4 ms·
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 ca
by 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 agoSpanish 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 agoNo, 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 agoThat'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 agoRight, 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 agoAnd yet they must be able to talk about gender-unknown people...