Ann Leckie & Turkish & pronouns, oh my

[kaberett]

As I occasionally mention, I'm learning Turkish on Duolingo, partly for interest (second non-Indo-European language! agglutination! vowel & consonant harmony!) and partly because it's turned out to be rather more useful in my day-to-day life than I anticipated when I started (for reasons various).

One of the things I find really very soothing about Turkish is that it's a language that doesn't have grammatical gender, and doesn't have gendered pronouns. Unfortunately, Duolingo hasn't quite caught up with current usage, which means that translations of the third-person singular pronoun "o" get marked wrong unless you use "he" or "she" (rather than "they"); obviously I stubbornly default to translating as "she".

I am also, As We Know, really very fond of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy, which "she" as the universal gender-irrelevant third-person singular.

Taken together, this means I'm occasionally catching myself defaulting to gender-irrelevant/gender-unknown usage of "she" in English, and possibly drifting slightly more towards third-person singular "they" as indicating a specific gender space.

I am, as you might well imagine, rather facepalmy over the Entire Situation.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

third-person singular "they" as indicating a specific gender space.

It's partly my belief that this would be A Good Thing that led me to agree that neopronouns like ey/em or zie/hir are like Betamax to they's VHS: they more clearly and obviously and necessarily carve out their own space.

[kaberett]

I have Feelings about the desirability of pronouns for "known, specified, relevant gender", "unknown gender", and "irrelevant gender"! And I think my preferred pronouns is a mix of "gender-irrelevant" and "gender-unknown", but I'm quite *shrug* about pinning down my Theoretical Concept Of Gender beyond what's necessary to make myself (at least a bit more) comfortable moving through the world.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah as someone who truly doesn't seem to have any preference for pronouns (beyond possibly "inconsistency," heh), I don't know if I'm the best or worst person to be thinking about the nuances of different neopronouns! But I do find it interesting.

[fyreharper]

CAN WE PLEASE HAVE (okay fine I know the answer is no, no we can’t, but still. If would be *so useful*.)

[horselizard]

That darn owl. *shakes fist* One of these days I might actually poke the Duolingo Turkish course (it's at the end of a very long list because I'm both greedy and lazy!), and if/when I do I'll be sure to stubbornly get every single "o" question "wrong" by using "they", and report it as "my answer should be accepted" ;)

What's your first non-Indo-European language, btw? Maybe I already know this, but I'm blanking. Been watching some animes with Romaji-subbed theme tunes with house, and marvelling at just how opaque Japanese feels to me without any PIE hooks to hang things on - and that's with a Japanese GCSE XD

(As an aside, making this observation to house prompted the question "Is BSL non-Indo-European?" Discuss :D)

[kaberett]

BSL is indeed the first language I'm claiming is non-Indo-European! Sign-Supported English is a very different beast (even if it has some of the same vocabulary), but sign languages tend to get grouped into their own language families :)

[cosmolinguist]

BSL is definitely not Indo-European.

[vass]

*heavy sigh at Duolingo*

It is soothing. I was watching Nirvana in Fire on Friday, and there was a moment when the protagonist mentioned another character in absentia, without naming them, and the subtitle translated the pronoun as he used as "he/she" and then his friend replied "Who, [male character]?" and the protagonist replied "No, [female character]." It's just... oh right, it doesn't have to be this way.

I am, as you might well imagine, rather facepalmy over the Entire Situation.

Speaking of nonbinary gender as a specific gender space: you might not want to look at the new "neutral" gender emoji until your face has recovered. Your palm might become permanently attached. They are very... specific.

[alexseanchai]

"neutral" gender emoji

…I am afraid to ask

[vass]

In iOS. https://twitter.com/emojipedia/status/1188877466615631878

Not everyone dislikes this. I do, because I see it as further narrowing the range of gender expression available to women, men, and everyone else. Now your precise length of hair determines if you're a man, a woman or a "neutral".

Also, EMOJI USED TO BE GENDER NEUTRAL UNTIL SOMEONE FUCKING DECIDED THE NEUTRAL OPTION WAS MALE AND ADDED A DISTAFF OPTION. *deep calming breaths*

[alexseanchai]

laptop emoji keyboard is not currently functioning (idkwtf; the hotkey combo isn't bringing it up but both keys still work for other things), and I do not have the right words, so here, have a selfie:

[vass]

*waves at you*

[fyreharper]

Oh look, the small child is right about hair length determining gender!
(Where is my longhair emoji representation though)

[niqaeli]

My glance through them from when they crossed my twitter feed gave me the impression that they all are very much drawn as androgynous/ambiguous. Which is... fine, as far as it goes? But, ASYK-Alex-Bob, ambiguous-could-be-either type androgyny is not a particularly accessible aesthetic for a great many non-binary people, and is not necessarily actually gender-neutral.

[alexseanchai]

yup.

[duckwhatduck]

Mandarin is AIUI more subtly annoying in that regard and "he" and "she" are pronounced the same but written differently...

[kaberett]

Thank you for clarity-edit! <3

[vass]

Thank you for clarifying that.

[kaberett]

ahahahaha yeah I have been seeing some of the Discourse about the emoji and just... it makes me very glad that I mostly don't use them because they are Unsettling And Newfangled :-p

[cosmolinguist]

And Inaccessible gdi.

[pipisafoat]

All I can do is sit here thinking about how awesome you are and giggling slightly.

[fyreharper]

:delighted face:

[cadenzamuse]

Apologies, I am commenting at everyone from Very Tired Very Mentally Ill brainspace, but all I can register is my semi-agender dismay at losing the universal-ness of my they pronoun set. (Such an unproductive response, sorry.)

[kaberett]

<3 Thank you for saying.

For what it's worth: as I have now said upthread, I'd like my languages to have distinct pronouns for "known, relevant, specific gender", "unknown gender", and "irrelevant gender", but... we don't.

Also for what it's worth: I think this is a highly specific brain-glitch on my part, and I do think it's a glitch rather than a universally applicable thing, and I think it's partly out of stubbornly actually treating "she" as neuter (in certain contexts). I think I am exaggerating-for-comic-effect the extent to which I actually experience "they" as "known, specific gender", not least because I do absolutely also use it as a general-purpose gender-irrelevant pronoun. I think it's just that I also, under certain circumstances, have expanded my usage of "she".

[sporky_rat]

My gender is 🐊 (alligator) frequently.

Works for me and I can bite people.

(I honestly have no preference, I'll take any pronoun.)

[kaberett]

TEEFS.

[sporky_rat]

TEEEEEEFS
(So useful when people are terrible)

[ludy]

My Dad used to be a little disconcerted by East Asian colleagues (mostly native speakers of Taiwanese Hokkien) defaulting to she as their standard/neutral English language pronoun. He's of a generation taught at school that he is uncritically universal and only came to understand that being problematic later in life, so will default to it when tired etc. So i think being casually and very definitely non-maliciously misgendered at work might have been been kind of good for him?

[horselizard]

:D