Due to the increased acceptance of non-conforming identities, it’s become more prevalent to either ask for pronouns, tell them to a person you meet, or have them somewhere visible in things like gameshows.
That’s quite as silly to me as this whole “what gender is this washing machine” nonsense is to English-speaking people.
Here in Finland, we don’t have gendered language. Even with third person pronouns, we usually default to “it” instead of “him/her/they”. Except for pets. They always get the proper pronoun “hän”. It’s just respectful.
So yeah, just like the English wonder why they have to learn different words for something needlessly gendered in France, I too, as a Finn, wonder why I have to learn different words for something needlessly gendered in English.
This is one of those things that, if translated directly, would be really, really bad.
Now I’ve spoken English for more than a quarter century, so my mouths used to it already, but I remember when learning the language, it was rather hard for the brain to keep switching between “he” and “she”, as it was not a distinction my brain had to make before using English.
I mean obviously I could differentiate women and men, but having to use different pronouns for both?
I do mean that we Finns use “se” very often in everyday speech to refer yo other human beings, and “se” would translate as “it.”
Ofc I’m aware how horrible using “it” when referring yo people would be in English.
But if someone asked me to translate a sentence like “mihin se [a person] meni”, I would ofc not use a direct translation because of how offensive and wrong it would be.
I respect the distinctions languages have for genders, but I’m happy I grew up with one which didn’t have them. Language shapes thought. We don’t think of people as “it”, it’s just the colloquial form of the language.
In Finnish, if you had to give a formal speech or something, most people realise to default to “hän”, the 3rd person singular.
And if you’re doing customer service or addressing someone with the sort of respect you’d use titles with in English. Then you’d address the person in the second person plural instead of the second person singular.
Just like English did hundreds of years ago, and it worked so well that in the end, English left the second person singular out of the language altogether. It still exists, but isn’t really used unless thou wants to pretend being from Elizabethan Britain.
Yeah I don’t see anyone accepting being called “it” in English; that’s how you refer to farm animals bound for slaughter or undesirable ethnicities you’re going to exterminate.
Why would anyone ever want to try using “it” for people in English unless they’re purposefully trying to demean someone… ?
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to say that’s what English should do. I was describing what Finnish does.
I’m pointing out that lots of languages have less gender distinctions than English, so English calling French out on gendered nouns is rather silly.
My point is that despite Finland having a perfectly good third person singular for people, we usually use the even more general one, which is just for anything. Except when talking to and about pets, because then somehow everyone uses less colloquial language.
While English has a perfectly good second person singular, but doesn’t even use it anymore.
You can’t have more third person singulars before you finish your second person singulars, that’s the rule. Now open up!
First, I’d like to identify Finnish as a Finno-Ugric language, more than a uralic one, because “uralic” is very broad, just like, say, “Indo-European languages”. There’s several distinction within both groups.
But yeah, there are quite a lot of grammatical cases, I can see that yeah. I wouldn’t bother learning Finnish if I wasn’t born with it, lol.
My point is rather that English calling French out on something linguistic. English is three languages in a trenchcoat masquerading as one.
But also, getting the conjugation wrong won’t really be offensive to anyone, whereas confusing he/she just because your brain is unused to having to specify such things and your mouth is unused to the “sh” sound in she, and ending up misgendering someone, could be. Even accidentally.
“She sells seashells on the seashore” is a very challenging tongue twister for Finns.
Also, note how I can write a sentence like “hän menee kirjastoon”, meaning “[3rd person nongendered singular] goes to the library”, but if you run that through a translator to English, the translator will have to make up a gender. And not surprisingly, the default is the masculine one. (Down with the patriarchy and all that.)
Although this also means you’ll lose information when translating to Finnish. Ups and downs.
Due to the increased acceptance of non-conforming identities, it’s become more prevalent to either ask for pronouns, tell them to a person you meet, or have them somewhere visible in things like gameshows.
That’s quite as silly to me as this whole “what gender is this washing machine” nonsense is to English-speaking people.
Here in Finland, we don’t have gendered language. Even with third person pronouns, we usually default to “it” instead of “him/her/they”. Except for pets. They always get the proper pronoun “hän”. It’s just respectful.
So yeah, just like the English wonder why they have to learn different words for something needlessly gendered in France, I too, as a Finn, wonder why I have to learn different words for something needlessly gendered in English.
Right or wrong, calling a person “it” in English is incredibly disrespectful
Which is why I never do, obviously.
This is one of those things that, if translated directly, would be really, really bad.
Now I’ve spoken English for more than a quarter century, so my mouths used to it already, but I remember when learning the language, it was rather hard for the brain to keep switching between “he” and “she”, as it was not a distinction my brain had to make before using English.
I mean obviously I could differentiate women and men, but having to use different pronouns for both?
Quite needless.
I think they maybe meant the gender neutral they/them, which we turn to “it” for the inanimate?
Edit: on second read I’m not sure
I do mean that we Finns use “se” very often in everyday speech to refer yo other human beings, and “se” would translate as “it.”
Ofc I’m aware how horrible using “it” when referring yo people would be in English.
But if someone asked me to translate a sentence like “mihin se [a person] meni”, I would ofc not use a direct translation because of how offensive and wrong it would be.
I respect the distinctions languages have for genders, but I’m happy I grew up with one which didn’t have them. Language shapes thought. We don’t think of people as “it”, it’s just the colloquial form of the language.
In Finnish, if you had to give a formal speech or something, most people realise to default to “hän”, the 3rd person singular.
And if you’re doing customer service or addressing someone with the sort of respect you’d use titles with in English. Then you’d address the person in the second person plural instead of the second person singular.
Just like English did hundreds of years ago, and it worked so well that in the end, English left the second person singular out of the language altogether. It still exists, but isn’t really used unless thou wants to pretend being from Elizabethan Britain.
Yeah I don’t see anyone accepting being called “it” in English; that’s how you refer to farm animals bound for slaughter or undesirable ethnicities you’re going to exterminate.
Why would anyone ever want to try using “it” for people in English unless they’re purposefully trying to demean someone… ?
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to say that’s what English should do. I was describing what Finnish does.
I’m pointing out that lots of languages have less gender distinctions than English, so English calling French out on gendered nouns is rather silly.
My point is that despite Finland having a perfectly good third person singular for people, we usually use the even more general one, which is just for anything. Except when talking to and about pets, because then somehow everyone uses less colloquial language.
While English has a perfectly good second person singular, but doesn’t even use it anymore.
You can’t have more third person singulars before you finish your second person singulars, that’s the rule. Now open up!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
You speak an uralic language, brother. Gender orno gender, having to learn a billion rules for conjugation is the problem there
First, I’d like to identify Finnish as a Finno-Ugric language, more than a uralic one, because “uralic” is very broad, just like, say, “Indo-European languages”. There’s several distinction within both groups.
But yeah, there are quite a lot of grammatical cases, I can see that yeah. I wouldn’t bother learning Finnish if I wasn’t born with it, lol.
My point is rather that English calling French out on something linguistic. English is three languages in a trenchcoat masquerading as one.
But also, getting the conjugation wrong won’t really be offensive to anyone, whereas confusing he/she just because your brain is unused to having to specify such things and your mouth is unused to the “sh” sound in she, and ending up misgendering someone, could be. Even accidentally.
“She sells seashells on the seashore” is a very challenging tongue twister for Finns.
Also, note how I can write a sentence like “hän menee kirjastoon”, meaning “[3rd person nongendered singular] goes to the library”, but if you run that through a translator to English, the translator will have to make up a gender. And not surprisingly, the default is the masculine one. (Down with the patriarchy and all that.)
Although this also means you’ll lose information when translating to Finnish. Ups and downs.