3 ms·

I really like how simple it is in English to use the singular pronoun they when the gender of the person you are referring to is not known. I find that it reads

I really like how simple it is in English to use the singular pronoun they when the gender of the person you are referring to is not known. I find that it reads a lot better than the compound he/she. I wish we had something similar in Dutch that didn't sound like a kludge. If we do, I haven't found it yet. Interestingly, in Japanese it's rather easy to refer to people in a gender-neutral way if you know either the profession or the name of that person; the honorific suffixes for names (e.g., さん or 様) where we would use Mr/Mrs/Ms don't differentiate by gender in Japanese and professions are often gender-neutral in name. It gets trickier if you don't have that information, because you tend to need he or she (彼 and 彼女 respectively) or one of the very common age bracket and gender specific classifiers like (you who could be someone's) sister (お姉さん) for any adult woman under the age of 35 (or older if you want to flirt a bit). Of course there is always the generic that person (あの方 or あの人). Luckily, Japanese allows you to complete leave out the subject of a sentence and still make sense if the context makes it clear, so there is that.

michannne 7y ago
Formal Japanese takes a lot to get into coming from English, but the benefit is that in informal conversation you can reliquish the honorifics to some extent. The con is that there is not that much informal conversation going on especially in regards to work, so polite form grammar should be the default way to speak. On the other hand, polite form still allows you to drop gender specific words, and another note is the way Japanese conversations are formulated, gender is almost never a pre-stated thing, it's usually inferred based on who you're speaking about or who you're talking to.
Strom 7y ago
It's even easier in a language like Estonian where there's no grammatical gender or gender pronouns at all. Everything is neutral/universal. Example: He wanted her number -> Ta tahtis ta numbrit. If for some reason you want to give info about the gender you can use words like girl/woman/lady/grandma instead of the pronoun.

michannne 7y ago

Formal Japanese takes a lot to get into coming from English, but the benefit is that in informal conversation you can reliquish the honorifics to some extent. The con is that there is not that much informal conversation going on especially in regards to work, so polite form grammar should be the default way to speak. On the other hand, polite form still allows you to drop gender specific words, and another note is the way Japanese conversations are formulated, gender is almost never a pre-stated thing, it's usually inferred based on who you're speaking about or who you're talking to.

Strom 7y ago

It's even easier in a language like Estonian where there's no grammatical gender or gender pronouns at all. Everything is neutral/universal. Example: He wanted her number -> Ta tahtis ta numbrit. If for some reason you want to give info about the gender you can use words like girl/woman/lady/grandma instead of the pronoun.