4 ms·

In some languages it is much more important than in English, and it would just sound weird for Google pages to refer to you in a gender-neutral way by default.

Joakal 15y ago
Can you give an example of referring to a gender-specific way that's weird in using gender-neutral words?
- bricestacey 15y ago
  Many languages have different ways of saying "you" depending on gender. For example, many arabic verbs have suffixes "ak" (you, masc) and "ik" (you, fem). There is no gender-neutral way to directly address someone (there is only masculine and feminine nouns). PS. I have only rudimentary knowledge of Arabic so any native speakers, forgive me if I'm way off.
- eddington 15y ago
  If you were to try to say "my friend's house" in lots of languages you have to use a gender-specific word. In spanish, for example La casa de mi amigo / La casa de mi amiga. If you were to try to do it in a gender neutral manner ... La casa de una persona que conozco bien. Which translates roughly to "the house of a person that I know (and know well)."
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    Spanish speakers don't have the same hangups about using 'he' as the gender-neutral pronoun. It's just a part of their language. English is the one where people get bent out of shape over it.
    - mtts 15y ago
      No, Dutchies don't like it either. I don't think it's language specific. It probably has something to do with how much machismo or political correctness there is in a culture :-) By that logic, Americans are probably more upset about this than, say, Nigerians (I assume Nigerian culture(s) are rather less PC than American culture).
      - wccrawford 15y ago
        That's a good point. I don't know all languages, so I can only speak for the ones I know. I also suspect it's a PC thing.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - nandemo 15y ago
      Right, but that gender-neutral he only works we're talking about a "generic" or hypothetical someone. You cannot use in (say) Facebook or Google+ for a text referring to a female friend. In English, some people still use they/their in this case. In Portuguese (and I think Spanish and other major Latin languages) you can't do that.
  - StuffMaster 15y ago
    And yet they must be able to talk about gender-unknown people...
- qqqqrrrrr 15y ago
  In Hebrew, like in Arabic, there are only male and female singular "you" pronouns. Possession and verbs are also gender-specific ("change your password" can only be m or f). Just like English speakers are finding ways to deal with the "he/she" problem, Hebrew speakers are finding ways to deal with this. It's not a real problem.
- prostoalex 15y ago
  Any past tense verb in Russian is gender-specific. When you use "worked", "did", the suffix must adhere to the subject of the sentence. Now, Russian has 3 genders, that includes neutral, but neutral is a gender of its own, not a catch-all case for when things are neither masculine nor feminine. So unless the product completely avoids using verbs in past tense, making the language gender-neutral and natural-souding for Slavic group of languages is pretty much impossible.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jarek 15y ago
    I've seen Polish software use "pracował/a" where male and female forms of "worked" are "pracował" and "pracowała", respectively. It's not terribly elegant, however, and things get progressively hairier as you try to gender-neutralize things like an adjective-noun combination ("new student's" would become "nowego ucznia/nowej uczennicy" at the simplest).
- yaix 15y ago
  Interesting list of difficulties by language. In Chinese, while he and she is pronounced the same way ("ta"), the writing is different for he 他 and she 她. That's the only difficult part I could think of in Chinese, there are no changing word endings, etc. In German is should be more difficult, because there is no "their" like in English to replace her and his.
  - ugh 15y ago
    It looks like they will go the messy route in German. (More likely they already have. I’m not even sure whether they were ever using gender appropriate language in the first place.) Here is how that looks: „Fügen Sie hier eine kleine Beschreibung über sich ein, damit andere wissen, dass sie die/den richtige/n Name erwischt haben.“ (“Put a little about yourself here so people know they've found the correct Name.”) See those slashes at the end? They just write both and separate the two variants with slashes. An ugly and common solution, I’m not aware of any better solutions in German, though.

Joakal 15y ago

Can you give an example of referring to a gender-specific way that's weird in using gender-neutral words?

bricestacey 15y ago
Many languages have different ways of saying "you" depending on gender. For example, many arabic verbs have suffixes "ak" (you, masc) and "ik" (you, fem). There is no gender-neutral way to directly address someone (there is only masculine and feminine nouns). PS. I have only rudimentary knowledge of Arabic so any native speakers, forgive me if I'm way off.
eddington 15y ago
If you were to try to say "my friend's house" in lots of languages you have to use a gender-specific word. In spanish, for example La casa de mi amigo / La casa de mi amiga. If you were to try to do it in a gender neutral manner ... La casa de una persona que conozco bien. Which translates roughly to "the house of a person that I know (and know well)."
- wccrawford 15y ago
  Spanish speakers don't have the same hangups about using 'he' as the gender-neutral pronoun. It's just a part of their language. English is the one where people get bent out of shape over it.
  - mtts 15y ago
    No, Dutchies don't like it either. I don't think it's language specific. It probably has something to do with how much machismo or political correctness there is in a culture :-) By that logic, Americans are probably more upset about this than, say, Nigerians (I assume Nigerian culture(s) are rather less PC than American culture).
    - wccrawford 15y ago
      That's a good point. I don't know all languages, so I can only speak for the ones I know. I also suspect it's a PC thing.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - nandemo 15y ago
    Right, but that gender-neutral he only works we're talking about a "generic" or hypothetical someone. You cannot use in (say) Facebook or Google+ for a text referring to a female friend. In English, some people still use they/their in this case. In Portuguese (and I think Spanish and other major Latin languages) you can't do that.
- StuffMaster 15y ago
  And yet they must be able to talk about gender-unknown people...
qqqqrrrrr 15y ago
In Hebrew, like in Arabic, there are only male and female singular "you" pronouns. Possession and verbs are also gender-specific ("change your password" can only be m or f). Just like English speakers are finding ways to deal with the "he/she" problem, Hebrew speakers are finding ways to deal with this. It's not a real problem.
prostoalex 15y ago
Any past tense verb in Russian is gender-specific. When you use "worked", "did", the suffix must adhere to the subject of the sentence. Now, Russian has 3 genders, that includes neutral, but neutral is a gender of its own, not a catch-all case for when things are neither masculine nor feminine. So unless the product completely avoids using verbs in past tense, making the language gender-neutral and natural-souding for Slavic group of languages is pretty much impossible.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jarek 15y ago
  I've seen Polish software use "pracował/a" where male and female forms of "worked" are "pracował" and "pracowała", respectively. It's not terribly elegant, however, and things get progressively hairier as you try to gender-neutralize things like an adjective-noun combination ("new student's" would become "nowego ucznia/nowej uczennicy" at the simplest).
yaix 15y ago
Interesting list of difficulties by language. In Chinese, while he and she is pronounced the same way ("ta"), the writing is different for he 他 and she 她. That's the only difficult part I could think of in Chinese, there are no changing word endings, etc. In German is should be more difficult, because there is no "their" like in English to replace her and his.
- ugh 15y ago
  It looks like they will go the messy route in German. (More likely they already have. I’m not even sure whether they were ever using gender appropriate language in the first place.) Here is how that looks: „Fügen Sie hier eine kleine Beschreibung über sich ein, damit andere wissen, dass sie die/den richtige/n Name erwischt haben.“ (“Put a little about yourself here so people know they've found the correct Name.”) See those slashes at the end? They just write both and separate the two variants with slashes. An ugly and common solution, I’m not aware of any better solutions in German, though.