4 ms·
I’ve never understood why people get so upset at using the word “they” or “them”. We already use gender neutral pronouns in the plural or possessive cases (we,
by village-idiot 8y ago
I’ve never understood why people get so upset at using the word “they” or “them”. We already use gender neutral pronouns in the plural or possessive cases (we, their, etc) all the time. Switching over to gender neutral for all cases seems harmless to me.
Personally I switched over years ago after a faux pas too many. Getting embarrassed sucks, and using gender neutral in most or all cases saves me mental cycles anyways.
- ryanmccullagh 8y agoAt least we have gender neutral pronouns in the English language. Some languages like Portuguese will default to a male pronoun when in the plural possessive even if their is women in the group. And if there are 9 women and 1 man in a group, the plural possessive is still masculine. What do people sensitive to these pronouns do if their own language will make a distinction?
- village-idiot 8y agoOuch. That’s hard. Long term, the language will change, as languages tend to do. Short term? Probably a lot of cultural conflict.
- icebraining 8y agoAs a native Portuguese speaker, I just replace the pronoun with, say, "the group" or some more specific description. We have an advantage here, because you can translate "belongs to" as just "é do/a", so you can write "it belongs to the group" as "é do grupo".
- ryanmccullagh 8y agoThanks. I’m still learning, but I think I would use your style like this: instead of o carro é do eles. I could use o carro é do grupo. Please correct me.
- icebraining 8y agoThat's right! Though in the first, it would be "de eles" rather than "do eles", as "do" is a contraction of "de o", and one wouldn't say "de o eles". To add further confusion: "de eles" is usually contracted to "deles", but only if "eles" is not a subject in the statement :)