Similar issue in Italian. Neutral gender in Latin consolidated in the male gender. It is what it is. There are some English-speakers who have really hard time to understand that different languages work in different ways, somehow.
That said, there are discussions about using both articles or more weird stuff like “*” or even the Ə character to replace the ending, which most people are not used to yet, though.
Yet that does not logically imply that it is as it should be. And if it should be as it isn’t, then the fact that it is what it is tells us that it should be improved.
You still have to deal with the “el/los” and “la/las”, because that depends on the word’s gender. Should it be “el latine” or “la latine”? Invent le/les to comply? And when it comes to quantity, un latino, una latina, uns latinos, unas latinas, un(?) latine?
Proposal: either smoosh them together (eg: ella / loas) which preserves the historical gendering of the language while creating a non gendered article
Or
Create a separate non gendered article that can be used
Language is made up by and for the speakers of the language. Rules of grammar are not actually rules but just what the collective speakers generally agree upon.
The suggestions were just that. All it takes is speakers agreeing with a word for the use and to use it to the point where it becomes the standard.
No different than how gruntled has reentered the English language after being lost. It also changed meaning upon return so there’s that similarity as well.
I dunno but those all sound like solvable problems and I think latine enbies will do great at solving them as long as latine binaries listen to them instead of calling the enbies anglos.
Any linguistic problem is technically solvable, just invent new words, add more rules and call it a day, you can do that for any language. Getting people that grew up and have used it for decades to accept is one hell of an uphill battle, especially as many will say the changes “are making up words to please half a dozen people”
there is no point to overcharge with moral meaning what is a linguistic process (well understood I would add) that happened over centuries. This particular phenomenon has to do with the optimization of the language (neutral in Latin had relatively few nouns for objects) and the loss of consonants at the end of the world (like -m) that were often not pronounced anyway in the spoken language already - so again simplification. It has to do with a moral stance not more than other linguistic phenomena that caused mutations in consonants etc.
changing the language is responsibility of the speakers, not of English-speakers that in addition to have language hegemony, pretend to change other languages they don’t speak, mirroring English’s quirks and working mechanisms.
In fact, what I mentioned above (about * and the schwa) are processes that exist among speakers to address what some perceive as a problem in the language. However this is something that for obvious reasons only applies to written language as both of them are not pronounceable.
Different languages also have a different prescriptive vs descriptive balance, hence changes happen differently.
You simply can’t transport English “solutions” to problems (I.e. neutral words) to Spanish (or Italian), because neutral for this language is the same as masculine. However, for speakers, gender is not perceived in the same way it is perceived in English. It is completely obvious (I can speak for Italian, but given the similarity I am sure the same applies to Spanish) that both “umani” (humans) and “persone” (people) include everyone, even if the first is a masculine word and the second is a feminine word, grammatically speaking. Nobody thinks of the gender of the word as the gender of the concept, because that’s not how the language works. When you want to do that, you add context that make it semantically obvious. This is apparently how English works instead, because gender has basically no other function, so you get things like the one in the screenshot, that doesn’t make any sense.
Similar issue in Italian. Neutral gender in Latin consolidated in the male gender. It is what it is. There are some English-speakers who have really hard time to understand that different languages work in different ways, somehow.
That said, there are discussions about using both articles or more weird stuff like “*” or even the Ə character to replace the ending, which most people are not used to yet, though.
Yet that does not logically imply that it is as it should be. And if it should be as it isn’t, then the fact that it is what it is tells us that it should be improved.
Doesn’t mean the current attempt is actually doing a good job at improving the situation, tho
The current attempt is Latine. What’s wrong with E? I thought everyone generally liked it.
You still have to deal with the “el/los” and “la/las”, because that depends on the word’s gender. Should it be “el latine” or “la latine”? Invent le/les to comply? And when it comes to quantity, un latino, una latina, uns latinos, unas latinas, un(?) latine?
Proposal: either smoosh them together (eg: ella / loas) which preserves the historical gendering of the language while creating a non gendered article Or Create a separate non gendered article that can be used
Language is made up by and for the speakers of the language. Rules of grammar are not actually rules but just what the collective speakers generally agree upon.
As neat as that’d be, ella ([ɛlə] not [ɛjə]) was already a word and got shortened to la.
As in ella agua, ella manzana, ella persona.
Not to say we can’t repurpose things, but it was already a preexisting feminine word.
The suggestions were just that. All it takes is speakers agreeing with a word for the use and to use it to the point where it becomes the standard.
No different than how gruntled has reentered the English language after being lost. It also changed meaning upon return so there’s that similarity as well.
I dunno but those all sound like solvable problems and I think latine enbies will do great at solving them as long as latine binaries listen to them instead of calling the enbies anglos.
Any linguistic problem is technically solvable, just invent new words, add more rules and call it a day, you can do that for any language. Getting people that grew up and have used it for decades to accept is one hell of an uphill battle, especially as many will say the changes “are making up words to please half a dozen people”
That’s why it’s very important for all of us to be positive towards attempts to improve language.
My fav response to that reasoning: all words are made up words. That’s how languages work
Sure, but my point is:
In fact, what I mentioned above (about * and the schwa) are processes that exist among speakers to address what some perceive as a problem in the language. However this is something that for obvious reasons only applies to written language as both of them are not pronounceable.
Different languages also have a different prescriptive vs descriptive balance, hence changes happen differently.
You simply can’t transport English “solutions” to problems (I.e. neutral words) to Spanish (or Italian), because neutral for this language is the same as masculine. However, for speakers, gender is not perceived in the same way it is perceived in English. It is completely obvious (I can speak for Italian, but given the similarity I am sure the same applies to Spanish) that both “umani” (humans) and “persone” (people) include everyone, even if the first is a masculine word and the second is a feminine word, grammatically speaking. Nobody thinks of the gender of the word as the gender of the concept, because that’s not how the language works. When you want to do that, you add context that make it semantically obvious. This is apparently how English works instead, because gender has basically no other function, so you get things like the one in the screenshot, that doesn’t make any sense.
every time i see a /u/mindtraveller post I’m like “that’s correct but i hate it”
Thank you, that means a lot. Remember that consensus reality is a social construct produced within the conditions of patriarchy and white supremacy.