7 ms·

But it's way less effort than checking, isn't it? The name in the footer isn't English, so it's hard to know from that and there's no about page that I could

by franga2000 6y ago

But it's way less effort than checking, isn't it? The name in the footer isn't English, so it's hard to know from that and there's no about page that I could find. The Twitter profile makes it more obvious, but I only clicked on it to check because of your comment. Why bother??

h_spacer 6y ago
Slav surnames are gendered. * ski is male, * ska is female, * sko is neutral. Using gender neutral in this case is as insulting as calling him a dog. Other cases where using gender neutral pronouns insults everyone speaking the language is using Latinx for Latino. If you want to butcher every other languages genders like they are in English, use Latin instead - the gender neutral form of Latino in English since only the middle ages. Hope this helps.
- smnscu 6y ago
  I'm Romanian and have many Polish friends. This is not even remotely accurate, except for basket cases that I have yet to meet.
  - h_spacer 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_name_suffixes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_name_suffixes Hope that helps.
    - echelon 6y ago
      I'm still going to use they/them because a name doesn't necessarily match with one's gender.
      - h_spacer 6y ago
        Sorry to hear that you hold other cultures in such low regard.
        echelon 6y ago
        Culture and gender aren't linked. Does culture tell you if someone's gender, sexual preferences, what kind of car they drive, whether or not they're a furry, what god(s) they do or do not believe in, etc.? Don't put people in boxes based on your limited world view. Think about the limit. When we're uploaded to the matrix, you'll finally be able to be whatever gender you want to be without fear for the stupid stigmas of this world. You can try lots of things. You can be a man, woman, multi-gender foxperson, or a stoic agender deity. Maybe lots of things. You'll be free. Let people be who they are. You be who you are. Just be happy.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        kepler1 6y ago
        What a hypocrite -- feel free to let people be who they are, as long as I can force you to call them a word I want.
        Kye 6y ago
        You opened this thread by lecturing others on the pronouns they used for the article author with no standing to do so. Who are you and why are you more authoritative on the author's pronouns than the person you attempted to correct?
        HexagonalKitten 6y ago
        Do you not understand how claiming to support people's pronouns and then bravely using gender neutral pronouns for everyone who doesn't specify is a bit hyprocritical? Most people identify happily and it's as rude to misgender them as anyone. It's a form of unasked for activism (it's done by an "ally") and it ropes people like yourself who are presumably not 'on the acronym' into supporting craziness that, if you're honest with yourself, would make you hate people who espoused. Both casually as one hates warm beer and gray weekends, but also in the sense of being inspired to actually work against the general freer society we've been building for decades. Actual allies can help by not joining in on the trolling.
      - baq 6y ago
        language 1 extracts gender to a separate word. language 2 embeds gender in the word itself. names are words. it's a lose-lose situation: native speakers of language 2 will look at what you wrote and cringe or just assume you're ignorant. they won't get the point you're trying to make, null, nada, 0% chance. source: i'm a native speaker of language 2.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Yep. "Greek is gendered, the gender is embedded into the words". Sure, but I can speak whole normal sentences without referring to gender at all, something like "went to the supermarket and bought x y z, then did a, b and c and came back". You can talk about someone at length without mentioning their gender once.
        baq 6y ago
        This is absolutely true, but sooner or later you’ll have to pick a gender or you’ll just end up sounding funny at best.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Not really, that's just the way sentences are formed. The third person has no gender, the gender is only in the pronouns, which are optional. Adjectives will give it away, though.
  - bboozzoo 6y ago
    Actually being Polish I can say it is correct, at least for the cases mentioned (also correct for suffix -cki). However it is true that there are surnames that do not follow this particular inflection scheme. Keep in mind that Poles are likely to use a single, male variant of the surname, rather than explain the intricacies of inflection in the Polish language.
    - lb1lf 6y ago
      -A former girlfriend is of a Russian emigré family; she always got a chuckle out of Norwegians' inability to understand the concept of inflection. Her father as a matter of course got letters from all her leisure activities, school &c addressed to 'Mr. Yuri ----skaia'. - as her last name was ----skaia, obviously his would be, too. At least for us inflectionally challenged Norwegians.
      - leephillips 6y ago
        Reminds me of Nabokov complaining about the incompetent translators of Russian novels → English writing Mr. Karenina.
        jgwil2 6y ago
        It wasn't "Mr. Karenina" (I've never seen anyone use that form) he took issue with; he believed that the name should be translated as Anna Karenin rather than the usual Karenina, since English does not inflect surnames.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Basically the same as "Miss John Doe".
- franga2000 6y ago
  I'm from Slovenia and this is bullshit. Maybe it holds true in a couple of Slavic languages, but I'm familiar with a handful of them and this isn't a thing in any of those. Regarding the "insulting" part, you're probably mistranating it. What would be insulting in many Slavic languages is using the "middle grammatical gender" (rough literal translation) which is equivalent to using "it" to refer to a person in English. If you insist on translating literally, using third person gender neutral (in Slovene and many Slavic languages) is actually a sign of respect and is how talks to their superiors (antiquated in 3rd person, but still the norm in 2nd). Not that it matters anyways, as we're all talking in English and thus English grammar is the only one that matters. Even if you know for a fact all parties in the conversation speak the other language, if you're using English, the rules of the other language don't matter. P.S. Re: Latinx: yeah, that's stupid and I'd see it as mildly offensive if directed at me, but that is neither a pronoun nor common practice, so is entirely irrelevant here
- antonfire 6y ago
  > Using gender neutral in this case is as insulting as calling him a dog. In English? No it isn't. You are the one who is "butchering" a language's pronouns by improperly mapping considerations into it from another language here, not vice versa. I have a Slavic last name, and I speak English fluently and Russian not-so-fluently-anymore. If you use "оно" to refer to me in Russian because you don't know my gender, it would sound weird to me. (I haven't been to any Russian-speaking countries in a while, but I suspect there hasn't been a shift in Russian to use that pronoun that way while I've been gone.) I personally wouldn't be insulted, but I can easily imagine how somebody might; it would carry a subtext of referring to me as an inanimate object. If you use "they" to refer to me in English because you don't know my gender, it would not sound weird to me at all. (Though it might have 5-10 years ago, for different reasons.) A much closer (but still imperfect) analogy to using "оно" to refer to me in Russian would be using "it" to refer to me in English, which would sound weird to me. Hope that helps.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Russians use “yous” or “вы” which is both gender-neutral and a polite pronoun.
    - antonfire 6y ago
      That's for the second person pronoun, which are all gender neutral in Russian, whether they are singular or plural. (Like English.) We're talking here about third person pronouns, and the "the plural is the polite version and the singular is the casual version" doesn't extend to those. You wouldn't refer refer to someone in the third person as "они" rather than "он" to be polite.
      - heavenlyblue 6y ago
        > you wouldn’t refer you wouldn’t do that because Russia is a paradise for homophobia, not because it does not make sense. “Они” is a valid pronoun for the same thing than now means “them” in woke English.
- halfnormalform 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing your personal opinions.

h_spacer 6y ago

Slav surnames are gendered. * ski is male, * ska is female, * sko is neutral. Using gender neutral in this case is as insulting as calling him a dog. Other cases where using gender neutral pronouns insults everyone speaking the language is using Latinx for Latino. If you want to butcher every other languages genders like they are in English, use Latin instead - the gender neutral form of Latino in English since only the middle ages. Hope this helps.

smnscu 6y ago
I'm Romanian and have many Polish friends. This is not even remotely accurate, except for basket cases that I have yet to meet.
- h_spacer 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_name_suffixes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_name_suffixes Hope that helps.
  - echelon 6y ago
    I'm still going to use they/them because a name doesn't necessarily match with one's gender.
    - h_spacer 6y ago
      Sorry to hear that you hold other cultures in such low regard.
      - echelon 6y ago
        Culture and gender aren't linked. Does culture tell you if someone's gender, sexual preferences, what kind of car they drive, whether or not they're a furry, what god(s) they do or do not believe in, etc.? Don't put people in boxes based on your limited world view. Think about the limit. When we're uploaded to the matrix, you'll finally be able to be whatever gender you want to be without fear for the stupid stigmas of this world. You can try lots of things. You can be a man, woman, multi-gender foxperson, or a stoic agender deity. Maybe lots of things. You'll be free. Let people be who they are. You be who you are. Just be happy.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        kepler1 6y ago
        What a hypocrite -- feel free to let people be who they are, as long as I can force you to call them a word I want.
        Kye 6y ago
        You opened this thread by lecturing others on the pronouns they used for the article author with no standing to do so. Who are you and why are you more authoritative on the author's pronouns than the person you attempted to correct?
        HexagonalKitten 6y ago
        Do you not understand how claiming to support people's pronouns and then bravely using gender neutral pronouns for everyone who doesn't specify is a bit hyprocritical? Most people identify happily and it's as rude to misgender them as anyone. It's a form of unasked for activism (it's done by an "ally") and it ropes people like yourself who are presumably not 'on the acronym' into supporting craziness that, if you're honest with yourself, would make you hate people who espoused. Both casually as one hates warm beer and gray weekends, but also in the sense of being inspired to actually work against the general freer society we've been building for decades. Actual allies can help by not joining in on the trolling.
    - baq 6y ago
      language 1 extracts gender to a separate word. language 2 embeds gender in the word itself. names are words. it's a lose-lose situation: native speakers of language 2 will look at what you wrote and cringe or just assume you're ignorant. they won't get the point you're trying to make, null, nada, 0% chance. source: i'm a native speaker of language 2.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Yep. "Greek is gendered, the gender is embedded into the words". Sure, but I can speak whole normal sentences without referring to gender at all, something like "went to the supermarket and bought x y z, then did a, b and c and came back". You can talk about someone at length without mentioning their gender once.
        baq 6y ago
        This is absolutely true, but sooner or later you’ll have to pick a gender or you’ll just end up sounding funny at best.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Not really, that's just the way sentences are formed. The third person has no gender, the gender is only in the pronouns, which are optional. Adjectives will give it away, though.
- bboozzoo 6y ago
  Actually being Polish I can say it is correct, at least for the cases mentioned (also correct for suffix -cki). However it is true that there are surnames that do not follow this particular inflection scheme. Keep in mind that Poles are likely to use a single, male variant of the surname, rather than explain the intricacies of inflection in the Polish language.
  - lb1lf 6y ago
    -A former girlfriend is of a Russian emigré family; she always got a chuckle out of Norwegians' inability to understand the concept of inflection. Her father as a matter of course got letters from all her leisure activities, school &c addressed to 'Mr. Yuri ----skaia'. - as her last name was ----skaia, obviously his would be, too. At least for us inflectionally challenged Norwegians.
    - leephillips 6y ago
      Reminds me of Nabokov complaining about the incompetent translators of Russian novels → English writing Mr. Karenina.
      - jgwil2 6y ago
        It wasn't "Mr. Karenina" (I've never seen anyone use that form) he took issue with; he believed that the name should be translated as Anna Karenin rather than the usual Karenina, since English does not inflect surnames.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Basically the same as "Miss John Doe".
franga2000 6y ago
I'm from Slovenia and this is bullshit. Maybe it holds true in a couple of Slavic languages, but I'm familiar with a handful of them and this isn't a thing in any of those. Regarding the "insulting" part, you're probably mistranating it. What would be insulting in many Slavic languages is using the "middle grammatical gender" (rough literal translation) which is equivalent to using "it" to refer to a person in English. If you insist on translating literally, using third person gender neutral (in Slovene and many Slavic languages) is actually a sign of respect and is how talks to their superiors (antiquated in 3rd person, but still the norm in 2nd). Not that it matters anyways, as we're all talking in English and thus English grammar is the only one that matters. Even if you know for a fact all parties in the conversation speak the other language, if you're using English, the rules of the other language don't matter. P.S. Re: Latinx: yeah, that's stupid and I'd see it as mildly offensive if directed at me, but that is neither a pronoun nor common practice, so is entirely irrelevant here
antonfire 6y ago
> Using gender neutral in this case is as insulting as calling him a dog. In English? No it isn't. You are the one who is "butchering" a language's pronouns by improperly mapping considerations into it from another language here, not vice versa. I have a Slavic last name, and I speak English fluently and Russian not-so-fluently-anymore. If you use "оно" to refer to me in Russian because you don't know my gender, it would sound weird to me. (I haven't been to any Russian-speaking countries in a while, but I suspect there hasn't been a shift in Russian to use that pronoun that way while I've been gone.) I personally wouldn't be insulted, but I can easily imagine how somebody might; it would carry a subtext of referring to me as an inanimate object. If you use "they" to refer to me in English because you don't know my gender, it would not sound weird to me at all. (Though it might have 5-10 years ago, for different reasons.) A much closer (but still imperfect) analogy to using "оно" to refer to me in Russian would be using "it" to refer to me in English, which would sound weird to me. Hope that helps.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Russians use “yous” or “вы” which is both gender-neutral and a polite pronoun.
  - antonfire 6y ago
    That's for the second person pronoun, which are all gender neutral in Russian, whether they are singular or plural. (Like English.) We're talking here about third person pronouns, and the "the plural is the polite version and the singular is the casual version" doesn't extend to those. You wouldn't refer refer to someone in the third person as "они" rather than "он" to be polite.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      > you wouldn’t refer you wouldn’t do that because Russia is a paradise for homophobia, not because it does not make sense. “Они” is a valid pronoun for the same thing than now means “them” in woke English.
halfnormalform 6y ago
Thank you for sharing your personal opinions.