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Gender Neutral Pronouns

Which pronoun would you fill in the blank for '___ enjoys running in the breeze'.

  • Total voters
    37
Music Dragon said:
And I didn't literally mean that you "wanted" lazy. You knew that, though, right?


Why? I think it makes sense. Why should we have more pronouns than necessary?
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English has more than necessary, 'he' and 'she' work just fine.
 
Music Dragon said:
It is much, much easier to have a pronoun for genderless things. Otherwise you'd have to assign a gender to every noun, and that would be a pain.
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A pain, yes, but when become good enough at certain languages, I'd call it having a 'sense' of the language, you just know which pronoun to use without looking it up. Usually it's the one that 'sounds' best to you.
 
Murkrow said:
A pain, yes, but when become good enough at certain languages, I'd call it having a 'sense' of the language, you just know which pronoun to use without looking it up. Usually it's the one that 'sounds' best to you.
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Yes; this greatly limits non-native speakers like me. But I guess that's no concern of yours, you little... esotericist!

Oh, and by the way... This "sense" you speak of, it is what we call språkörat, the language ear. A true gift!
 
Good point, I don't really want it to be more difficult, which is why I don't like all of the grammar rules in German.

IMO pronouns don't really make it all that harder.

With languages that you're learning as a first language, you're usually good enough to know which one to use. With second languages, they don't seem that important. I haven't done any essays yet or anything, so far it's just been writing something, the teacher marks it. I write it again, with corrections. I learn it all and have to write it out again with no help except my memory. Pronouns aren't that hard to learn when you think about it.
 
Murkrow said:
With languages that you're learning as a first language, you're usually good enough to know which one to use. With second languages, they don't seem that important. I haven't done any essays yet or anything, so far it's just been writing something, the teacher marks it. I write it again, with corrections. I learn it all and have to write it out again with no help except my memory. Pronouns aren't that hard to learn when you think about it.
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Yes, they are. Really, there are some things that only native speakers or very well-educated people can grasp completely; I, for example, never know what prepositions to use. (But apart from that, I think my English is quite acceptable!)
 
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