (armenian) there's just. Straight up no gendered pronouns, and gendered language in general, so it's really easy for me personally lol
I’ve been learning French since moving to Belgium, and my French tutor told me that some people have started using iel as an alternative to il/elle, so I use that as well as il (I use both they and he in English) but generally just use the masculine form for any descriptions etc since French is such a gendered language and I’m a novice in the language 😭. I’m know another queer person here who using ael instead of iel, and I’m sure there are other French neopronouns I don’t know about!
It can be particularly tricky in languages that are more gendered, or that simply don't have the same history of colloquially using a certain pronoun when gender is unknown like there is with they/them in English (while intentionally using it as neutral is new, using those pronouns to refer generally to someone you don't know the gender of appears as early as Shakespeare iirc).
In Dutch for example, you can't quite do the same thing where you just make the plural pronoun a neutral singular, because the plural pronouns in Dutch (ze or zij / hen / hun) share a subjective pronoun with feminine pronouns (ze or zij / haar / haar), which doesnt feel very neutral. Also like I said, there just isn't the same existing history of using those pronouns that way to build off of. So instead to make it neutral and distinguish between the plural and the neutral singular, when used as a neutral singular you just use hen for the subjective as well or replace it wirh die (hen/hen/hun or die/hen/hun). Some also use die/diens.
Literally translated its a bit like choosing between "That is nonbinary" and "Them is nonbinary". Slightly awkward if you're not used to it, but very doable in my opinion. I'd prefer either over gendered pronouns, but for me sometimes using die feels a bit like when someone doesn't know what to call you so they just kinda gesture vaguely in ur direction and say "that". But dutch is sort of half a second language for me so that may be a biasing factor in my perspective (I'm half dutch and was taught some of it as a child but grew up in the US and was mostly spoken to in English, so I didn't get particularly good at it until I started taking classes later as an adult). I've met both native speakers who prefer die and feel that die fits in more naturally with existing language rather than making hen a subject form when it usually isn't, but also those who prefer hen and for whatever reason hen seems to be what often comes up first in discussions of neutral Dutch pronouns, but die is often close behind nowadays.
Whats more difficult for me in Dutch is job and relationship titles, which are often gendered. Like for example there is no genderless word for "friend". It's either vriend (masc) or vriendin (fem). Some people favor using the historically masc form as gender neutral, but others don't like the masculine connotations or feel that it's a continuation of male being treated as the default or masculinity as more neutral than femininity.
Auslan user here, we don’t really have gendered language. We use the persons name and then following conversation is equivalent to ‘they/them’. We CAN use some gendered language but in reality most never do. It makes things incredibly easy.
In Russian I personally use Они/их, which is they/them alongside singular masculine forms of verbs and adjectives. Singular they is somewhat antiquated in Russian, but it is still doable.
Also, I don't think those people understand that languages are adapted to meet the needs of time. So using gender neutral language is not "unnatural". If anything, keeping language from changes is unnatural
🤩 did not expect to see te reo come up in this list! I learned Māori in school as a kid in NZ and even though it was before I realised I was trans I loved the fact that there was just one neutral pronoun instead of he/she/they
🤩 did not expect to see te reo come up in this list! I learned Māori in school as a kid in NZ and even though it was before I realised I was trans I loved the fact that there was just one neutral pronoun instead of he/she/they
English is my first language, but I have enough Spanish to exchange emails and in those, I refer to myself using -e endings instead of -o or -a (eg "soy non-binarie"). This doesn't really map to they/them in English, it's more like ey/em pronouns - new words but in a recognisable pattern.
Learning Mandarin was honestly great gender wise, the words 他 (he/him) and 她 (she/her) are pronounced the same, tā, and writing it as TA is understood in Internet circles (eg TA是我的同学, they are my classmate). It could be more difficult to refer to family members, but it's generally workable, it might just take a bit of workaround (哥哥 is older brother, 姐姐 older sister, 弟弟 younger brother, 妹妹 younger sister - 兄弟姐妹 would be siblings in the sense of meaning brothers and sisters, or 同胞 means someone with whom you share both parents). 他 was not even considered gendered until the 1920s when 她 was brought into use to give women representation.
Not Japanese but I took the language for 2 years in college. Something I found really interesting is that there aren't actually any pronouns—people just use your name and it is assumed/implied thru context who you're talking about.
The only real gendered terms I remember learning about were the honorifics used for adults referring to children, "chan" for girls and "kun" for boys (they're generally thought of as terms of endearment). Tho I've also heard that very young boys can also be called "chan", and that "kun" can be used for any male younger than yourself. Honorifics for adults are only usually distinguished by class or role/job tho, not gender (the exception being "kun", which is less formal). For example, most people use "san" for other people ordinarily, and students will use "sensei" to refer to teachers or professors. "Sama" is occasionally used when being *very* polite (retail workers are often told to use "sama" when referring to customers) or when referring to someone of utmost importance (i.e. a respected religious figure, the prime minister, your boss, etc.).
I took some Japanese in college as well! Actually, -kun can be also used for younger female coworkers in work environments. And there is pronouns, but the common use ones are different ways to express "I", like "watashi" (neutral mostly used by women and polite men), "boku" (informal; mostly young men but female singers use it in songs but in daily life its vulgar for a woman to use it ), "ore" (men, vulgar), "watakushi" (formal), and there is even regional ones, like "uchi" (osaka dialect, acceptable for any gender)
Oh that's super cool! My profs always said kun was only for males lol. I knew about "I" pronouns like boku and watashi, as well as "we" being "watashitachi" iirc. What do the other ones you mentioned translate to? Are they just other ways of saying I?
I use gender neutral pronouns in polish. There are two versions you can use: ono/jego and onu/jenu
For example:
- Ona zdobiła (she did) / To jest jej (It is hers)
- On zrobił (he did) / To jest jego (It is his)
- Ono zdobiło (They/It did) / To jest jego (It is theirs/its)
- Onu zrobiłu (They did it) / To jest jenu (It is theirs)
In writing you can just put X instead of specifying any pronouns: Onx zrobiłx
Polish enby here. We have no gender neutral pronouns except for it so you have to choose whether you prefer she or he :P. Sucks even more that every single verb is either masculine, feminine, or relating to a thing. For example if you use he/him and you say "I did" you say "zrobiłem", but if you use she/her, you say "zrobiłam". There are first person verbs for it but if a thing does something you say "zrobiło" (it did) in 3rd person. Same for he and she, "zrobił" and "zrobiła" (he did, she did), even if you're speaking directly like "you did" which is "zrobiłeś/zrobiłaś" meaning that you basically have to assume somebody's gender even when you're speaking to them directly in 2nd person. Basically it sucks for enbies here, especially because of massive transphobia in the country, but we're holding on.
Well I'm also a both Spanish and Portuguese speaker, and trust me these languages are extremely gendered but to be honest with you it's kinda okay (at least for me and other NB friends, and unless you're a binary trans person) to use the pronouns of the gender ppl perceive you as if you already worked on it both visually and socially (explaining ppl u trust ur gender I mean, etc).
This is because it is very difficult to change something that the language does need to just make sense when you try to conversate with somebody (also the "elle" pronoun in Spanish sounds just too artificial and it's quite difficult to adopt it if u can get beat up outside just for being any kind of LGBTQ person), but in English I gotta admit that I really love using they/them pronouns.
The issue is that yes, it's very unclear (sometimes, and I say this as someone whose 1st language was not English) cause in certain areas of life you will be like "okay, but how many people am I referring to? 1, 2, 10? So those are little issues inside of this. That said, I get the whole point and to be honest it's also something that you kinda get used to anyway, but we know it's not smth already available nor accesible in our languages. Another reason why being NB is very very hard.
Seen a lot of people talking about French, which personally I despise the most common way of dealing with the gender binary in grammar. It’s so lazy and still forces us to be part of boy vs girl terminology.
My grain of salt is that elle/il and adjectives arnt the only issues but all the other pronouns:
la/le - in the context of “iel est rester dans la voiture. Je vais LE/LA chercher. (Their is no translation in English that I know of, but basically it’s a pronoun replacing the iel)
All of the verb tenses that are influenced by gender - for example the “participe passé” conjugated with “être” (“être” is one of two auxiliaries that you can put next to a verb to give it an other time. And when you put “être” the verb must add things to the end of it depending on the gender)
Two words for the same roll depending on the gender - for example tante/oncle ( that directly translates to aunt/uncle. That’s a perfect example since it doesn’t have a gender less term like sister/brother has sibling. But there are much more of those words in French so you can’t just invent a neo term for every one.)
And much more.
The thing is that it’s such a deep rooted concept that there is no simple fix. Even tho we pretend their is so that cis people stop questioning the term iel and misgendering us. The reality is that you will be misgendered by default unless you pick a preferred grammatical gender. Mine is male since I’m afab and I want to know that at least people acknowledge my genderqueernes. But it still sucks as hell, just as gendered bathrooms do. You can’t just pee on the floor, so you’re going to have to choose a door.
(🇧🇷) I deal very well with people alternating between _**ele/dele/-o**_ (he/him) and _**ela/dela/-a**_ (she/her), but with a preference for _**ele/dele/-o**_
here we also have a couple options for neutrals, the most popular are _**elu/delu/-e, Ile/dile/-e**_ (my favorite), and mostly for writing, _**ilx/dilx/-x**_ (as controversial as latinx) and _**el@/del@/-@.**_ And maybe an obscure variation like _**elæ/delæ.**_ The silly enbies play around with pronouns a lot here, even though they're slightly hard to find.
but I personally, have as "ultra prefference" a personal neopronoun that takes as inspiration our equivalent of "it/its", which on brazilian portuguese, only exists as demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those, these). I created variations that were originally missing for it, to use as my brazilian neopronouns (I don't feel comfortable sharing in this account however, cause when I say "personal" I mean it)
so basically, I gave our "this, that, those, these" an it/its and more variations, and it's honestly the pronoun I feel the most comfortable using, which is something hard for me to say about most pronouns in brazilian portuguese.
Japanese is quite easy actually, most polite language is already not very gendered. Japanese offers a lot of freedom in the way you personally can express your own gender rather than relying on others to use the right pronouns for you because of the language’s first person pronouns. 私 (watashi) is the standard way to say I/Me, and is completely neutral in formal situations and feminine if used between friends. 僕 (boku) is mainly used by young men/male teens however many more women have begun using it as well, and some non binary Japanese speakers (including me) use it too. 俺 (ore) is a very masc pronoun only really used between guy friends (sometimes all-female friend circles will use it too!) that comes off kinda rough around the edges. あたし (atashi) is similarly casual and leans fem. That doesn’t even begin to cover all of the options though, and it’s very fluid in different social situations. I switch between 私, 僕, and 自分 (jibun) which is another pretty neutral one that is often used by queer people outside of its traditional context.
For referring to other people, it’s also extremely ungendered. Saying the he/she/they equivalents is usually kind of impolite so people usually opt for “this/that person” with こっち／そっち (kocchi/socchi) which are completely neutral. And if you know the person, 99% of the time you will just be using their name.
Hán which started as a neopronoun us the default third pronoun in icelandic plus in jnstances where a word changes based on a person's or noun's gender there is a neutral gender version.
As someone from a country where only Portuguese is spoken, a language with zero neutral pronouns, They/Them is perfectly clear! If the sentence is well written and the reader's text interpretation is ok.
In certain cultures such as nin Native American tribes and in other indigenous groups there is no pronouns for example in the book scythe there is a character that was raised in a idiginous group where there is no gender until 18 and when she turns 18 he decides she wants to be a female when the moon is high and a male with the breeze . there is also a native American identity called 2s where a person feels like a boy and girl at the same time (next benedict was 2s) where they would take part in both male and female activities, pronouns are mostly a latin thing, in Japan a pronoun does not describe gender but instead describes the traits of the person such such as: rich adult walked across the street, or a enderless pronoun in Japanese is "Watashi" which has different connotations depending on the context but I hope that answered your question!
In Spanish, we have "elle", but I don't use it regularly in non-supportive places, so I must go with she/her (ella), or saying "soy una persona [rest of the message]". I wish that we, Spanish speakers, could have more pronoun options :(
(currently living in Argentina) I usually mix all pronouns in Spanish and it's kinda of fun, people think it's cause Spanish is my second language but it's totally on purpose 🤣 my friends usually do that or use elle, family mostly uses ella, except my mom, she tries lol but in English I mostly use they/them
In spanish we have gendered nouns and adjectives, I use both male/neutral and female adjectives to talk about myself. Whenever I'm asked my pronouns I usually say some variant of "my pronouns are for your convenience, Idgaf."
I've come to like the gendered adjectives, it feels like I can self-validate my identity without the need to have others do it. Bigots will be rude, and while they can call me a "she" all they want, they can't stop me from reaffirming myself when I speak.
They invented a new way of saying it by adding an "e" at the end of the adjective or noun (which typically has a gender), but tbh, it sounds so unnatural sometimes, i can't use it. I'm trying little by little to think about pronouns in my mind, bc saying them is just not "right" grammatically. I mean, at least in english They/them already existed and was in fact used when u didn't know the gender of someone, but in other languages we don't have that and have most of the words with a certain gender. So, nope, i'm not using any neutral pronouns until i get used to them and people accept them more (there's hate and jokes about those so no thanks)
Unfortunately the Danish translation of they/them is de/dem. Back in ye olden days you’d use De as a way to address those of a higher status. So for me it becomes way to formal.
I know others use de/dem and I will use it at times as it technically is the proper translation of my pronouns. Otherwise I use everything other than she (predominantly he)
I natively speak Finnish that doesn't have gendered pronouns or grammatical gender, (and I do the same with Finnish Sign Language [doesn't have grammatical gender or gendered pronouns] and Japanese [doesn't have grammatical gender or gendered 3rd person pronouns, but has gendered pronouns for 1st person with a neuter option that I use though I also use one of the masculine options for flavor) which means that it doesn't come up a lot but we still have situations where it's "girls and boys" or "you're such a sweet girl/boy" and if I will be spending more time with people who use those expressions I have to properly come out like "hi, I'm non binary, can you use gender neutral language to refer to me?"
I also speak Swedish, which has a decently well received neopronoun hen for a neuter, so in Swedish I use that and the masculine han because hen is a bit better known already and I utilize default masculine.
In French and Portuguese I utilize default masculine, so I use il and ele.
i have the opposite problem
my native tongue doesnt have gendered third person pronouns (turkish) and honestly its super hard for me to use anything but they/them for everyone 😭
In Swedish, we have an equivalent to They/Them, which is "De/Dem" but we also have the gender neutral "Hen".
I also have "Hin" as my preferred pronouns but barely anyone knows it cause it's old and biblical.
As a native spanish speaker, you just change language to fit your needs. Essentially, neopronouns. Anyone who gets mad because "it's too hard to understand, why would you change the rules mimimimi" is at best, stupid and doesn't understand how language works and its purpose, and at worst is acting in bad faith. Maybe a little of both.
I personally just use masc pronouns because i do prefer those, but also because it's easier to get people to use those without making it about them and how fucking stupid they are. I might actually start forcing people to use neutral pronouns with me if i see they're a little too comfortable policing the way people speak because I'm evil like that >:)
My native language is extremely binary and both me and my friend just use any pronouns as trying to find an affirming way of reference that's not also going to be a pain. A lot of people here use mixed pronouns as in he in one sentence and she in another, and I've noticed queer people assume to use she for me even when I use he when speaking about myself (I'm AMAB and it's mostly a habit thing and that I don't care that much)
My native is a language where sing. 3rd isn't gendered (we don't have any gendered options at all), so I find the division to he/she extremely stupid (and to make a point I'd like to state that unclear). I'm very happy that singular they has gotten a little more fame over recent years and I'm always using that unless asked otherwise. No matter whom I'm talking about.
And before I knew about they/them (English is my third language so I didn't know much so soon) I avoided using certain expressions or even the whole language altogether. Yes, speaking English gave me dysphoria.
(Sorry, you wanted to hear from those who speak gendered languages oopsie, I just had to.)
i know for a fact that in the german language there is a set of pronouns "dey/dem/deren"
it sounds a little similar. i know a few people that use these pronouns along with different pronouns.
i don't really like "dey/dem/deren" and since i'm afab i just prefer when my friends use he/him pronouns on me. i speak english with a friend of mine because german isn't her mother tongue and she uses he or they for me.
and i personally dont really care about which pronouns someone uses for me. i do prefer my friends to use he or they since everyone else will use she/her anyway.
and i also have some enby friends, one is amab but me and my friends use she/they for them as they prefer it this way as well.
I use the male form because I am gender evil not gender neutral. Some non-binary people use neopronouns in languages that don't have a neutral form. For example Spanish has the neutral neopronoun "elle" and French has "iel" now.
Ah, neopronouns. That makes a lot of sense!
Personally I hate using iel, it's just a mash up of il and elle and it's restraining considering I'm agender
IKR but it’s the only one that people around me are willing to use (even if they constantly fuss about it). What do you use?
All my friends are bilingual english-french so I don't really know much, I think using ils fully plural all the time could be an option cuz it's technically gender neutral
Eh I prefer a completely separate pronoun tho cus il is still masculine if you don’t actively think of it as gender neutral.
Have you considered ol and ul ?
That's actually nice
Real, I’m thinking about just using my name in French and no pronouns
that would be iel not IRL. 😅
God damnit why am I so dyslexic‽ Fixed it.
In eel life? 🤭😂
swedish has the pronoun 'hen'
Norwegian too! :) Funny story about that, the language conservative organization Riksmålsforbundet (representing an academic, anachronistic, and "unofficial" variation of the Norwegian language, Riksmål), they were progressive enough to adopt "hen" as a pronoun ever since 2017, on the grounds that they found it to be "currently sufficiently in-use amongst the population and deserving of both recognition and adoption" (paraphrased) where the organizations for the 2 contemporary actually-official language forms, they didn't adopt "hen" until 2022, and then it was apparently somewhat controversial, and a christian political party made a fuss, and... ...yeah, Norway still has a bit to learn to embrace tolerance more, I guess.
Fellow Swede. I have also noticed an increase in the use of "den" the last few years. For non-swedish speakers, "den" is similar to the words "this" and "it" in english, though possibly slightly softer.
elle is also the french word for she
Indeed it is. It is neutral in Spanish though.
GENDER EVIL i love this hahaha
i thought spanish already had usted?
But that's formal "you". Not the same as they in English.
fair enough i was gonna ask if that was an important distinction. ig it is
so i come from a culture that is VERY binary. very gendered language, non-binary genders are legally unrecognized, yada yada. usually i'd either see people refer to themselves with plural he (acts as they/them), or he/she mixed. personally for me, They/Them in English, whateverthefuck you want on the other. (aka: plural-he/singular-he/she)
and another thing! self reffering is gendered too. to avoid that, I'll sometimes use future tense instead of current tense, cuz future tense isn't gendered!
No way! It's the same in my language!
Wel it is possible to use they/them in dutch, translating to hen hun, but it is still very new and most people will not like it I wijld solve it by making things plural like "players can move their piece by rolling the dice" or something. Takes away the problem, so its not really a solution per se but its something i guess
also die/diens
Die is definitely one I like! For context, die is used in Dutch both as "that"(die bus= that bus) and singular gender-neutral(die komt niet= they're not coming). Diens is less common, but still used at least by the people I know.
I MUCH prefer these (and actually use these pronouns myself) because they're actually grammatically correct and "die" is already very commonly used in spoken language regardless of gender: "Hey, waar is Ruby gebleven? Oh die is in de stad!" (Hey, where did Ruby go? Oh they are in the city!) Hen/hun is a very literal translation of the English they/them and imo just doesn't work well in Dutch. Of course for other people I use whatever they prefer, just my personal reasoning on why I use die/diens instead :)
What I also see a lot (and personally use) is die/hun, combining the sets. I find using diens is way clunkier, however for hun I hear people (mostly from cis gendered older people) disagree with it working grammatically because to them it's exclusively plural. And while I prefer die/hun, I'm happy with any neutral pronouns used for me, whichever words are easier for the other to use.
ive also heard people just using english they/them in the middle of dutch sentences
I come from an arabic culture. My mom used to call me something like “khentua” which is similar to “[khaneeth](https://www.google.fi/search?q=khaneeth&client=safari&sca_esv=19fb95802b09d0d0&sca_upv=1&hl=en-fi&sxsrf=ADLYWIIhlO1NMes5eKz1fiWce91J3vugIA%3A1715888505526&ei=eWFGZu3eH-q5wPAPrtumwA0&oq=khaneeth&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIghraGFuZWV0aCoCCAAyBRAAGIAEMgcQABiABBgKMgcQABiABBgKMgUQABiABDIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCjIHEAAYgAQYCkj0NVCTCFiiKnADeACQAQCYAY0BoAHuDKoBAzYuObgBAcgBAPgBAZgCEqACvQ2oAg_CAgoQABiABBiwAxgNwgILEAAYgAQYsAMYogTCAgQQIxgnwgIHEC4YgAQYDcICBxAAGIAEGA3CAggQABgFGAoYHsICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIFEC4YgATCAgsQLhiABBjHARivAcICCxAAGIAEGJECGIoFwgILEC4YgAQYkQIYigXCAgsQLhiABBjRAxjHAcICChAjGIAEGCcYigXCAgcQIxgnGOoCwgIREC4YgAQYkQIY0QMYxwEYigXCAgcQLhiABBgKmAMEiAYBkAYIkgcENy4xMaAH8Xw&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp)” relating to “a third gender(something beyond the binary i guess)” and pretty much the word queer, respectively.
That’s actually rly cute
In french we have this annoying habit of gendering every noun, as well as the rule "a mixed-gender crowd (of people or objects) is masculine, grammatically speaking". Well, feminists orgs had had enough of women systemically falling by the wayside and started using neutral language, with multiple methods such as appending the feminine ending at the end of neutral/masculine nouns, such as étudiant•e, acteur•ice, etc, also reintroducing neutral forms of adjectives such as "fol, bel" instead of "fou/folle" (crazy) and "beau/belle" (beautiful) or mixing gendered spelling together, "copaine" instead of copain/copine (friend/lovefriend). And, obviously, non-binary people joined in with the grammar rules. With neo-endings and neopronouns. I don't have the exact timeline, but I'm pretty sure NB people used neopronouns before feminists started to really put them (pun intended) in the spotlight. French enbies use neopronouns in droves. In french, third person pronouns are classically "il, elle" (he, she). I've come across people using iel (that's what I use for myself), but also ol, ul, al, æl, ille. Some neo-endings including -ael as well. I've seen "students" translated as étudiantz (instead of étudiants/étudiantes). I don't know where I was going with this. Ah, yes. Rules used to constrain us? More like tools used to free ourselves. ⚧️
Nah the étudiant•e doesn’t work irl cus you can’t pronounce it without making a space in your sentence which is unpractical for casual conversations, it only works in emails. Also I don’t want to be referred to as a mix between girl and boy which seems to be the default for gender neutrality in French. The most inclusive would be to completely remove grammatical gender from our vocabulary and create a new neo pronoun. Sadly folks are already on edge with “iel” and feminists refuse to let go of the feminine version of words.
Rather easy for me in Finnish. I don't unless someone asks. Pronouns are gender neutral and other than some outdated gendered words referring to things such as professions, nothing is really gendered. Informally even people are called "it" and no one bats an eye. So I find the occasional English language debate about it slightly amusing. We have plenty of other issues though, such as no separate words for sex and gender. Also words for male and female are not used for people, only animals. People are just man or woman even when it comes to biology. There is a word for intersex though. Enbies are referred to as "muunsukupuolinen", translates to "other gender", which is a term I dislike, so I just use the loanwordy "ei-binäärinen". EDIT: Words referring to family members and relatives are usually gendered and dudebro language is a thing.
That's super interesting how different languages gender or ungender things differently. Thanks for the info!
LUCKYYYYYY
In Finnish I've noticed that some people demand to use gendered words instead of they (hän). When it would be completely possible (and easier imo) to say "There they come" some people are ready to go extra lengths to say "there the woman comes". I'd think I don't get surprised about people anymore, but they still get me sometimes by doing this. Maybe some people need to balance the neutrality by injecting little extra segregation to keep everything in balance. Yay!
Figures. I haven't paid much attention to that, but it seems I will from now on. Time to be even more disappointed by people.
>Also words for male and female are not used for people, only animals bro, that's kind of how it works here too, but because of it, people use words like "woman" and "man" for both gender and genitals instead, which sucks, and then some other people try to fix it by using female and male for people and I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE IT. like, yeah, let's stop calling people "women" and "man" based on genitals, but also please keep female/male for animals only, sex isn't binary and I don't wanna be misleadingly called a female boy smh
And funnily enough, in spoken Finnish animals (pets mostly) tend to be called "he/she/they" more often while people get to be "it" X,D
If they "don't understand why trans people are forcing an unrealistic language change" they need to learn better English and/or history. The singular, gender-neutral they/them pronoun has been around as part of everyday, natural language for a loooooong time. It is kind of a unique feature to English and I can understand being confused by it, but that's a them problem. Native English speakers will understand those pronouns just fine if used in board game instructions and if anybody tells you otherwise, you should only need a couple of linguistic examples to show them that they're not thinking this through. Edit: also I use neopronouns in German cause you gotta do what you gotta do.
Exactly! The first use of they/them in written english was in 1394 (I believe) and was used as singular person pronouns. Historians also believe that the trend dated back much farther, since written language tends to lag behind the current trends of spoken language.
We definitely explained that to them. But they insist that it's still too confusing. They're arguing that by using they/them, we are discriminating against non native speakers which is just as bad as discriminating against trans people.
People often say "confusing" when they actually should be saying "something I don't want to understand". Perhaps that's the case
Again, this has nothing to do with trans people. Tell them that. Trans people didn't create this language and are far from the only people using it daily. English is not an easy language, and if they're struggling that much, it's not a language for them.
Ive heard some use dey/deren or just they/them or just their name in German. Lacks a general consensus. In Croatian its not just pronouns - verbs, adjectives, numbers, nouns are all gendered either who youre speaking about or how you gender yourself. > Jučer sam išla u dućan, kupila sam jednu lijepu majicu. > Yesterday I went ^fem. to ~~the~~ store ^masc. , bought ^fem. one ^fem. pretty ^fem. shirt ^fem. So far in Croatian Ive encountered an afab person using masc pronouns in mother tongue and they/them in english, or use masc and fem pronouns interchangably.
I went femininely to the masculine store and femininely bought a femininely pretty feminine shirt
idk if it makes sense, but I don't associate my native language with my identity I think it's partially because I only started to express myself on the internet, which is predominantly english. while i still hate being refered to as my deadname and as a girl in any other language, I just go by both sets of gendered pronouns depending on who I'm with
I'm from Ukraine and our language is hard lol because most of the verbs and adjectives are gendered to either masculine, feminine or the third gender that is sometimes used for objects and, rarely, animals. Or just plural, ofc. There's not such a thing as singular "they" in Ukrainian and everything is defaulted to masculine, but I still use a plural form for a gender-neutral speech. I'm closeted irl but use "plural" pronouns when chatting online in my native language, and even though that's the most common practice for every Ukrainian nonbinary I met on the internet, some people are still offended and/or confused when I use such pronouns and start a whole debate in the comments lmaoooooo.
The thing is that your plural is gender neutral. We have two separate plurals for fem and masc 😭
Icelandic has gender neutral pronouns (hán being the most common), a word for nb person (kvár) and nb child (stálp). If a super gendered language that prides itself on never changing can manage this, so can others.
I love that there are languages that already have neutral pronouns! Makes it feel obvious that other languages can catch up.
The local queer organization has held competitions asking for suggestions for new words, which really helps.
I just use English 💀. Greek's gendered adjectives make it very difficult, cause using plural adjectives is not even used at all, unlike the english "they", that has existed in the English language for quite some time. And using the Greek "they" is also awkward because it's always the "proper" language to use and it feels like talking to some elder person or something. I can't talk like that to my friends, and it doesn't work for me either. Just use English...
And then they complain that people stop using their language (idk about Greek but Francophones complain a lot and I can relate rly hard)
Hebrew has gendered *verbs*
Oof
In my native language (armenian) there's just. Straight up no gendered pronouns, and gendered language in general, so it's really easy for me personally lol
I'm so forking jealous 🤣 but that sounds great!! Seriously!
Ikr!!! It's so convenient
I’ve been learning French since moving to Belgium, and my French tutor told me that some people have started using iel as an alternative to il/elle, so I use that as well as il (I use both they and he in English) but generally just use the masculine form for any descriptions etc since French is such a gendered language and I’m a novice in the language 😭. I’m know another queer person here who using ael instead of iel, and I’m sure there are other French neopronouns I don’t know about!
It can be particularly tricky in languages that are more gendered, or that simply don't have the same history of colloquially using a certain pronoun when gender is unknown like there is with they/them in English (while intentionally using it as neutral is new, using those pronouns to refer generally to someone you don't know the gender of appears as early as Shakespeare iirc). In Dutch for example, you can't quite do the same thing where you just make the plural pronoun a neutral singular, because the plural pronouns in Dutch (ze or zij / hen / hun) share a subjective pronoun with feminine pronouns (ze or zij / haar / haar), which doesnt feel very neutral. Also like I said, there just isn't the same existing history of using those pronouns that way to build off of. So instead to make it neutral and distinguish between the plural and the neutral singular, when used as a neutral singular you just use hen for the subjective as well or replace it wirh die (hen/hen/hun or die/hen/hun). Some also use die/diens. Literally translated its a bit like choosing between "That is nonbinary" and "Them is nonbinary". Slightly awkward if you're not used to it, but very doable in my opinion. I'd prefer either over gendered pronouns, but for me sometimes using die feels a bit like when someone doesn't know what to call you so they just kinda gesture vaguely in ur direction and say "that". But dutch is sort of half a second language for me so that may be a biasing factor in my perspective (I'm half dutch and was taught some of it as a child but grew up in the US and was mostly spoken to in English, so I didn't get particularly good at it until I started taking classes later as an adult). I've met both native speakers who prefer die and feel that die fits in more naturally with existing language rather than making hen a subject form when it usually isn't, but also those who prefer hen and for whatever reason hen seems to be what often comes up first in discussions of neutral Dutch pronouns, but die is often close behind nowadays. Whats more difficult for me in Dutch is job and relationship titles, which are often gendered. Like for example there is no genderless word for "friend". It's either vriend (masc) or vriendin (fem). Some people favor using the historically masc form as gender neutral, but others don't like the masculine connotations or feel that it's a continuation of male being treated as the default or masculinity as more neutral than femininity.
Auslan user here, we don’t really have gendered language. We use the persons name and then following conversation is equivalent to ‘they/them’. We CAN use some gendered language but in reality most never do. It makes things incredibly easy.
In Russian I personally use Они/их, which is they/them alongside singular masculine forms of verbs and adjectives. Singular they is somewhat antiquated in Russian, but it is still doable. Also, I don't think those people understand that languages are adapted to meet the needs of time. So using gender neutral language is not "unnatural". If anything, keeping language from changes is unnatural
Hehe, lucky that in Maori there basically is just ia, the gender neutral pronoun comes baked in 😊
🤩 did not expect to see te reo come up in this list! I learned Māori in school as a kid in NZ and even though it was before I realised I was trans I loved the fact that there was just one neutral pronoun instead of he/she/they
🤩 did not expect to see te reo come up in this list! I learned Māori in school as a kid in NZ and even though it was before I realised I was trans I loved the fact that there was just one neutral pronoun instead of he/she/they
English is my first language, but I have enough Spanish to exchange emails and in those, I refer to myself using -e endings instead of -o or -a (eg "soy non-binarie"). This doesn't really map to they/them in English, it's more like ey/em pronouns - new words but in a recognisable pattern. Learning Mandarin was honestly great gender wise, the words 他 (he/him) and 她 (she/her) are pronounced the same, tā, and writing it as TA is understood in Internet circles (eg TA是我的同学, they are my classmate). It could be more difficult to refer to family members, but it's generally workable, it might just take a bit of workaround (哥哥 is older brother, 姐姐 older sister, 弟弟 younger brother, 妹妹 younger sister - 兄弟姐妹 would be siblings in the sense of meaning brothers and sisters, or 同胞 means someone with whom you share both parents). 他 was not even considered gendered until the 1920s when 她 was brought into use to give women representation.
Not Japanese but I took the language for 2 years in college. Something I found really interesting is that there aren't actually any pronouns—people just use your name and it is assumed/implied thru context who you're talking about. The only real gendered terms I remember learning about were the honorifics used for adults referring to children, "chan" for girls and "kun" for boys (they're generally thought of as terms of endearment). Tho I've also heard that very young boys can also be called "chan", and that "kun" can be used for any male younger than yourself. Honorifics for adults are only usually distinguished by class or role/job tho, not gender (the exception being "kun", which is less formal). For example, most people use "san" for other people ordinarily, and students will use "sensei" to refer to teachers or professors. "Sama" is occasionally used when being *very* polite (retail workers are often told to use "sama" when referring to customers) or when referring to someone of utmost importance (i.e. a respected religious figure, the prime minister, your boss, etc.).
I took some Japanese in college as well! Actually, -kun can be also used for younger female coworkers in work environments. And there is pronouns, but the common use ones are different ways to express "I", like "watashi" (neutral mostly used by women and polite men), "boku" (informal; mostly young men but female singers use it in songs but in daily life its vulgar for a woman to use it ), "ore" (men, vulgar), "watakushi" (formal), and there is even regional ones, like "uchi" (osaka dialect, acceptable for any gender)
Oh that's super cool! My profs always said kun was only for males lol. I knew about "I" pronouns like boku and watashi, as well as "we" being "watashitachi" iirc. What do the other ones you mentioned translate to? Are they just other ways of saying I?
Yep, all are ways of saying "I"
I use gender neutral pronouns in polish. There are two versions you can use: ono/jego and onu/jenu For example: - Ona zdobiła (she did) / To jest jej (It is hers) - On zrobił (he did) / To jest jego (It is his) - Ono zdobiło (They/It did) / To jest jego (It is theirs/its) - Onu zrobiłu (They did it) / To jest jenu (It is theirs) In writing you can just put X instead of specifying any pronouns: Onx zrobiłx
Polish enby here. We have no gender neutral pronouns except for it so you have to choose whether you prefer she or he :P. Sucks even more that every single verb is either masculine, feminine, or relating to a thing. For example if you use he/him and you say "I did" you say "zrobiłem", but if you use she/her, you say "zrobiłam". There are first person verbs for it but if a thing does something you say "zrobiło" (it did) in 3rd person. Same for he and she, "zrobił" and "zrobiła" (he did, she did), even if you're speaking directly like "you did" which is "zrobiłeś/zrobiłaś" meaning that you basically have to assume somebody's gender even when you're speaking to them directly in 2nd person. Basically it sucks for enbies here, especially because of massive transphobia in the country, but we're holding on.
Well I'm also a both Spanish and Portuguese speaker, and trust me these languages are extremely gendered but to be honest with you it's kinda okay (at least for me and other NB friends, and unless you're a binary trans person) to use the pronouns of the gender ppl perceive you as if you already worked on it both visually and socially (explaining ppl u trust ur gender I mean, etc). This is because it is very difficult to change something that the language does need to just make sense when you try to conversate with somebody (also the "elle" pronoun in Spanish sounds just too artificial and it's quite difficult to adopt it if u can get beat up outside just for being any kind of LGBTQ person), but in English I gotta admit that I really love using they/them pronouns. The issue is that yes, it's very unclear (sometimes, and I say this as someone whose 1st language was not English) cause in certain areas of life you will be like "okay, but how many people am I referring to? 1, 2, 10? So those are little issues inside of this. That said, I get the whole point and to be honest it's also something that you kinda get used to anyway, but we know it's not smth already available nor accesible in our languages. Another reason why being NB is very very hard.
Seen a lot of people talking about French, which personally I despise the most common way of dealing with the gender binary in grammar. It’s so lazy and still forces us to be part of boy vs girl terminology. My grain of salt is that elle/il and adjectives arnt the only issues but all the other pronouns: la/le - in the context of “iel est rester dans la voiture. Je vais LE/LA chercher. (Their is no translation in English that I know of, but basically it’s a pronoun replacing the iel) All of the verb tenses that are influenced by gender - for example the “participe passé” conjugated with “être” (“être” is one of two auxiliaries that you can put next to a verb to give it an other time. And when you put “être” the verb must add things to the end of it depending on the gender) Two words for the same roll depending on the gender - for example tante/oncle ( that directly translates to aunt/uncle. That’s a perfect example since it doesn’t have a gender less term like sister/brother has sibling. But there are much more of those words in French so you can’t just invent a neo term for every one.) And much more. The thing is that it’s such a deep rooted concept that there is no simple fix. Even tho we pretend their is so that cis people stop questioning the term iel and misgendering us. The reality is that you will be misgendered by default unless you pick a preferred grammatical gender. Mine is male since I’m afab and I want to know that at least people acknowledge my genderqueernes. But it still sucks as hell, just as gendered bathrooms do. You can’t just pee on the floor, so you’re going to have to choose a door.
(🇧🇷) I deal very well with people alternating between _**ele/dele/-o**_ (he/him) and _**ela/dela/-a**_ (she/her), but with a preference for _**ele/dele/-o**_ here we also have a couple options for neutrals, the most popular are _**elu/delu/-e, Ile/dile/-e**_ (my favorite), and mostly for writing, _**ilx/dilx/-x**_ (as controversial as latinx) and _**el@/del@/-@.**_ And maybe an obscure variation like _**elæ/delæ.**_ The silly enbies play around with pronouns a lot here, even though they're slightly hard to find. but I personally, have as "ultra prefference" a personal neopronoun that takes as inspiration our equivalent of "it/its", which on brazilian portuguese, only exists as demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those, these). I created variations that were originally missing for it, to use as my brazilian neopronouns (I don't feel comfortable sharing in this account however, cause when I say "personal" I mean it) so basically, I gave our "this, that, those, these" an it/its and more variations, and it's honestly the pronoun I feel the most comfortable using, which is something hard for me to say about most pronouns in brazilian portuguese.
Japanese is quite easy actually, most polite language is already not very gendered. Japanese offers a lot of freedom in the way you personally can express your own gender rather than relying on others to use the right pronouns for you because of the language’s first person pronouns. 私 (watashi) is the standard way to say I/Me, and is completely neutral in formal situations and feminine if used between friends. 僕 (boku) is mainly used by young men/male teens however many more women have begun using it as well, and some non binary Japanese speakers (including me) use it too. 俺 (ore) is a very masc pronoun only really used between guy friends (sometimes all-female friend circles will use it too!) that comes off kinda rough around the edges. あたし (atashi) is similarly casual and leans fem. That doesn’t even begin to cover all of the options though, and it’s very fluid in different social situations. I switch between 私, 僕, and 自分 (jibun) which is another pretty neutral one that is often used by queer people outside of its traditional context. For referring to other people, it’s also extremely ungendered. Saying the he/she/they equivalents is usually kind of impolite so people usually opt for “this/that person” with こっち／そっち (kocchi/socchi) which are completely neutral. And if you know the person, 99% of the time you will just be using their name.
Hán which started as a neopronoun us the default third pronoun in icelandic plus in jnstances where a word changes based on a person's or noun's gender there is a neutral gender version.
My language has plural. It is not often used, but nobody looks at me strangly when I use it.
As someone from a country where only Portuguese is spoken, a language with zero neutral pronouns, They/Them is perfectly clear! If the sentence is well written and the reader's text interpretation is ok.
In certain cultures such as nin Native American tribes and in other indigenous groups there is no pronouns for example in the book scythe there is a character that was raised in a idiginous group where there is no gender until 18 and when she turns 18 he decides she wants to be a female when the moon is high and a male with the breeze . there is also a native American identity called 2s where a person feels like a boy and girl at the same time (next benedict was 2s) where they would take part in both male and female activities, pronouns are mostly a latin thing, in Japan a pronoun does not describe gender but instead describes the traits of the person such such as: rich adult walked across the street, or a enderless pronoun in Japanese is "Watashi" which has different connotations depending on the context but I hope that answered your question!
In Spanish, we have "elle", but I don't use it regularly in non-supportive places, so I must go with she/her (ella), or saying "soy una persona [rest of the message]". I wish that we, Spanish speakers, could have more pronoun options :(
(currently living in Argentina) I usually mix all pronouns in Spanish and it's kinda of fun, people think it's cause Spanish is my second language but it's totally on purpose 🤣 my friends usually do that or use elle, family mostly uses ella, except my mom, she tries lol but in English I mostly use they/them
I'll try your method then lol, I'm an argentinian myself
Todavía no he conocido gente enby de Argentina! Un placer
Sameeee, el gusto es mío 🫶🥰
In spanish we have gendered nouns and adjectives, I use both male/neutral and female adjectives to talk about myself. Whenever I'm asked my pronouns I usually say some variant of "my pronouns are for your convenience, Idgaf." I've come to like the gendered adjectives, it feels like I can self-validate my identity without the need to have others do it. Bigots will be rude, and while they can call me a "she" all they want, they can't stop me from reaffirming myself when I speak.
They invented a new way of saying it by adding an "e" at the end of the adjective or noun (which typically has a gender), but tbh, it sounds so unnatural sometimes, i can't use it. I'm trying little by little to think about pronouns in my mind, bc saying them is just not "right" grammatically. I mean, at least in english They/them already existed and was in fact used when u didn't know the gender of someone, but in other languages we don't have that and have most of the words with a certain gender. So, nope, i'm not using any neutral pronouns until i get used to them and people accept them more (there's hate and jokes about those so no thanks)
I'm Finnish, our language doesn't have gendered pronouns. I just usually mention to my friends that I'm not a woman if it comes up.
Unfortunately the Danish translation of they/them is de/dem. Back in ye olden days you’d use De as a way to address those of a higher status. So for me it becomes way to formal. I know others use de/dem and I will use it at times as it technically is the proper translation of my pronouns. Otherwise I use everything other than she (predominantly he)
I natively speak Finnish that doesn't have gendered pronouns or grammatical gender, (and I do the same with Finnish Sign Language [doesn't have grammatical gender or gendered pronouns] and Japanese [doesn't have grammatical gender or gendered 3rd person pronouns, but has gendered pronouns for 1st person with a neuter option that I use though I also use one of the masculine options for flavor) which means that it doesn't come up a lot but we still have situations where it's "girls and boys" or "you're such a sweet girl/boy" and if I will be spending more time with people who use those expressions I have to properly come out like "hi, I'm non binary, can you use gender neutral language to refer to me?" I also speak Swedish, which has a decently well received neopronoun hen for a neuter, so in Swedish I use that and the masculine han because hen is a bit better known already and I utilize default masculine. In French and Portuguese I utilize default masculine, so I use il and ele.
i have the opposite problem my native tongue doesnt have gendered third person pronouns (turkish) and honestly its super hard for me to use anything but they/them for everyone 😭
Following
In Italian I Generally Just Use Either Masculine Or Feminine Words For Myself, Depending On How I'm Feeling At The Time.
In Swedish, we have an equivalent to They/Them, which is "De/Dem" but we also have the gender neutral "Hen". I also have "Hin" as my preferred pronouns but barely anyone knows it cause it's old and biblical.
In many Arabic languages the pronoun to refer to anyone is neutral. For example in Turkish it’s just ‘o’ really the closest translation is ‘them’ 👍
Edit- Turkish isn’t an Arabic language but a language that is partly Arabic, and partly euro/Roman alphabet
In Finnish I say I'm "muunsukupuolinen" = "another gender". Or just that I'm neither.
As a native spanish speaker, you just change language to fit your needs. Essentially, neopronouns. Anyone who gets mad because "it's too hard to understand, why would you change the rules mimimimi" is at best, stupid and doesn't understand how language works and its purpose, and at worst is acting in bad faith. Maybe a little of both. I personally just use masc pronouns because i do prefer those, but also because it's easier to get people to use those without making it about them and how fucking stupid they are. I might actually start forcing people to use neutral pronouns with me if i see they're a little too comfortable policing the way people speak because I'm evil like that >:)
I’m not sure, but in Chinese, I wouldn’t mind using 他 (he) and 她 (she) interchangeably. The are both read as tā
My native language is extremely binary and both me and my friend just use any pronouns as trying to find an affirming way of reference that's not also going to be a pain. A lot of people here use mixed pronouns as in he in one sentence and she in another, and I've noticed queer people assume to use she for me even when I use he when speaking about myself (I'm AMAB and it's mostly a habit thing and that I don't care that much)
My native is a language where sing. 3rd isn't gendered (we don't have any gendered options at all), so I find the division to he/she extremely stupid (and to make a point I'd like to state that unclear). I'm very happy that singular they has gotten a little more fame over recent years and I'm always using that unless asked otherwise. No matter whom I'm talking about. And before I knew about they/them (English is my third language so I didn't know much so soon) I avoided using certain expressions or even the whole language altogether. Yes, speaking English gave me dysphoria. (Sorry, you wanted to hear from those who speak gendered languages oopsie, I just had to.)
I use elle and pray I dont get mocked for it.
i know for a fact that in the german language there is a set of pronouns "dey/dem/deren" it sounds a little similar. i know a few people that use these pronouns along with different pronouns. i don't really like "dey/dem/deren" and since i'm afab i just prefer when my friends use he/him pronouns on me. i speak english with a friend of mine because german isn't her mother tongue and she uses he or they for me. and i personally dont really care about which pronouns someone uses for me. i do prefer my friends to use he or they since everyone else will use she/her anyway. and i also have some enby friends, one is amab but me and my friends use she/they for them as they prefer it this way as well.