I know a lot of other languages, like Spanish, are gender-oriented and I was wondering how gender-neutral people deal with that? If you prefer they in English, is there an equivalent way of saying that in other languages? Has anyone run into this problem before?
There's a problem with that in Portuguese, most of it is all traditional ways of speaking, but recently there's been talk of attempting in Portuguese to have a gender neutral pronoun to use. They have some, but sometimes, in Portugal, it's used in a derogatory manner. In my experience while I was there, however (but I'm no native speaker!). It's not as commonly used as some other pejoratives. I have heard, however, in Spanish that there is the option to "nullify" gender in words by replacing the gender-determining part of the word with the @ symbol. For example, l@s niñ@s. Caballer@s. That sort of thing.
In Swedish we have the gender neutral word "hen". Subject: hen (han/hon - he/she) Object: henom (honom/henne - him/her) Genetive: hens (hans/hennes - his/hers)
Arfff in Indonesian language all pronouns are gender neutral Subject : Dia Object : Dia Genitive : "insert item name"nya
I've also seen that happen in Brazilian Portuguese, some people use "@" but usually I see a greater occurrence of "x". I think it is good, but the biggest problem in using such letters/symbols are the fact that, as far as I know, they can only be used in written language, and some people have also pointed out they are problematic for people with visual deficiencies because the softwares they use to "read" things in the computer don't recognize the words written in that way. I think the best solution would be creating gender neutral pronouns, but I don't see that happening in Portuguese anytime soon, if ever, I don't know if that would be a possibility for other languages.
In Dutch this is a problem too; there are no genderneutral pronouns. Using the singular form of 'they' in Dutch isn't an option either, since the subject will be the same as the subject of 'she'. I'm actually trying to make up genderneutral pronouns myself and see if my friends would be able to get used to it and maybe try to get the government involved? That's probably too much to ask but it's worth a shot. I haven't come up with genderneutral pronouns yet, so if there are any Dutch people with ideas, tell me I think it's sweet of you to think of it though! I have indeed run into problems, mostly when describing/talking about non-binary people I meet on here or describing non-binary people in general, since I just can't use their prefered pronouns in Dutch.
Quietisviolent is quite right about the situation in Dutch. However, we do have a neutral word, but that's actually a derogatory word (het). It would be the same as the English "it". Using het in Dutch to refer to a person is considered rude. You can avoid the problem by referring to him/her as "the person", but there's no gender neutral pronoun in Dutch as far as I know.
In Turkish we have one pronoun for he/she/it. So it is easy to hide genders behind it if you feel like it. Also this is why calling God, him always makes me uncomfortable. God has no genders so why make God biggest supporter of male-dominant life style? Also we have different pronouns for you(singular) and you(plural). It is considered elegant to call person you are dealing with in plural form until you are allowed to call them in singular form. End of today's lesson kids.
