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points by wolvoleo 3 days ago | 0 comments

Here in Spain both the 'x' and '@' versions are really common in written language. The 'e' version I've not seen. But they're not really spoken because the X and @ versions are weird to pronounce. Replacing the o and a with an e makes more sense but it hasn't really seemed to have reached here.

And no it's not just privileged white people. My Spanish teacher was a Colombiana and she always pointed out the innate patriarchal traits of the Spanish language while rolling her eyes.

[–] ozozozd 3 days ago

My native language has no gender. Every time I see these conversations I wonder “why not do away with the gender?”

It often leaks information the speaker didn’t intend to share. e.g., “I met a friend. She was late.”

Did the speaker mean or care to share to gender of this friend? Is it relevant? I don’t think so.

And I find it especially interesting when people argue for gender-neutral plurals, but then happily use gendered noun. It sort of feels like “everyone must stay in their lane” type of expectation.

Even the patriarchy argument is weird. The patriarchy - along with religion - wanted this gender line and specification in every context. Wanna stick it to patriarchy? Nix the gender from all languages!

[–] dpark 3 days ago

> The patriarchy - along with religion - wanted this gender line and specification in every context

Did they? English used to be gendered but lost it ~1000 years ago.

Languages evolve in odd ways and don’t think the patriarchy or religion have much to do with it.

[–] bregma 3 days ago

English is still strongly gendered: the animate and inanimate genders are everywhere. The masculine/feminine subgenders are still present in pronouns of the animate gender.

If English were to truly evolve to be non-gendered, there would be no "he/him/them" or "she/her/them", only "it/that/those".

[–] ramcle 3 days ago

I wonder how you would feel about, for example, Slavic languages. There, you leak information about the gender even about speaking about yourself in first person (at least in the ones I have some idea about). Example in Polish:

"Spotkałem kolegę" - "I [male] met a [male] friend."

"Spotkałam kolegę" - "I [female] met a [male] friend."

"Spotkałem koleżankę" - "I [male] met a [female] friend."

"Spotkałam koleżankę" - "I [female] met a [female] friend."

Notice the different ending (em/am) depending on whether a male or female is speaking.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

> My native language has no gender. Every time I see these conversations I wonder “why not do away with the gender?”

Yes, many languages have no gender or have a generic option besides genders.

I always find this very annoying in Roman languages, where every object has an arbitrary gender, and to make matters worse it's not always the same. A word that is female in Spanish could be male in Italian or Portuguese. It trips me up a lot and it's annoying because the gender is just some arbitrary thing there, it has no meaning because objects have no gender. If we're talking about people I can understand but things?

But languages are not very logical. They are something that melted together over centuries out of habit.

[–] suddenlybananas 2 days ago

Persian doesn't have gender and Iran is famously not patriarchal at all.

[–] lazide 2 days ago

It adds real world flavor, instead of mashing everyone and everything into the same grey goo of genderlessness.

It’s no surprise that the strongest (mainstream) gendered languages are also known as the ‘Romance languages’.

Is it logically simpler in some ways to not have it? Of course. Let’s not even talk about how complex gendered verb conjugations are in Spanish or Portuguese, for example.

But it does allow a lot of beautiful flourishes that add a lot of color.

[–] piperswe 2 days ago

They're known as the Romance languages because the languages are rōmānicē (Roman-style), not because they're romantic.

[–] tacitusarc 2 days ago

Romance in the context of languages means they were derived from Latin, the language of Rome.

[–] lazide 2 days ago

Technically yes - And also why every single one of the cultures speaking those languages is known for it’s lovers?

[–] lazyasciiart 2 days ago

I had no idea that was a stereotype of Romanians.

[–] lazide 19 hours ago

Romanians have a variant which is a bit less flattering.

[–] dpark 3 days ago

Interesting. Google trends shows that Latine is more common in Spain (and everywhere that isn’t the US).

Nonetheless I appreciate a perspective from someone who has an affiliation with the culture term refers to.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

Ah I have to say I'm not reading much official media in Spanish, perhaps the media is taking up these terms faster. But I see x and @ in official event posters too.

But my friends and in the LGBT+ communities chat groups I only see people using the x and @.

[–] dpark 2 days ago

I have never seen Latin@ at all (but I also do not speak Spanish). Is that a common a/o replacement?

I find it interesting that the Hispanic LGBTQ+ community would use LatinX. How is this even pronounced in Spanish? Latin-equis? Or is it the English Latin-ex?

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

Yes in my scene @ and x are both common. I like the @ option.

Like I said nobody pronounces either option because it's unpronounceable. That's why the 'e' is a better option IMO.

[–] elondaits 2 days ago

You can pronounce it as “Latine”:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50261926

[–] dpark 2 days ago

But then why not just write “Latine”?

[–] elondaits 1 day ago

Because there are consonants that change their sound before an “e”. So, say, the word “chicos” (boys) and “chicas” (girls) should be written as “chiques” in neutral because the c sounds like an s and not like a k with an e in front… but “chiques” doesn’t look like “chicos”… visually it’s not recognizable… while “chicxs” is much easier to parse. So that's why some people prefer the neutral to be written with an x.

[–] mr_00ff00 3 days ago

I’m curious on people’s opinions here cause I have seen this both ways. I have seen people say gender in the language at all is bad. And have said Spanish is sexist.

I’ve also seen people argue that we should learn to not see vocabulary gender as gender at all, just start associating some words as “la” and some as “el” with no boy/girl idea behind it.

[–] dpark 3 days ago

Old English for “wife” was masculine. “Maiden” in German is neutral. In Italian, the formal “you” is the same as “she” (written capitalized).

Grammatical gender is not intrinsically sexist and doesn’t really make a lot of sense if you try to analyze it to tease out what patriarchs were thinking when they added these forms, because largely they never thought about it at all. The forms evolved over hundreds of years.

[–] vladvasiliu 3 days ago

There are also languages where the gender changes from singular to plural! What do we think of this?

I can't say I follow these things too closely, and I do find them silly, but I think that, at least for languages that have "genders", this mostly comes from words describing professions that "seem gendered". I don't think many people care if a bag is feminine or masculine.

For example, in French, a doctor is "masculine", but a secretary is feminine. The point was that young girls would see these words and figure, "I can't be a doctor because I'm not a man. Guess I'll just be a nurse (which is feminine, but also has a masculine form)".

Now, I think there may be some kind of truth to the fact that many such professions were traditionally held by people of the "same gender". And, now that these traditions don't hold as much anymore, especially for "prestigious" professions, people want to make a point that there's a difference, especially in things like politics and medicine.

Of course, I don't remember much noise being made about how to call a woman who picks up garbage (though there are quite a few) or does construction work (haven't seen that many).

[–] spankibalt 3 days ago

“Maiden” in German is neutral.

Nachweise erbeten (citations, please). :)

[–] dpark 2 days ago

Should have said ‘The German word for “Maiden” is neutral.’

My phrasing was ambiguous and my German is rusty, hence the archaic translation.

[–] heinrich5991 2 days ago

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mädchen

[–] spankibalt 2 days ago

I was asking for Maiden, plural of Maid. [1]

1. [https://www.dwds.de/wb/Maid]

[–] lazyasciiart 2 days ago

As my high school teacher memorably put it: “in Germany girls have no sex”.

[–] mike_hearn 2 days ago

dpark is using a slightly archaic translation, Mädchen would normally be rendered as "girl" in modern English.

[–] dpark 2 days ago

Correct. I was referring to Mädchen and my German is extremely rusty.

[–] swiftcoder 3 days ago

> I’ve also seen people argue that we should learn to not see vocabulary gender as gender at all, just start associating some words as “la” and some as “el” with no boy/girl idea behind it.

If you look up the list of exceptions to the whole "-a = feminine, -o = masculine" in Spanish, it's incredibly long (and covers many of the most common words). Similarly there are a whole bunch where the gender is correct, but the article is swapped because it sounds better. The gender of specific words is also arbitrary, and doesn't agree between the various Romance languages.

This whole thing is just the leftover pieces of Latin's 3x linguistic genders hanging around in our languages, and ceased to be related to actual gender centuries ago.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

> Similarly there are a whole bunch where the gender is correct, but the article is swapped because it sounds better.

Yes, like "el agua" but agua is a female word. Soo confusing when you are learning it.

[–] nbajka 3 days ago

Which is funny because the entire Spanish-speaking world has always been deeply matriarchal.

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

No not really. In the Spanish language the masculine form always takes precedence.

And they are also catching up on feminism. Until recently here in Spain a woman would have to prove there had been violence when claiming rape. There was a big headline-making case where some rapists went free (well until supreme court appeal): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Manada_rape_case It led to the "only yes is yes" law which was already prevalent in other countries.

[–] nbajka 2 days ago

Even then, women hold all the soft power in Spanish-speaking countries. For example, at home, whatever the woman says, that’s what’s done. That’s what a matriarchy is.

Also, convicting people without proof, that’s not something to be proud of. (This also proves they live in a matriarchy)

[–] dpark 2 days ago

> convicting people without proof

They literally videotaped it and shared the video in a group chat.

There was no question of whether the assault happened, only whether it met the bar for the more severe crime.

[–] nbajka 2 days ago

There was no proof of lack of consent. But I wasn’t talking about this particular case anyway.

[–] partyficial 2 days ago

women control the inside, men the outside.

that's just biology and it's the case the world over, not only spanish countries.

[–] darksim905 3 days ago

>My Spanish teacher was a Colombiana and she always pointed out the innate patriarchal traits of the Spanish language while rolling her eyes.

Was the eye roll part of the sarcasm or...? Colombian and other related Spanish speaking cultures do the same things, so what's her point, to feel like she's sticking it to the invisible spanish dude?

[–] wolvoleo 2 days ago

No, she genuinely hated that even though it is part of Colombian culture too. But being part of a culture doesn't mean you 100% agree with everything.

I'm Dutch myself and I hate many things in Dutch culture. Especially those stemming from the calvinist influences. It's one of the reasons I don't live there anymore.

[–] darksim905 2 days ago

  calvinist influences

Admittedly I don't really know about dutch/some other regions -- could you expand on that?