this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Yeah, this is a whole thing. In Portuguese, like most other Romance languages I believe, every single noun is gendered, so cars are male, houses are female, and so on and so forth. We have the male pronoun ele (he) and the female one ela (she), and besides these there's also a neutral isso (it) but using that to refer to someone is very rude and dehumanizing, so we basically have no neutral pronouns (when talking about multiple people you generally use the plural male pronoun eles unless they're all women, but some people think that's kinda sexist I guess).
Some people have been trying to create new pronouns to fix that, such as elu, elx and ile, all of which have seen very limited adoption. I like to consider myself a progressive and inclusive person but I just can't bring myself to use these new words, they all sound terrible, it's like I'm butchering the language. So yeah, when talking about someone you don't know in Portuguese you basically have to guess their gender or just ask them what they like more.
Exactly, it's painful because I want to be respectful and use a more neutral pronoun but none of the ones people created really feels natural to pronounce and it's always awkward when someone tries to use them in conversation. Now the they/them in English rolls off the tongue and I use it all the time without realizing.
My current strategy is to address someone by whatever pronouns I think is correct and if they correct me then I just ask for forgiveness and use the one they prefer
No, it doesn't. It's really awkward.
Canada has a player on the women's national soccer (football) team who wants people to use they/them pronouns when referring to them in the third person. It leads to trying to create sentences like "they've been playing well today but they haven't".
They (singular) has been used since at least Shakespeare, so every single student in an English-speaking country has learned how to use it correctly; including how to format sentences using singular they. 'The firefighter rescued a puppy from a burning building; they were really lucky they spotted the puppy in time.' In any sentence where two pronouns are the same, you'd replace one or the other (preferably the latter though the 'rules' on this are stupidly complex). Alex was drinking Jim's coffee. He should really buy ~~him~~Jim a replacement.