They/them, I guess
You wouldn’t really need them. Just by watching a bunch of anime last year I came to guess that pronouns are not really a thing in Japanese. They repeat people’s names, even when they speak of themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronouns_in_Japanese
ndupont ha kaban wo totta
ndupont took bag [kaban = bag, totta = took]
Whose bag did ndupont take? Presumably their own but that’s an additional mental step that Japanese native speakers do which isn’t necessary when you have a pronoun in there indicating ownership. And even Japanese can do that in order to prevent this kind of ambiguity:
ndupont ha kare/kanojo no kaban wo totta.
ndupont took his/her bag.
Which of course still only tells you if ndupont took someone else’s bag if the pronoun isn’t ndupont’s but it works in most cases.
To further decrease ambiguity you could do this:
ndupont ha jibun no kaban wo totta
ndupont took (his/her/their) own bag
So just because you can get through the day without pronouns most of the time and many languages do just that,
they dodoesn’t mean they don’t serve a purpose. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.Edit: forgot how I began that sentence halfway through.
Thanks, I enjoyed your Ted talk!
That’s a cool fact! My GF is learning Japanese but I didn’t think of asking her on the topic, now I know I should!
status, like they already are in many languages
What languages base their pronouns on status? I’d like to read about them.
Japanese does this, and doesn’t half-ass it either! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronouns_in_Japanese#List_of_Japanese_personal_pronouns
Hell, Japanese essentially has entire modes of speaking just to be polite, with whole sets of pronouns, verbs and speaking style. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorific_speech_in_Japanese
Incidentally, from a Euro perspective, tons of “our” languages, and formerly English (thou/thee) have what is called a t-v distinction, named after Latin “you” (tu/vi) which depends on status much like “usted” in Spanish. There’s a list of languages which do this.
Just to be clear, the Wikipedia list is simply trying to be exhaustive and points out which ones are a matter of dialect and what’s just an archaic form. Think of it like a list that includes you, ye, ya, y’all, u, thou. Those are not different pronouns - it’s the same word with variations for regions, time periods, medium. Don’t take “you can just write ‘u’ when you are writing on an electronic device” as a formal rule.
Spanish is one. Western Hemisphere Spanish has different second-person singular pronouns depending on relative status / formality / familiarity. One uses “tu” for inferiors, intimates, and children, and “usted” for superiors and respected strangers. Spain does as well, but they also have variants for second person plural pronouns.
Vietnamese uses both status and gender. For example, there are different terms associated with older brother (anh) or sister (chi) vs younger siblings (em). You generally wouldn’t use any of those terms to address someone older than your generation, as there are more respectful pronouns you would use.
Japanese for example. Pronouns like he (kare 彼) or she (kanojo 彼女) aren’t used as frequently as in English or many other western languages. Usually it is familyname + status-suffix.
For example: Smith-San(さん) -> Mr/Mrs Smith
Tanaka-Sama(様) -> Very respectful form of adress
Aoyama-Sensei(先生) -> Teacher/Doctor/Artist
To any native/professional speaker: correct me if I’m wrong.
The latter three (~さん・様・先生) aren’t really pronouns, though. Sensei can technically function as such when we already know which one is being discussed, but you would never use the other two on their own. These are titles/honorifics.
彼・彼女 are pronounce. We also have others こいつ・あいつ・and basically whateverqualifier人 (あの人・その人).
In my native Czech we use plural when addressing strangers or people with a higher standing. Singular pronouns are a lot more informal, used betwen friends and family. French and German have something similar.
Actually, English does the same, except the uncouth singular has been dropped and now the formal address is the only choice. The informal, singular version of “you” is “thou”.
You can read more about it here
Personhood.
That would require a lot of pronouns! But sounds interesting ngl
They/them, the standard pronouns that have been part of the English language since it was spoken in a way completely unintelligible to people today.
Nah, it’s just a single differentiation between people and non-persons, e.g. him vs that.
There are gender-free languages that still make this distinction, e.g. Hungarian ő vs az.
To add to the subject of complexity, in English you have 3 genders, 2 numbers (singular/plural), and 4 cases, totalling 24 pronouns. A gender-free language would just set the first factor to 1. Adding differentiation by e.g. status would increment (in cases of there being one extra formal gender for the 3rd person) or multiply it (when there are different versions for all pronouns).
Itd just be the “singular they” that English was using even before Shakespeare and other languages like Chinese still use.
It’s weird how many people get worked up about it now. It’s literally always correct and removes what’s almost always extrenous information.
Exactly
It’s just always been ironic the two groups most opposed to it are the most extreme on either side of the issue
If he/she disappeared tomorrow and everyone just always used “they”, >95% of us wouldn’t care.
But ~5% of people would probably be really really pissed. Because they’ve made the entire idea of gender and sexuality their entire personality.
That stuff being tribialized never works out well for any of us. We need to aim for society where it just really doesn’t matter.
The only true equality is people genuinely not giving a fuck about it. And the first step to that is abolishing the distinction that language places between genders. As long as language draws a line, the human brain wants to put everyone on one side or the other.
If there’s no line, there’s no division.
Mostly the same as it is now: Based on whether you’re talking 1st, 2nd or 3rd person, as well as singular or plural. There would just be a single third-person pronoun instead of multiple.
Probably active/passive actor or more short forms of names. I.e. everyone must have a single syllable descriptor. There are various extant examples of grammar that is more complex than just gender. English does have very few complexities after all.
Basically anything with a roughly 50 50 split in usage in spoken language
Probably active/passive actor
That’s what I’ve been using to write notes on my worldbuilding. Using only they/them got annoying real quick.
more short forms of names
I’m curious how practical would it be for a language to avoid pronouns whatsoever. Sounds hard.
Linguistics, just like in our world. The purpose of pronouns is to reduce repetition in speech and writing.
Additional gendered aspect is there for easier disambiguation between multiple people’s pronouns when mentioned in the same context.
I mean, yeah, that’s why I’m asking. Since it’s beneficial to have several pronouns based on a person’s intrinsic characteristics, a genderless society would also end up with several - but the question is, what would they base these pronouns on? Their age? Their role in society? Their personality?
You can just as easily do without any gendered pronouns, like some languages do already
At the very least in the number, English and its almost non existent verbal conjugations is awful in that regard. When someone says you I need quite some context to know if it is talking to me or to a group of people where I’m included, it is even worse with they.
There are some interesting comments about how other languages do it in other threads.
Here’s one more idea - is this person present or not during the conversation
Edit to expand on the idea:
We can have 3 pronouns- Person participates in the conversation
- Person doesn’t participate but is somehow involved with speakers and conversation (like talking about a friend, or a customer that bothered you at work)
- Talking about someone in an abstract sense. Like when writing about a celebrity, or a biography, or describing someone’s life (even if a friend)
Do we have a fantasy ideas community? This would be a great question for there too
There’s !worldbuilding@lemmy.world although I don’t know how many people care about languages there. It seems like a small community.
I assume we are talking about third person pronouns, mostly singular, possibly plural (like in French which has gendered ils/elles). First and second person (I, you, we) aren’t gendered in (most?) western languages anyway.
It could go multiple ways:
- Just one set of third person pronouns for everyone, equivalent to English they/them. The fewer different pronouns you have, the harder it is to talk about multiple people at once but in principle, it works. After all, nobody keeps you from talking about five men who all use he/him in English, you just have to add more specifiers or names to differentiate.
- A distinction based on proximity. One set of pronouns for a person near the speaker, one for a person near the listener and one for a person somewhere else. Japanese does something similar for things (これ kore, それ sore, あれ are) but as far as I know, not for people. For an example in English, imagine equivalents to this and that which are personal pronouns instead of demonstratives.
- A distinction based on age. Different pronouns for children, adults, elderly or relative to the speaker’s age.
- A distinction based on familiarity. One set of pronouns to refer to close friends and family, one for acquaintances, one for strangers.
- A distinction based on status and respect. A bit similar to what Japanese does with honorific name suffixes but in pronoun form.
- One of the conlangs I’m occasionally working on has pronouns based on the shortened form of names: the first syllable of the person’s name plus a suffix. Plus one set of pronouns for if you don’t know (or don’t want to mention) a person’s name.
A distinction based on age. Different pronouns for children, adults, elderly or relative to the speaker’s age.
That’s the one I thought about after posting.
A distinction based on status and respect. A bit similar to what Japanese does with honorific name suffixes but in pronoun form.
It could actually be the evolved version of the age-based pronouns. The pronouns for older people become the pronouns for respectable individuals and stuff like that.
A distinction based on proximity. One set of pronouns for a person near the speaker, one for a person near the listener and one for a person somewhere else. Japanese does something similar for things (これ kore, それ sore, あれ are) but as far as I know, not for people.
A distinction based on familiarity. One set of pronouns to refer to close friends and family, one for acquaintances, one for strangers.
I like these weirdly practical pronouns! I can imagine them in a language of a highly rational alien species.
One of the conlangs I’m occasionally working on has pronouns based on the shortened form of names: the first syllable of the person’s name plus a suffix. Plus one set of pronouns for if you don’t know (or don’t want to mention) a person’s name.
I’d argue that shortened names aren’t pronouns. Like, “Bob” isn’t a pronoun after all. But that’s a cool idea nonetheless.
I like these weirdly practical pronouns! I can imagine them in a language of a highly rational alien species.
This is how it works in Armenian - their personal pronouns are genderless and based on deixis (here, there, over there).
I’d argue that shortened names aren’t pronouns. Like, “Bob” isn’t a pronoun after all. But that’s a cool idea nonetheless.
Counter-argument: the only two reasons why “Bob” isn’t a pronoun are a) because English has other pronouns and b) because not every name has a form that’s short enough to use in place of pronouns.
I would say it’s fully plausible that a language develops proper pronouns (with case markings and everything else you would expect) based on a rule that works with any name. As an arbitrary example, a Robert, Robin, Ronald and Rocinante might all use roki for the nominative case, ros for the genitive case and ron for the accusative case. In the absence of other pronoun systems, that would be indistinguishable from what you imagine as pronouns. Add a few centuries of sound shifts and you get something really interesting.
Well there are several possibilities. For instance, pronouns could be based on simple clicking sounds that indicate one’s social proximity to the queen.
“If my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike!”
This question has a false premise and thus makes no sense.
Many natural languages are already genderless, so your question is equivalent to: “In genderless and sexless languages, what are pronouns based on?”, implying that there has to be some sort of gender-based polymorphism among pronouns.
@aldhissla @enemyofsun I would argue even having pronouns might not be strictly necessary.
implying that there has to be some sort of gender-based polymorphism among pronouns.
Pronouns are a shortcut for a noun. They do not need to be linked to genders. Singular third-person pronouns benefit from some variance based what is talked about. As other comments pointed out, these third-person pronouns could be based on social status, age, physical proximity, familiarity, etc.
That’s all there is about my question.
Why do we need to base it on something? He vs. she is already not that useful of a distinction anyway. We don’t gender any other pronouns (though I’m aware that some languages other than Englisch do), hasn’t ever been an issue.
Why do we need to base it on something?
Humans like naming things after other things. Like how we name people after concepts we like (love, hope, faith, etc).
He vs. she is already not that useful of a distinction anyway.
I agree.
We don’t gender any other pronouns, hasn’t ever been an issue.
Well, first-person pronouns don’t really need any distinguishing since it can only mean one person/group. Second-person pronouns are generally favored by context so they can be non-specific. But third-person pronouns can mean literally any person (including the speaker and the listener) so some way to limit who that ‘them’ might be is useful. At least, that’s my experience from writing notes about a society with no gender - I got really tired of endless ‘thems’ so I started using two sets of neopronouns.
English also has three different sets of plural pronouns, none of which are gendered - AFAIK some other languages do make distinctions there, too, though it’s more common to gender first and second person pronouns.
People are writing novels in first person, too, doesn’t seem like a big issue that there’s only one set of first person pronouns in English.
I’d imagine the same as ours: broadly speaking, random shit that just happened to show up one day. They’d just need fewer of them than we happen to use in English.
Pronouns as a word category aren’t as inherently linked to gender as you’d think, just commonly influenced by it. You’re presumably asking from an English viewpoint, where we happen to split some third person pronouns by gender. Finnish, for example, already doesn’t do that, their only equivalent of he/she/they is hän which, like “they”, goes for anything. Japanese has absolute shit tons of pronouns of all kinds, some of which are very gender linked and some of which are fairly equal opportunity.
The connection between gender gender and grammatical “gender” is kind of overrated anyway, speaking as a native of a language with gendered nouns. The name is misleading: people obviously have genders, but when generalized to all nouns it gets… arbitrary as hell. Practically it’s just an extra bit of information you need to memorize for each one. What would it even mean for a book to have a gender, and why is it what it is? (The answer is unfortunately “fuck you, that’s why” because natural languages aren’t required to make any logical sense)
On the upside, if you’re German you can make your news headlines real short and awkward to read. It’s like code golf, or something.
In T Kingfisher’s novel What Moves the Dead, society has extra pronouns for soldiers (and some other groups, but I can’t remember who; doctors maybe). So if you enlist, you’re not longer him or her, you’re ka.
