6 ms·

Gendered nouns are kind of silly and antiquated when you think about it though, and many languages have a neuter gender too (e.g. German). The "X" suffix is an

Gendered nouns are kind of silly and antiquated when you think about it though, and many languages have a neuter gender too (e.g. German). The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. English doesn't have gendered nouns, but we do have gendered pronouns, which not all languages have. Chinese doesn't have gendered pronouns, which is why you'll often hear native Chinese speakers accidentally refer to a woman in English as "he". Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown. For example, if you found a random wallet, you might say, "Someone lost their wallet," and it would be acceptable. Intentionally changing language isn't unprecedented either: in the 1970s, feminists successfully introduced "Ms." as a female equivalent to "Mr." to denote a woman who may or may not be married, (instead of Miss and Mrs.). Ultimately, most language evolution is driven by young people: they're bending their native tongue to better describe their world. And that's a good thing. Language is supposed to be fluid and dynamic. We shouldn't be constraining our thoughts to a static unchanging language invented by our ancestors to describe their world that no longer exists. It's a tool meant to serve us, we're not meant to limit ourselves to it.

JCharante 5y ago
> Chinese doesn't have gendered pronouns, which is why you'll often hear native Chinese speakers accidentally refer to a woman in English as "he". This is interesting because I've heard this explanation before from an international student. You still have 他/he 她/she despite them being pronounced the same, so the gendered pronouns still do exist, but the mistake of switching he/she in conversation is still commonly made. It's not like Vietnamese where Em ấy or Ẻm (both meaning he/she for someone younger than the speaker) where a genderless pronoun is used, and yet I've seen he/she mixed up a lot less often.
- Hasnep 5y ago
  I guess that if you speak Chinese as a first language you're not expecting to need to distinguish between 他 and 她when speaking, so it's harder to remember when speaking a language that has two different pronunciations. I believe older Chinese used 他as a fever neutral pronoun and using 她 is a fairly recent change to mimic western languages.
ukoki 5y ago
> Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown. I can understand why 'they' is chosen as a way to introduce neutrality of gender but it pains me that this also introduces of ambiguity of plurality. We _really_ need a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. We're lucky that our first and second-person pronouns and our plural pronouns by fluke of language evolution just happen to already be gender neutral. It's just this last one -- third-person singular -- that is causing all this discussion, political fights, and newspaper column inches. It seems absurd to me when we could just call each other ze/zim (or whatever, the actual word doesn't really matter) and call it a day. If it turns out that the only way we can shut up about pronouns is to sacrifice 'they', then I guess that's an acceptable loss. But it does feel like all we need is a tiny tweak of the language to iron out this wrinkle by introducing something new (or taking one from another language, if that's more palatable).
- twic 5y ago
  singular: they plural: theys
  - GordonS 5y ago
    Somewhat similar, here in Scotland we often say "youse" to mean "you and those with you", or "youse two" to mean "you two". A similar concept exists in Mandarin Chinese, where "ni3" means "you" and "ni3men" to mean "you and those with you", but there is also "ta1" as a gender-neutral, singular "they" (that is, he/she), and "ta1men" as a gender-neutral, plural "they".
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
  There are suggestions for neutral pronouns in English but in my experience they get even more resistance than they/them for being ridiculous/fake/made up/not real/etc. xyr/xym or ve/vem of zir/zem are all things I’ve seen ridiculed.
- humanrebar 5y ago
  Agreed. "Y'all" is being introduced into the language because singular/plural "you" is ambiguous. Regressing on the clarity of "they" is confusing.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language Is it? I mostly see non-Spanish people using "latinx".
jefftk 5y ago
> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. That's not what I've seen. "Latinx" isn't pronouncable in Spanish. The actual attempt to introduce a neutral gender uses the suffix -e. For example "les estudiantes ruidoses" or "mis amigues".
joshuaissac 5y ago
> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. Did it really come from native Spanish speakers or is it an exonym? It is not the preferred term for the vast majority of Hispanic people even in the US.[1] > Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun A Comedy of Errors (William Shakespeare, c.1594), Act 4, Scene 3: > There's not a man I meet but doth salute me. As if I were their well-acquainted friend Singular 'they' even when the gender is known has been popular in the English language for hundreds of years. Even longer than singular 'you'. 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
- jhgb 5y ago
  >> There's not a man I meet but doth salute me. As if I were their well-acquainted friend > Singular 'they' even when the gender is known has been popular in the English language for hundreds of years. Even longer than singular 'you'. It seems to me that the negation qualifies your Shakespeare example for OED's explanation of "I. 2. Often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by every, any, no, etc., or applicable to one of either sex (= ‘he or she’)." That is distinct from a reference to a single, specific individual, which using "they" as a singular gender-non-specific pronoun with unrestricted usage would necessarily include (things like "Peter said *they wanted some tea"). Presumably this is what was meant by GP.
deleted 5y ago
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graeme 5y ago
> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. This isn’t true. The term is enormously unpopular with latinos, only 3% use it. The entire spanish language uses gendered nouns, and unlike german has no neuter. The term may have originated with puerto rican academics but it is mostly used by English speakers. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...
- bushbaba 5y ago
  It’s being driven by non Hispanics. Almost an example of a group using their privilege to force unwanted action on a minority.
hihihihi1234 5y ago
> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. Not true - Latinx was invented by English speakers and the vast majority of "Latinx" people don't use or like the term.
jhgb 5y ago
> Gendered nouns are kind of silly and antiquated when you think about it though No, they're not. In WALS (https://wals.info/chapter/30 https://wals.info/chapter/30), almost half of the languages have gendered nouns. > Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown. For example, if you found a random wallet, you might say, "Someone lost their wallet," and it would be acceptable. It's actually reasonably weird to propose since usages historically mattered. Also that's what gives you collocations, idioms, etc. If you look at grammars of English, you find plenty of examples of similar generalizations that people consistently refuse to make, such as the lack of "I could X" in the sense of "I was able to X", even though though nobody bats an eye at "I couldn't X" in the sense of "I wasn't able to X".

JCharante 5y ago

> Chinese doesn't have gendered pronouns, which is why you'll often hear native Chinese speakers accidentally refer to a woman in English as "he". This is interesting because I've heard this explanation before from an international student. You still have 他/he 她/she despite them being pronounced the same, so the gendered pronouns still do exist, but the mistake of switching he/she in conversation is still commonly made. It's not like Vietnamese where Em ấy or Ẻm (both meaning he/she for someone younger than the speaker) where a genderless pronoun is used, and yet I've seen he/she mixed up a lot less often.

Hasnep 5y ago
I guess that if you speak Chinese as a first language you're not expecting to need to distinguish between 他 and 她when speaking, so it's harder to remember when speaking a language that has two different pronunciations. I believe older Chinese used 他as a fever neutral pronoun and using 她 is a fairly recent change to mimic western languages.

ukoki 5y ago

> Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown. I can understand why 'they' is chosen as a way to introduce neutrality of gender but it pains me that this also introduces of ambiguity of plurality. We _really_ need a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. We're lucky that our first and second-person pronouns and our plural pronouns by fluke of language evolution just happen to already be gender neutral. It's just this last one -- third-person singular -- that is causing all this discussion, political fights, and newspaper column inches. It seems absurd to me when we could just call each other ze/zim (or whatever, the actual word doesn't really matter) and call it a day. If it turns out that the only way we can shut up about pronouns is to sacrifice 'they', then I guess that's an acceptable loss. But it does feel like all we need is a tiny tweak of the language to iron out this wrinkle by introducing something new (or taking one from another language, if that's more palatable).

twic 5y ago
singular: they plural: theys
- GordonS 5y ago
  Somewhat similar, here in Scotland we often say "youse" to mean "you and those with you", or "youse two" to mean "you two". A similar concept exists in Mandarin Chinese, where "ni3" means "you" and "ni3men" to mean "you and those with you", but there is also "ta1" as a gender-neutral, singular "they" (that is, he/she), and "ta1men" as a gender-neutral, plural "they".
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
There are suggestions for neutral pronouns in English but in my experience they get even more resistance than they/them for being ridiculous/fake/made up/not real/etc. xyr/xym or ve/vem of zir/zem are all things I’ve seen ridiculed.
humanrebar 5y ago
Agreed. "Y'all" is being introduced into the language because singular/plural "you" is ambiguous. Regressing on the clarity of "they" is confusing.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago

> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language Is it? I mostly see non-Spanish people using "latinx".

jefftk 5y ago

> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. That's not what I've seen. "Latinx" isn't pronouncable in Spanish. The actual attempt to introduce a neutral gender uses the suffix -e. For example "les estudiantes ruidoses" or "mis amigues".

joshuaissac 5y ago

> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. Did it really come from native Spanish speakers or is it an exonym? It is not the preferred term for the vast majority of Hispanic people even in the US.[1] > Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun A Comedy of Errors (William Shakespeare, c.1594), Act 4, Scene 3: > There's not a man I meet but doth salute me. As if I were their well-acquainted friend Singular 'they' even when the gender is known has been popular in the English language for hundreds of years. Even longer than singular 'you'. 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...

jhgb 5y ago
>> There's not a man I meet but doth salute me. As if I were their well-acquainted friend > Singular 'they' even when the gender is known has been popular in the English language for hundreds of years. Even longer than singular 'you'. It seems to me that the negation qualifies your Shakespeare example for OED's explanation of "I. 2. Often used in reference to a singular noun made universal by every, any, no, etc., or applicable to one of either sex (= ‘he or she’)." That is distinct from a reference to a single, specific individual, which using "they" as a singular gender-non-specific pronoun with unrestricted usage would necessarily include (things like "Peter said *they wanted some tea"). Presumably this is what was meant by GP.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

graeme 5y ago

> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. This isn’t true. The term is enormously unpopular with latinos, only 3% use it. The entire spanish language uses gendered nouns, and unlike german has no neuter. The term may have originated with puerto rican academics but it is mostly used by English speakers. https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/ https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...

bushbaba 5y ago
It’s being driven by non Hispanics. Almost an example of a group using their privilege to force unwanted action on a minority.

hihihihi1234 5y ago

> The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language. Not true - Latinx was invented by English speakers and the vast majority of "Latinx" people don't use or like the term.

jhgb 5y ago

> Gendered nouns are kind of silly and antiquated when you think about it though No, they're not. In WALS (https://wals.info/chapter/30 https://wals.info/chapter/30), almost half of the languages have gendered nouns. > Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown. For example, if you found a random wallet, you might say, "Someone lost their wallet," and it would be acceptable. It's actually reasonably weird to propose since usages historically mattered. Also that's what gives you collocations, idioms, etc. If you look at grammars of English, you find plenty of examples of similar generalizations that people consistently refuse to make, such as the lack of "I could X" in the sense of "I was able to X", even though though nobody bats an eye at "I couldn't X" in the sense of "I wasn't able to X".