Kingdom of Knuffel

In Spanish male plural is supposed to include both male and female: "chico" (boy), "chica" (girl) but if you want to include several people of both genders you just say "chicos".
Some of us simply change it now and then, to my students I sometimes treat them with the collective male plural but other times I use the female one "chicas".

What most people propose in Spanish is:
a) Either mention both genders (saying "chicas y chicos"), which after a while sounds extremely repetetive
b) Replace the letter that makes it sound male/female for a neutral one ("chiques", "chicXs", "chic@s") which is ok for writing but only the first one is actually readable at all.

And of course leave alone all the nouns in which the gender does not make reference to any sex.
The word table is female? Let it be.




I learned a bit of Japanese when I was in college, and it's the most gender-neutral language I've ever heard.
Speakers may have some habits, but most words don't really need any gender assignation at all so it's quite easy to go gender-neutral imho.

Akili Li wrote:Do you think it would be easier to learn a new gender-neutral pronoun for third person singular? Or would it be just as hard as transitioning they/them into a "plural grammar, can refer to singular" just like we use "you" now?

I do think a new word would probably be easier, except that it doesn't seem that the folks that are coming up with the new words can agree on what to use.

Amura wrote:In Spanish male plural is supposed to include both male and female: "chico" (boy), "chica" (girl) but if you want to include several people of both genders you just say "chicos".
Some of us simply change it now and then, to my students I sometimes treat them with the collective male plural but other times I use the female one "chicas".

What most people propose in Spanish is:
a) Either mention both genders (saying "chicas y chicos"), which after a while sounds extremely repetetive
b) Replace the letter that makes it sound male/female for a neutral one ("chiques", "chicXs", "chic@s") which is ok for writing but only the first one is actually readable at all.

And of course leave alone all the nouns in which the gender does not make reference to any sex.
The word table is female? Let it be.

¡El gato está debajo de la mesa!

Yeah in English "man" or "men" was used collectively for many, many years: To boldly go where no man has gone before, but suddenly that was sexist and became To boldly go where no one has gone before. I always understood the context to mean mankind in general and the use of the male word never bothered me.

The cat is under the table. the nouns gender is on the table XD

I think that for Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, ...) this gender thing is quite complicated.
Latin was a language highly dependent on gender (declinations and such) and we've inherited it.



Exactly, the word man was used instead of mankind. Even the word mankind is based on the word man.
Because the world used to be all about men, and women were not relevant.

Language is shaped by society, and society can be shaped back by language. That's why people struggle now to use less sexist forms.
Not that "man" or "mankind" are wrong to use, but other terms which are more inclusive kinda force your mindset to shift towards considering that other people are also included in that sentence.


Reminds me of the Lord of The Rings story, cause no man could defeat Sauron, that's what the legend said.

Amura wrote:Reminds me of the Lord of The Rings story, cause no man could defeat Sauron, that's what the legend said.

And I love Éowyn's answer to that!