this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Inclusive language is the dumbest fucking thing anyone tried to do to the Spanish language. For those not familiar, Spanish is a gendered language, words ending in -o are male and words ending in -a are female (not a steadfast rule there are tons of exceptions). "Academics" with too much time want to change words to a gender neutral ending -e. And it sounds so fucking stupid.
As a native Spanish speaker, inclusive sounds a little goofy, but overall seems pretty harmless to me.
I guess the same about Polish, this language is incredibly gendered and while the neutral gender does exist, it's a rump of it because it's only used for some inanimate objects, some animals and small babies, it is also not used at all in 1st nor 2nd person - so the mere usage of neutral form for a person automatically implies lack of agency and is a grave insult (also it became specifically transphobic insult thank to few jerks in the parliament). Language also default to masculine in case of unknown gender. So if a Pole randomly calls anyone "him" in the internet it's not necessarily purposeful misgendering, it's just how language works while English would default to neutral form - it's also one of the more common mistake in Polish translations of English books.
But even here some efforts has been made.
I moved to the states at a young age. I really love Spanish, and I especially love the Argentinian version of it. This inclusive language butchers the beauty of it in a lot of ways. I guess when you live there you take it for granted
I agree its stupid. But its even more stupit to try and ban it.
Probably, it's a waste of energy
Spanish speakers could have dropped all the final vowels and basically speak Catalan "los ciudadanos" > "els ciutadans", easy! two problems (gender inclusivity and secession of Catalonia) solved at once.../s
But the Catalan articles are still gendered
What puzzles me is that many IALs/conlangs based on the Romance languages (Interlingua, Elefen, etc.) insist on having a definite article (either la or le) when it could as well be dropped.
Yeah, some Catalan politicians say “els ciutadans i les ciutadanes”, much like some Spanish politicians say “los ciudadanos y las ciudadanas”. Romance languages tend to have gendered nouns (and by extension articles). 🤷♂️
You are right, I don't speak Catalan and I was trying to downplay a little on a topic which is dramatic (not for the language per se but for the people who can be hurt by it). Auxlangs, being designed for a purpose, could make some little more effort towards inclusiveness. And that would be one of the few reason to prefer them to natlangs (e.g. for institutional communications).
Tsk, tsk, this willow wants to get rid of THE definite article, but they're too afraid to even say it.
Of the inclusivity approaches the Spanish language has, the -e ending is the least used and promoted, others being duplication (ciudadanas y ciudadanos) or paraphrasis (ciudadanía).
That makes sense, people that talk with the -e endings sound like they are having a stroke
Counterpoint: gendered languages are fucking stupid. A table does not have a gender, why should its word?
The only advantage I've ever heard of is if you're referring to a person, like if there's two teachers, one male and one female, you can say profesor or profesora to indicate which one you're talking about, but that seems like a very small advantage compared to the downsides (always having to say niños y niñas, for example, or remembering whether a hospital is masculine or feminine, or how you should gender loanwords).
Gender in words have to do with grammar, not sex. It is pretty much a classification. Other languages instead of using masculine/feminine use strong/weak. Again nothing to do with sex but grammar and which group they belong.
yeah, typical idiotic response to this debate, defending the idea that a chair is a man.
No it's a woman, La Silla. Lmao. But origins of grammatical gender are related to the function of the word, and not related to sex. I forgot the specifics. Some languages have(or had) three 'genders' for their language.
Counterpoint: El asiento. Chairs are actually gender fluid.
Shieeee
It doesn't really matter, it's a stupid and shitty function that is at best vestigial, and at worst, not even consistent.
There's a lot of things you can about Turkish being a shitty language, but at least vovel harmony is always consistent, and once you get enough language exposure, you can guess the correct mutations of suffixes correctly.
Also, you're helping me prove my point that despite actualmente aprendiendo español, usandolo casi diariamente, ya es casi impossible para recordar las reglas absurdas de generos de objectos cotidianas fuera de contexto.
EDIT :
If this were true/functionally correct[1] you could teach newcomers to the language the function sets and how they are grouped so that people could reason their way though new objects and which gender they should have. It's not even consistent with the ending of words (el agua/la mano)
It's literally a vestigial feature. A proper language with prescriptivism would have gotten rid of it already, like .... French? but they have lots of prescriptivism and shitty genders. Eugh.
Sidenote : The RAE are a lazy bunch of fucks.
[1] : it doesn't matter that the origin of grammatical gender is a true statement if the language continued to work like that, which it doesn't do anymore. The case can one of the following :
it is true, the origin of grammatical gender is true, and it continues to work with functionality of words determining the gender
it is true, the origin of grammatical gender is true, but it no longer works with the functionality of words determining the gender << our shitty reality, probably , but it's moot point
it is false, the origin of grammatical gender is was not related to the function of the word, the functionality of words do not determine their gender
it is false, the origin of grammatical gender is was not related to the function of the word, but the functionality of words do determine their gender