These terms are undoubtedly beneficial, helping to allow for expression of gender fluidity. Anagha Srikanth | Jan. 4, 2021. but at least in English, one can use female or other pronouns or nouns to, as the book Gender Across Languages put it,  “emphasize women’s [or other’s] presence in the world.” In a language that can’t grammatically distinguish between he, she, and ze, androcentricity—or male bias—can be even more insidious. Gendered languages: Russian, German, and French are prominent examples of this kind of language, in which both people and objects are given a gender. Key words: gender, gender-specific pronouns, gender-neutral pronouns, language, social identity. Pronomen. Tosha also notes that there’s the option to use a plural pronoun when referring to agender people. The Académie Française, France’s ultimate language authority, issued a furious statementright after the book’s release. Scroll down for English version (in progress!) In addition, the “-ke” ending in Estonian denotes a diminutive, something small and cute. This was at an early stage of me asking them not to use ‘she’ (the pronoun I was ‘assigned’ at birth), so I think people were still getting used to the idea of any pronoun other than ‘she’ for me. I do not mean pronouns like He, She, It. It doesn’t allow for a lack of gender; you always have to pick something. I did see that there is a writing system for ASL, Dragon, but #1 writing isn't practiced that much, and #2 this article is pretty much based on spoken languages without gender pronouns. Faced with that level of discrimination, the use of pronouns can seem far down the list of priorities. In the mid-1500s, William Lily declared in his Latin textbook that “the masculine gender is more worthy than the feminine, and the feminine more worthy than the neuter.” (He was speaking in the context of grammatical gender, rather than biological sex or socially-constructed gender roles in humans. Though Estonian people using the term tema may not specifically picture a man or a woman, they invariably picture either a man or a woman, not anyone else in between. Or what if just about every noun in your world was masculine or feminine—seemingly at random, like in Russian? The aim is to enhance the language by making it easier to speak about a person without specifying their gender, though some Swedish speakers are trying to promote the use of hen as a replacement for male and female pronouns; meaning everyone would be referred to without their gender being specified. A few gender pioneers, however, have co-opted it. Some languages without noun class may have noun classifiers instead. That is because I am not really out as non-binary. A version of this article appeared in The Establishment and is used here with permission. Find out more at our Patreon page. To find out how one’s native language and gender identity intersect, I spoke with people from several countries who have come out as genderqueer, nonbinary— gender-questioning in some way—and their answers reveal the importance of grammar in the expression of gender identity. In Spanish, moon is feminine, and dress is masculine. If I can say in my language, “She (or ze) is the CEO,” I can draw attention to the fact that the term CEO is a false generic. In many such languages, what is commonly termed "animacy" may in fact be more accurately described as a distinction between human and non-human, rational and irrational, "socially active" and "socially passive" etc. The bottom-left corner shows the genderless third-person pronoun tema, which means “he” or “she”. Without my clarification, most people will picture a male CEO. (Spotted by @antimytheme) 5. Natural gender languages: English is an example of this kind of language, which doesn’t categorize non-human, non-animal nouns into male or female categories. This is common in East Asian languages. I’m constantly misgendered, or I’m misgendering myself in order to be understood.” Language and Power in Politics: A Gender Stereotype Game; Using Language to Examine Power and Gender Gradients Between YouTube’s Influencers; Man Up! To put it simply, choosing the right pronoun is a big deal. Some languages, such as English, do not have a gender neutral or third gender pronoun available, and this has been criticized, since in many instances, writers, speakers, etc. Would you care less about the pronouns for yourself? Assumptions about the binary nature of gender and the status of masculinity seem to survive intact, even under genderless language conditions. “[S]peaking a gendered language as an agender person fuckin’ sucks. “I think after some time I’ll be able to do the same for myself [in Russian].”, It’s clear that, not surprisingly, natural gender and gendered languages pose problems for identity expression. Certain language families, such as the Austronesian, Turkic and Uralic language families, usually have no grammatical genders (see genderless language). Be ready for a complex answer . Some languages that do have gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, where all or the vast majority of nouns are assigned to gender classes and adjectives and other modifiers must agree with them in that; but a few languages with gender-specific pronouns, such as English, Afrikaans, Defaka, Khmu, Malayalam, Tamil, … Polina Ravlyuk, a Russian blogger who runs an information portal on gender and gender identification, wrote to me in an email: “For example, in English, there are multiple nouns that I can use to classify myself (partner, student) without making reference to gender, whereas in German I’m supposed to say the feminine form of many common categories into which I fit, like student (Studentin), and have to explain myself when I refuse.” requesting ‘he’ instead of ‘she’). To put it simply, choosing the right pronoun is a big deal. Even without considering the exclusionary effects of these strategies, they were the worst of the four, anyways. House introduces gender-neutral language in new rules for Congress . But are they enough? Those in light blue have no gender system [Image: Wikiwand], “Natural gender” languages like English perpetuate the idea of a strict gender binary for humans—one can be either “he” or “she.” But there is an option to challenge these parameters: the use of gender-neutral terms. A school textbook promoting a more inclusive version of French had been released, making purists fly off the handle. This is far from perfect—but it may be the best option yet for those who identify along a spectrum. Pronouns in English don’t hurt me, as long as no one does it on purpose. You want to make it as simple as you can, so you don’t overwhelm users with options. And also,, i am fully aware that there are nouns that correspond to gender in english (but that change accordingly) such as blond/blonde, waiter/waitress, bachlor/bachlorette, etc. Because of the language barrier, that doesn’t feel unnatural for me, and besides, [i]n Russian almost all the verbs and adjectives have gender, and in English it’s not like that. A table and tree are it, and only people are he or she. [Image courtesy of Eesti keele õppimiseks]. ‘Homosexual propaganda’ is still a fineable offence in the Russian Federation…” If I can’t use she or ze, this kind of sexist/gendered assumption can be even more difficult to notice and correct. In these languages, animate nouns are predominantly of common gender, while inanimate nouns may be of either gender. Generally, French pronouns don’t have a proper gender or number, they inherit from their referent. For example, 'he/him/his' with men and 'she/her/hers' with women. This page was last edited on 12 January 2021, at 05:18. We don’t have gendered pronouns, so a regular person might call a cis man a she by accident, and not be corrected, because we are not native speakers.”. Gender Across Languages Volume 4, published in 2015, notes the appearance of the term tema-ke or ‘little him/her,’ in use in newspapers and online to force a feminine aspect; the 2013 Spike Jonze movie Her, for example, is called Temake in Estonian. Story at a … English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. Erin Crouch lives in Tacoma, Washington and Tallinn, Estonia. Maybe someday I could use them, though. Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top Home Questions Tags Users Unanswered What is the possessive pronoun for a person whose gender we … Friends and close acquaintances call me ‘Paul,’ which I really like to be called. Like what Deep Baltic does? English has many false generics (male nurse, anyone?) “I planted him in the forest, where he will grow very tall!” Please consider making a monthly donation – help support our writers and in-depth coverage of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It makes some things so much easier…one does not need to make assumptions about gender when trying to address someone.” “When I was using gender-neutral pronouns in English, it was almost impossible to get anyone who wasn’t in the queer community to use ‘they’ for me consistently. One participant wrote: Tema is used only for humans, and when used in a sentence, it is neither masculine nor feminine. This article lists languages depending on their approach to grammatical gender. Those who answered “yes and no” detailed both positive and negative aspects. Half of millennials in the United States think that gender isn’t limited to male and female, and in the U.S., Facebook offers 56 custom options to select for gender. Does Estonian offer a natural home for the nonbinary? However, when the referent doesn’t exist (in the case of the nominal pronouns) or if it has an indefinite gender, then the pronoun takes his masculine form. I mean like in german,, sun is masculine, door is feminine, and grass is neutral. Female lawyers are called just that: female lawyers. Asexual Finnish student Kati agrees, saying, “I’m so happy Finnish has only one [ungendered] pronoun. I prefer ‘they’ or ‘he’ in English, but I don’t usually say it to people unless they ask. The document signed by the academy’s 40 members — only five of whom are women — de… But I had the impression that people outside the queer world (not LGBT but ‘queer’ as in challenging gender binaries) had an even harder time with the idea of a gender-neutral pronoun than with the idea of someone ‘crossing’ gender lines (i.e. Others, meanwhile, have genders for nearly everything, even objects. Plural or ‘neuter’ cases in Russian aren’t comfortable for me. A gender neutral or gender inclusive pronoun is a pronoun which does not associate a gender with the individual who is being discussed. I use masculine pronouns, even though they don’t suit me very well. I somehow identify more with neutral or masculine marker words, and names. A personal pronoun diagram for Russian and Estonian learning. But what about genderless languages? It only takes a minute to sign up. In a 2016 survey—Bucking the Linguistic Binary—20% of monolingual, transgender English speakers said, yes, English gender-neutral language allows me to express my identity; 31% said no, it does not allow for adequate identity expression; and 19% said “yes and no.” 4% specified that they felt that it currently did not allow them to express their identities, but, “the situation was improving and that they were hopeful that time and advocacy would lead to increased acceptance of the language that would allow them to express their identities.” In Estonian there is no gender in pronouns, but there are marker words like ‘tüdruk’ (girl), ‘preili’ (Ms.), or ‘neiu’ (a young woman) that I don’t identify with, but which are used by older people addressing me. Were we able to go back in time over a hundred years and ask casual people in the streets about gender, we would notice that their answers would pertain to a grammatical category rather than a social phenomenon. In the same survey, transgender French respondent #171 was clear and succinct: When a language has gendered pronouns, the use of a particular word as a dummy pronoun may involve the selection of a particular gender, even though there is no noun to agree with. Sign up to join this community. In my opinion, the language plays a pretty large role in how agender people feel about themselves, because [Russian] isn’t flexible enough for us. On November 2017, France was caught in the middle of a heated debate over the future of its own language. We’re always open to additions, corrections and newly coined words! But that’s maybe because the people I talk to in English are not native speakers. Genderless languages: Chinese, Estonian, Finnish, and other languages don’t categorize any nouns as feminine or masculine, and use the same word for he or she in regards to humans. Having just one pronoun for humans doesn’t equal perfect equality in society, though. © Deep Baltic 2018. Misgendering in a gendered language was explained by another respondent: I would prefer the gender-neutral pronoun ‘tema’ or my name. by Erin Crouch, TALLINN  As one Quora poster explained, “We just don’t distinguish the gender through the pronoun. These are typically borrowed words like кафе (cafe) that do not take a masculine or feminine case. So there is some slip of pronouns going on unintentionally, especially with Estonian people speaking in English. Also, the dichotomy of “he … All rights reserved, Between Two Shores: A Visual Love Letter to the Curonian Spit, An Eccentric Cold War Education: Revisiting the Lithuanian Gymnasium in Germany, Fiction: Saulius Šaltenis – Diary of a Jewish Girl, Searching for Nikolajs Hercbergs: the Mystery Man Who Photographed Riga, Sillamäe: Inside a Former Soviet Secret City in Estonia, [S]peaking a gendered language as an agender person fuckin’ sucks, one can use female or other pronouns or nouns. 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