Thereās definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
Thereās definitely some additional nuance (like a pronouns in bio/username situation) but this should cover the broad needs of anyone who is approaching this with good faith.
In German it feels completely random.
A table is masculine. A castle is feminine. A sausage is feminine. A boy is masculine. A girl is neutral. A fire is neutral. ā¦
Not sure if thereās any meaningful rule behind.
Actually, MƤdchen (meaning āgirlā in German) is a diminutive. It comes from Magd (an old word for āmaidā or āyoung womanā) with the -chen suffix, which is a common diminutive in German.
The -chen suffix makes words grammatically neuter, which is why MƤdchen takes das instead of die, even though it refers to a female person.
Iām not German but the same applies to the Dutch word for girl, and weāve the same rule for neutral. By the way, āmagdā in Dutch means virgin (maagd to be precise), which sounds incredibly inappropriate to be going around calling someone; little virgin (/ĀÆ ą² _ą² )/ĀÆ
Sorry if you already know this, but it sounds from the wording of your post that you might not know that āmaidā or āmaidenā means virgin also.
No need to be sorry. I didnāt realise, in Dutch I donāt think that connotation stuck for the equivalent, meid. That simply means girl.
āmy maiden auntā means an aunt who never married (and itās presumed to be virginal because what other option is there /s)
So yeah
Some non binary people use the pronoun ātheyā in arabic, but unlike english it is exclusively meant for plural. And in arabic, verbs also are conjugated with amount, So you just canāt say āThey ateā in a singular form, you have to explicitly mark āateā in plural.
Itād be like saying āthey ate(plural verb)ā. It sounds very weird but thereās not much better.
Thereās a similar ā though very localised ā thing in English with āthemself.ā
The singular form is used, but itās far less common than the plural form āthemselves.ā I often hear āthemselvesā used to refer to one non-binary person and it always sounds weird.
I guess we have to work with what we have. Is there an alternative in Arabic, like neopronouns?
Your comment made me try to think of one, and all I got was a headache.
In arabic everything is gendered. Even the most simple pronoun āIā changes the form of the sentence based on your gender (ie masculine: āana juāanā fem: āana juāanaā
Even the numbers and verbs are gendered. To try to add a new gender would be rethinking the entire language.
But in Arabic masculine pronouns are considered normal. Even with feminine objects like the sun, you can use a masculine pronoun āhua kabirā He (it) is big. So most enbies I know of just use masculine pronouns. There may be an alternative I donāt know of. Itās an interesting yet complex topic.
Isnāt there a dual case (as in, specifically for two of something) in Arabic? Or is that primarily a formal thing?
There is. Itās absolutely necessary, no exceptions at all. Itās one of the only languages that really use it. It just adds to the complexity lol
As far as I know there isnāt any rule to learn. Grammatical gender is a wild mixture of several things, sometimes it has something to do with the ending of words and sometimes with attributes of the things, if it has like agency, is an inanimate object, or is an abstract concept. Sometimes itās completely arbitrary and sometimes there are rules to it like with group of people. But there is no way of telling, you got to memorize it. In any way, grammatical gender has nothing to do with biological gender. And Iām pretty sure thatās not itās origin. Though, we try to link it to biological gender in case of people. But even that has exceptions, and it doesnāt really work with group of people etc.
Unlike for girl, das MƤdchen, which is a diminutive (of die Maid, a virgin young woman) as it is ending with -chen and thus, is of neutral gender, I doubt if rules for the other examples do exist:
Oh sorry I went out and commented the same thing ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Doesnāt matter, as you elaborated more deeply on why das MƤdchen has neuter gender.
BTW: The use of (das) FrƤulein (miss), again a diminutive; ālittle womanā, in German, to refer to an unmarried woman has come out of fashion since ~50 years and now may be perceived as insulting as well.
MƤdchen is no longer perceived as a diminutive of Maid or Magd, as both terms are more used in a historic context, and thus, it stands on its own.