Gender neutral pronouns are just so much more convenient; I tend to use them even when I know someoneās gender. I do wish English had some common-use ones that were explicitly singular, though.
I do wish English had some common-use ones that were explicitly singular, though.
In the long run I predict that ātheyā will follow the same path as āyouā - itāll become increasingly more associated with the singular, until itās the default interpretation. I also predict that both ātheyā and āyouā will eventually require a pluraliser to convey the plural.
āVosā (you, singular) in Rioplatense Spanish followed a similar path.
If thatās correct, eventually thereāll be explicitly singular second and third person pronouns.
my prediction is for thāall and yāall or just thal and yal in the long run
I have a soft spot for āyousā, personally.
youse guyseses
My first bet is roughly in this direction, too.
Not outside of the USā¦
Most peopleās English is more closely linked to American English anyway, or otherwise follow their own development path
And especially in the age of the internet, where language changes quickly spread globally
I tend to use āmates,ā as āyāallā just doesnāt really agree with me.
how does that work?
ācould yāall please help meā -> ācould mates please help meā?Could I get some help, mates?
you dont need the word mates in that sentence ?w?
and it wouldnt work in like so many situations.
not saying you cant use it, but it doesnt seem like an adequat plural you
Well, I guess the need for āyāallā may just may depend on the userās desired level of informality when talking/writing. (To me personally, I just donāt like using it as it just sounds wrong to me.)
Do we currently have an explicit pluralizer for they?
I think that āallā is evolving in this direction. It was already used as an explicit pluraliser for āyouā (alongside āguysā, -s, and others); and now Iām seeing āthey allā more and more across the internet, even in situations where the āallā clearly does not convey āevery single one of themā.
Just keep in mind that this is anecdotal from my part, not backed up by hard data.
We can thank Harry for this one
(TV;DW: themāll)
Theys
Dude is supposed to be gender neutral and singular.
Still, maybe donāt. Not everyone agrees with the gender neutrality of ādudeā. How many dudes have you slept with?
Four. Will be five if my Grindr match pans out tonight.
Whoah! Thatās a personal question I donāt feel like would reflect accurately my life if someone knew. Thereās more to me than my body count. I contain depths and multitudes outside of the number of people I have slept with!
280ish. But thereās more to me than that!
i think there is alot to be said about the influence of patriarchy on masculine words becomming applied to everyone. men being seen as the norm and all thatā¦
Youāre correct. But also itās a nice word. Easy to say and very casual.
Ahah, you changed it plural which genders it. Itās dudes and dudettes in that case.
Did you see that dude I slept with last night?
Totally different now that itās a singular.
Yeah language sucks.
nah i still see āi slept with a dudeā as āi slept with a manā, sorry
maybe itās the article that makes it seem masc? A dude, vs āhey, dude!ā
I think itās the difference of referencing another person using the word ādudeā vs talking to a person and calling them ādudeā
Hey dude, donāt make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Well contextually you would know who the person was talking aboutā¦
If you saw a woman and confused it with a man because of word, thatās on you mate. Thereās another gender neutral and singular term.
In my area ādudeā is really gender neutral in most cases.
Regional dialects and all that.
Funnily enough so is āmanā in a lot of cases.
For example: āMan I donāt know whatās going on anymore.ā In this case āmanā is less a reference to anyone in any specific way and more like an exasperation (like fuck, shit, hell, etc) and is a really common usage.
Edit: As an example of itās gender-neutralness, āFuck man, chill itās just the wrong order.ā In this case āmanā is often used in a gender neutral way when referring to a specific person. Also man in this case can be swapped with ābroā and ādudeā.
Regional dialects can get really weird in some cases, we use the same words but the meanings can be so different.
Language is a beautiful tangled knot that depending on which side youāre looking at it from it can change so much.
āmanā used to mean person, it was gender neutral. In fact the root āmenā just meant āto thinkā, so a man could be any sapient being.
It was only changed several hundred years ago. āmankindā and other similar universals were meant to represent every human and became exclusionary only under patriarchal interpretation. āmankindā of course endures as universal, but we see lots of āfirewomanā, āmailwomanā, etc., where the language becomes fundamentally gendered.
Oh man, Iāve slept with like 10 dudes, 4 guys and 6 gals.
Totally agree. I think half the problem is that English is a stupid language at times. I have no problem with gender neutral terms but the plural nature of ātheyā makes my 54 yo brain hurt. I have the same issue with the word data. āThe data areā sounds awkward to me.
You use singular they every single day or at most every single week and you have for your entire life and so did all of your English speaking ancestors including middle English.
'how far out is the pizza guyās ātheyāre 15 minutes outā
āmy coworker was a pain in the ass todayā āwhat theyād do this time?ā
āi think my doctor is famousā āoh whatās their name?ā
They was singular before it was plural, and itās singular use is still one of the most common pronouns in English.
Every example you provided was extremely unambiguous and without anything that might require distinction between singular and plural. Often language isnāt that simple. For example, āFion had finally joined the party and they were happy about it.ā Who does ātheyā refer to in that context? Yes, you can write/speak your way around it, but that adds extra difficulty that isnāt suited for casual speaking/writing. That is why people (who arenāt transphobes) donāt like it as a pronoun and would rather have a new word.
In your sentence they unambiguously refers to fion. Itās really not that hard for a fluent speaker. Iām not a native and this shit is simple, itās unwritten but innately known like the order of adjectives when multiple are present.
When I was writting that, I assumed it was about the party, so clearly not so unambiguous. It could conceiveably refer to either - doubly so in casual speech where rules are bent. Fill up a books worth of text about a character using they/them pronouns (esspecially written by a bad writer) and you get confused often.
To be clear, in ideal English, its easy to use. Most English is not ideal, with words being changed, dropped, reordered, ect. based on the speaker or writerās whim in the moment. All that is before factoring in regional varients of English.
Shitjustworks not knowing what theyāre talking about and being transphobic, classic
Yes. Criticsm of the English language for not better supporting non-binary people. So transphobic. By advocating for the creation of a new non-gendered word, Iām not advocating for a more inclusive language, Iām actually part of a conspiracy with anyone who ever supported or used pronouns like āXerā, āZerā, and āHirā to destroy trans rights.
Also, youāre accusing me of not knowing English, when its literally my first and only language. If that is your rebuttal, clearly you donāt have much to back up your beliefs.
Edit: and when I went to your profile to check for qualifications, literally the top one is admitting to being a hexbear user. Youāre really singling out shitjustworks as problematic?
i think its mostly an issue with not being used to it. āyouā is both singular and plural as well and we manage fine. āweā is plural but it does not distinguish between inclusive and exclusive āweā. arguably those cases are more rarely relevant, and honestly id prefer if all of them had solutions, but i think we can handle it once we are used to it, or solutions will develop.
btw not trying to be antagonistic here, just sharing my thoughts :3
No I totally agree. This really wasnāt a thing for my generation so it just feels weird. And Iām talking about the language aspect only. Iām totally cool with people being who they are.
I just wish there were better alternatives to convey the same meaning without these overloaded English terms. English is just an amalgamation of weird grammar and vocabulary from at least three major languages plus Iām old and change is hard.
āthe data areā also sounded odd to me when I first heard it. After practice it became fine. Now I see it as a green flag that someone may be scientifically literate.
I believe I read somewhere that the singular for ātheyā used to be āthyā, but that makes language sound terribly old. Doubt itāll get picked up in the mainstream
āThyā is the disused informal āyourā. Thereās āthouā/ātheeā but thatās still second-person.
Interesting! Do you have any etymological sources that go into this more? Iād be curious to learn
This looks like an alright starting place:
I think āthyā is singular for āyourā, āthouā would be singular āyouā.
Familiar rather than singular. You wouldnāt use thee and thou on someone of higher station, youād use singular you and and singular your (QE2 used singular āweā in the same mold)
I think you have it backwards. A lot of languages (including mine) use some form of plural to address people at a higher station, which isnāt really a thing in Egnlish any more since it uses āyouā for both singular and plural, but āthyā and āthouā is 100% singular - you would never use these words when addressing a group of people, no matter how familiar or above them in station you are.
Yeah that is correct, I was only describing singular usage. It is commonly believed by English speakers that thee, thou, thine were formal or that you and your are newer
Really we dumped the informal words and started addressing everyone as if they were due respect of rank or station
Yeah, I hate āxerā and āxeā
I would totally use xe/xer if doing so wouldnāt be hugely distracting from whatever topic Iām actually talking about, those words have a nice scifi vibe to them.
If that is what we come to as a society Iām game. If I said that in public today most wouldnāt know what Iām talking about
xer/xes
The pronoun for when youāre a total game freak
I tend to defer from using those when I can just use the personās name or the ungendered pronouns. To me, when I see those besides someoneās name, it just means that they donāt want to be labeled as any gender.
Though, on that note. I honestly never really understood the purpose of people using zhey/zhem/zheir when they/them/their is already neutral.
I also make a point of saying yāall to include the 50% of humans without cocks.
What about the 99.99% of people who arenāt hillbillies?
Tom Scott has a page of reflections and corrections for that video from a few years ago. Heās a good ally but I think we all envy past Tomās optimism.
I also appreciate the thoughtfulness he showed when he found out someone he had recently collaborated with had made transphobic comments in the past.
Youāre never going to appease everyone, and I appreciate that he shared the thinking that led him to his decision. I just regret not finding out about the incident until like a week after I ordered her book.
Wow. Iām in sales and customer service and I must say thatās a fantastic note. They clearly care about their viewers, their customers, and spend the time working to earn their business. Bravo!
Iām a couple years behind on his content, who was the person he collabed with?
Jill Bearup, a Youtuber and stage/film combat enthusiast. She echoed some shitty transphobe rhetoric in a blog post years ago and deleted them. Tom asked her about it after others made him aware and he gave a very reserved description of her reply that tells me she still holds views that he doesnāt agree with or want to be associated with.
ETA: After donating what he estimated would be the proceeds of that collaboration video to the Trevor Project, he ultimately decided to take the video down altogether.
Every time I read āhe or sheā I think āYOU COULD HAVE SAVED FIVE CHARACTERS!!ā
mad respect for counting those spaces
Every byte is sacred
code.golf approves
Happy binaric chittering.
Programmer brain go brrrrr
{s,}he
He/she
s/he
length(ās/heā) == length(ātheyā)
It also just sounds awkward to say he/she
es he
(s/t)he(y)
āHe or sheā is so clunky and I immediately think they must be 50+ when I see someone writing it.
Fun side fact āthe playerā is a masculine noun in German, so many boardgames seem sexist because they are mistranslated as āthe playerā¦ heā¦ā
But when the World needed him most, he vanished.
Roses are red, violets are blue, singular they predates singular you.
No rule in title = you must eat 196 gummy sharks, WITHOUT A YOUTUBE VIDEO
also my homophobic mom threw away a book because the talking plant wanted to be called ātheyā instead of āitā and itās too woke for her. LITERALLY JUST A TALKING PLANT š
Your mom should definitely check out the monk and robot series by Becky Chambers. The first main character (the monk) uses they pronouns but the robot uses it pronouns. Your mom will love it!
kill
Telling someone to kill their own mother seems a bit sociopathic
what?
People who were/are upset about singular they really donāt understand that language change is pervasive and unstoppable. Shifts in pronoun agreement are no different.
Prescriptive grammarians cling to their (arbitrary) rules because they believe in a āpureā form of the language. That itself is a misunderstanding and just mirrors other common things some people do to divide the masses. Do not listen to such people.
As someone deeply engrained in the field of Linguistics for decades (personally, academically, and professionally), I can tell you that one of the biggest challenges in teaching people how language actually works is breaking down the preconceived notions they have about such things ā the exact notions those prescriptivists tout.
Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person,Ā youĀ to one, instead ofĀ thou, contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth,Ā thouĀ to one, andĀ youĀ to more than one, which had always been used by God to men, and men to God, as well as one to another, from the oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt ends, in later and corrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work upon the corrupt nature in men, brought in that false and senseless way of speakingĀ youĀ to one, which has since corrupted the modern languages, and hath greatly debased the spirits and depraved the manners of men;āthis evil custom I had been as forward in as others, and this I was now called out of, and required to cease from.
Thomas Ellwood, ca. late 1600s.
This kind of thinking is exactly what is meant by āprescriptive grammarā. It is, in many ways, not even grammar, at least not in the scientific sense.
Amusingly enough, modern day prescriptivists would now probably flag Mr. Ellwood for a run-on sentence.
People who were/are upset about singular they really donāt understand that language change is pervasive and unstoppable.
What do you mean by this, exactly? As someone who is deeply āengrainedā (?) in the field of linguistics, surely you must be aware that singular ātheyā has been in usage since the 14th century.
It has been in usage a long time ā and yet, it is still considered āimproperā English by many a grammarian (though improper English is as nonexistent as Standard American English).
In the 18th century, there was a push away from singular they on the basis that it did not fit within the logic of the agreement paradigm as some understood it. Most (if not all) rules suggesting it is poor usage derive from this thinking.
But this is exactly the problem: the fact that singular they arose naturally is the point. If it does not fit within oneās understanding of the agreement paradigm, then that understanding is wrong. That is the key difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism, at least in the way those are often discussed in Linguistics.
If those grammarians cared about grammar as much as they claimed, they would be seeking to better describe it and not trying to change the way that others use it. When I say that they donāt understand ālanguage change is pervasive and unstoppableā, I mean that prescriptivism is naturally conservative in suggesting that one should not deviate from some particular usage; that isnāt how language works.
PS- I assume your quoting is to suggest āingrainedā, but Iād argue that ingrained and engrained both work in this context. Even if we disagree there, spelling isnāt really about language either ā simply one possible representation of it. Given that the purpose of language is information transfer, if I had put āngraynedā above and you had gotten my meaning, then it would have served its purpose.
Fun fact: there has been more time between the first use of singular they and today than there was between the first use of plural they and the start of the criticism of singular they
Yup.
Singular They is only hated by the uneducated and stuffy grammar nazis from the 1920s
The Wikipedia page says it was criticized in the mid 18th century
I was gonna sayā¦ The use of singular they has been around for a heck of a lot longer than 11 years. I didnāt realize it dated all the way back to the 14th century though, thatās neat.
I get the point, that it wasnāt in common use until somewhat recently (even growing up I had textbooks that used he exclusively), but itās not a new radical concept of the English language either.
I still donāt get why people have such an issue calling people what they want to be called.
You donāt balk at a guy or a girl named Robin, or Alex, or any of a hundred different androgynous namesā¦
But you take issue with āheā, āsheā, and āthemā?
Why?
My only problem, and to be clear this is entirely my problem, nobody elseās, is that Iām so dumb, I frequently forget and call someone he/she when they prefer they/them. I fuck it up sometimes. I try, but decades of societal norms are getting in the way of me getting it right sometimes.
To every person who identifies as they/them please forgive me because Iām going to screw it up. Just correct me when I say it and hopefully in time my brain will stop making this mistake.
Because a bunch of bad faith actors have been carefully building an outrage-generating cash machine on the idea of āculture warsā for decades.
Culture war, race war, nationalism warsā¦
As long as itās not a class war, theyāre okay with it.
I still donāt get why people have such an issue calling people what they want to be called.
Why?
Normally Iām the type to wax philosophical for a few paragraphs about what the heck may be going on in their heads, but honestly I think itās assholes being proud to be assholes. Punching down just feels so good. That and people who are suffering enough that they donāt care about others, but donāt realize they need to work on their mental health. Or theyāve been conditioned to see doing that as a character flaw or weakness. And of course the snowball effect of those people raising the next generation of assholes, building up some inertia behind the generational trauma.
Because underlying it all, regardless of which impactful arguments they think they are making or refuting, they just donāt want to be nice to people that are different.
Fair enough. I honestly just think they canāt see the forest because of all the trees in the way.
Theyāll cry foul on someone insisting on being called by they/them pronouns, arguing that itās an incorrect usage of they/them, or whatever the argument of the week is, then immediately use they/them pronouns for an individual in a different context without batting an eye, or even realizing what theyāve done.
Ignorance and hypocrisy.
Definitely, because the issue is not with the words but with the people who are different that they donāt want to be nice to, lol.
By being offended I donāt start calling them by their pronouns right away my brain immediately goes into defense mode and refuses to acknowledge whatever the fuck they identify as.
Fairly certain most donāt get offended at genuine mistakes. Itās doubling down that usually upsets people, and if youāre the type to immediately go āwell fuck youā, I suspect that may be the case with you.
Thank you. Iām elated to hear that most donāt get offended at genuine mistakes.
Thatās all I really needed.
Remember that itās the loud ones we hear most. If a hundred people just say nothing to avoid awkwardness, a dozen correct you politely and a single one kicks up a fuss, itās the fuss you will remember.
Itās also easy to take corrections way more personally than theyāre intended. Someone saying āItās they, actuallyā isnāt an expression of offense, even if it can feel bad to be corrected (because it feels bad to be āwrongā). Compare it to bumping into someone you didnt see, who then goes āwatch outā to point out thereās someone in the way ā theyāre not necessarily upset, just informing you.
And finally, sometimes people are just irritable for whatever reason. They might not usually get offended, but for whatever reason will lash out that one time. To take the analogy of bumping into someone, perhaps their shoulder was already sore.
There certainly are some that do get offended. Some are so upset with the norms people grow up with they end up lashing out at those people instead. Some genuinely lack any understanding or patience for the other side of the issue. Some are just plain entitled. Some are looking for things to be upset at. Assholes exist in just about any sufficiently large grouping of people.
But for most Iāve known, itās really just about mutual respect, and often thereās a base assumption of respect too. We all know how hard it can be to untrain a habit, and most people donāt want unpleasantness. Donāt let the exceptions get to you.
Itās pretty obvious when someone misgenders by mistake or reasonable ignorance. If someone gets upset about that itās probably because they feel insecure about it at that point in their journey. Just correct yourself if you catch it and move on, be open to civil feedback if you donāt.
In any case if you feel unsafe around someone because of their behavior then consider spending less time around them. You donāt have to feel like youāre stepping on eggshells if youāre making an honest effort to learn and improve.
If theyāre here, then why am I alone š
Tom Scott also hated reddit before it was cool
tbh gendered pronouns are stupid. We should call everything it.
laughs in Finnish
Yeah, realised pronouns were stupid because of finnish.
Edit: gendered pronouns
gendered pronouns*
oh yeah. People who complain about just pronouns are the ones who are bad at english, everyone has pronouns, it came with speaking a langauge.
Mean, not like need pronouns at all. Just speak like cavemen.
Nah fam, we kinda shat the bed on that front
I love linguistics but it has some weird stuff in it.
Chinese doesnāt have gendered pronouns in the spoken language. āHeā, āsheā, and āitā are all pronounced, ātÄā. Possession and number are done by adding ē (de) or 们 (men) after the pronoun, irrespective of gender. Originally, there was only one character for ātÄā, ä». In the early 20th century there were several westernization movements in China. One of them included adding gendered pronouns, in order to be able to more accurately translate English texts. Thus, 儹 (she) and å® (it) were adopted. (they used to mean other things and were repurposed). One immediate problem that people noticed was the choice of components. ä» includes the äŗ»component, which means āpersonā. 儹 replaces it with the 儳 component, which means āfemaleā. So some linguists pointed out that this implies that women arenāt people. The current situation is that people tend to use, 儹, when there is a single subject who is known to be female. When itās unknown or there are multiple subjects they default to, ä» or ä»ä»¬.
German is heavily gendered. You can still linguistically gender someone correctly but, in addition to pronouns, you also need to match adjectives. You also need to get comfortable with the gender of nouns often not making any logical sense. eg:
Moon - Der Mond - masculine
Girl - Das MƤdel/MƤdchen - neuter
Sun - Die Sonne - feminine
Thereās the added confusion that the third person feminine singular, is spelled and pronounced the same as the second person plural. The second person doesnāt differentiate in gender but itās often impolite to use the singular so itās common to refer to males as āSieā. Not to say that any of that is hard. Native German speakers constantly need to match the gender of adjectives to nouns so theyāre very used to it.Russian seems to be more complicated. I recently read that Masha Gessen uses, ātheyā. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masha_Gessen It seems that Russian uses gendered past-tense verbs. They originally used masculine verbs out of, āhoping that I would wake up a boy. A real boyā but switched to feminine verbs as a teen and stuck with that. If anyone speaks Russian well Iād love to hear more about how gender is used and perceived in Russian. Particularly from the linguistic, rather than the cultural, perspective. It looks like Russian does have gendered pronouns https://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/pronouns.php but the Wikipedia article doesnāt say which they use.
edit: clarifications and grammar
i like this comment but i feel the need to reply because it touches upon a pet peeve of mine in linguistics: there is a persistent myth in the modern period that grammatical gender is useless, pointless, or somehow arbitrary and is just some sort of vestigial, rotting, lexical limb that made it to the 21st century by fluke.
this is simply not true. just because grammatical gender often appears arbitrary or illogical doesnāt mean it actually is. and just because grammatical gender follows many, many rules does not mean there are no rules. grammatical gender is just a fairly common form of noun class system. as with most forms of noun classing, what the rules are in a given dialect can be a little wishy-washy but they are certainly not arbitrary.
for example, you point out the german MƤdchen as an example of illogical noun gendering. this is an opinion often expressed by foreigners learning the language, and even by linguistically-ignorant germans. it makes sense on the face of it, this word has a similar meaning to the english phrase ālittle girl,ā so it is strange the germans decided to sort this word into the neuter gender, no?
well, no. it isnāt strange and it isnāt illogical, in actuality. -chen is a diminutive in german. for those who are unaware, diminutives are suffixes/prefixes in languages that serve to make nouns feel smaller or more cute in a language. think booklet vs book or dog vs doggie for some english examples.
what are some examples of more german diminutives?
das KƤtzchenĀ - kitten
das HĆ¼ndchen - puppy
das PlƤtzchen - a cookie (depends on dialect exactly what this refers to afaik but generally is always some sort of cookie)
das OhrlƤppchen - earlobe
noticing a trend? these are all neuter! and thus we uncover a little grammatical rule that grammatical gender was trying to tell us. all diminutives are neuter.
most every āarbitraryā example of grammatical gender people provide has some sort of similar reasoning or rule behind it, some story or information it is trying to give you that makes speaking the language that much easier.
just because what it is encoding doesnāt seem useful or logical to (rhetorical) you doesnāt mean it is not. grammatical gender is much more than just gender-washing everyday speech for kicks and does carry useful meaning, if you can be bothered to puzzle it out. attempts iāve seen to āde-genderā spanish (this is just what is local to me) all fundamentally misunderstand what it is theyāre even trying to do and often opt for rotely tearing out the entire gendered case system without offering proper lexical and linguistic infrastructure for the language to actually effectively function without it. these attempts sound clunky because they are clunky! and to be perfectly clear iām not dogging on the premise, just the serious attempts iāve seen implemented in real life speech and their implementation. i think itās relevant bc it showcases how modern misunderstanding of what grammatical gender is can realize as actual, negative manifestations in the non-conceptual world. why this is important to think about more than passingly!
edit:formatting
The big thing that people get wrong and which makes me so very tired is that ITāS NOT SOCIETAL GENDER, itās just a case of terrible terminology that weāre stuck with. A chair isnāt feminine or whatever, itās just that words related to femininity happen to be in the same class as other words.
I really wish we could all agree to call it basically anything else, like āgenreā which shares the same root but doesnāt create the connotation to societal gender.
Thank you for your thorough response. You make some good points. I think weāre talking about slightly different topics though.
Thereās always some explanation to why certain words or grammar forms evolved. Sometimes those reasons are commonly known, sometimes the ācommonly knownā reasons are wrong, sometimes linguists argue about the origin, sometimes they have no idea.
For everyday speakers, the ālogicā of immediate usage, is more important than the etymology.
German speakers are generally aware of the āruleā that diminutives are neuter. If you look at this list words, some of them have non-diminutive forms;
Die Katze
Der Hund
Die Ohrlappe
Two of them donāt really.āPlatzā is grammatically, the non-diminutive form of āPlƤtzchenā but it doesnāt mean ā(normal sized) cookieā (aside: Not to make fun of our Northern friends but āKeksā gets around that confusion) āMagdā is the non-diminutive form of āMƤdelā but girls arenāt (generally) ālittle maids.ā I canāt remember the last time I heard anyone say, āmagdā to refer to a living person.
Also notice that when we strip off the diminutives, the remaining words are no more ālogicalā. Cats and earlobes arenāt inherently feminine and dogs arenāt inherently male.
My usage of ālogicā in the context of German grammar, is that grammatical gender is often at odds with both self identified gender and biological gender. German speakers are generally comfortable saying āDerā about subjects, that nobody would think of as male. German speakers are likewise comfortable saying āSieā about subjects that nobody would think of as female and, āDasā to subjects that are very obviously not neuter.
The reason for contrasting several languages was that I suspect there are different cognitive loads involved in correctly gendering people, depending on language. Many people notice that native Chinese speakers routinely ārandomizeā he/she/it. They donāt just misgender trans-people, they often just forget which one means which. German speakers are pretty used to playing around with endings to imply additional meaning. āDutzenā is often done without the word āduā. Speakers easily put together the correct endings for the singular and listeners instantly recognize the implication.
As a final example, Iād offer the sentence, ā___ ist ein fesch__ ___.ā I posit that if I insert āDieā vs āDerā into the sentence, most German speakers would instantly correctly fill in the rest of the blanks with, ā-es Madlā or ā-er Buaā. If you try to say the wrong one it just sounds weird.
Tom Scott is so jacked in that video!
Ngl, took me a long while to get used to defaulting to ātheyā after a lifetime of assuming āheā.
