Neutral pronouns, any language

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WeGotThis
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Neutral pronouns, any language

Postby WeGotThis » Sun Dec 05, 2021 8:35 pm

Hi,
I'm looking for a gender neutral pronoun to use in place of she. The language doesn't matter, I need to be able to pronounce it (native English speaker)

This is for my own personal use when I am referring to a friend who doesn't like gender specific words.

Example "she gave me this beanie baby"
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smallwhite
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Re: Neutral pronouns, any language

Postby smallwhite » Mon Dec 06, 2021 6:25 am

Cantonese 佢 with audio here:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/佢
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tractor
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Re: Neutral pronouns, any language

Postby tractor » Mon Dec 06, 2021 6:55 am

They.
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Deinonysus
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Re: Neutral pronouns, any language

Postby Deinonysus » Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:35 pm

I second tractor. The singular "they" has been used for centuries, including by Shakespeare, but it was not widely used until recently. However, it has quickly become standard, probably due to increasing visibility and acceptance of non-binary people. It is also becoming more common in reference to an unknown person where "he or she" would have previously been used.

Gendered pronouns are actually pretty rare outside of the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic (including Semitic) families. The only other languages with gendered pronouns I can think of off the top of my head are Tamil and Mohawk. If you want random non-gendered pronouns from any language, you have your pick of the Chinese languages as well as Turkish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Swahili, Navajo, Inuktitut... I could keep going but I think you get the idea.
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/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

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Re: Neutral pronouns, any language

Postby Dragon27 » Mon Dec 06, 2021 1:15 pm

I think the conventional thing to do nowadays is to ask the person in question what they want to be referred to as.
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