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>central role gender plays in our language, You mean 'English'. (Although most[all?] Indo-European languages do have a gender concept) There are languages tha
by xxs 7y ago
>central role gender plays in our language,
You mean 'English'. (Although most[all?] Indo-European languages do have a gender concept)
There are languages that have no gender specific pronouns (or cases) and the best/funny part is that native speakers of a similar languages tend to call everything 'he' in English.
Personally I don't care what people would call me at all, if the rest of the argument/discussion is on point.
- progman32 7y agoYes I was a unclear. I meant "our" to imply the language being used in this very conversation. I should have used "this". My first language is Italian. Even though almost everything is gendered in that language, gender tends to fade into a purely grammatical role. Unless it relates to humans. > tend to call everything 'he' in English yes I've noticed this too. Like referring to a machine... "he" will encode the frame into mp4 and pass it to the database... Your last comment reminds me of an interesting anecdote I observed. Mom and son, the son having new long hair. Mom asked regarding the hair, "aren't you worried people will mistake you for a girl?" She was genuinely surprised and confused when the son replied that they didn't give a toss if someone does. The landscape is changing fast.
- esyir 7y agoI'd note that in English, the default pronoun actually is "he". The movement to remove that is relatively new and almost purely politically driven.