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At 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 ev
by ryanmccullagh 8y ago
At 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 :)