Polish also has three. She, he, it/this.
Comment on why
idunnololz@lemmy.world 2 months agothree?!
Demdaru@lemmy.world 2 months ago
de_lancre@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I think most slavic languages in general, not just polish.
Lysergid@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Polish also distinguishes oni (they he) and one (they it/she). Probably most sexist language I know
hydrashok@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Yep. Masculine, feminine, and neuter. It’s annoyingly hard to learn. Plus all the other adjectives and such change to match. It’s wild.
rautapekoni@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
When I studied German a bit for fun I gave up on trying to memorize the genders and just used “das” for everything. Yeah it’s wildly incorrect but still mostly understandable which is fine for me.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Just say d’. It’s not wrong, it’s an abbreviation for whatever it’s supposed to be!
KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Yeah, a lot of european languages have a three gender system: masculine, feminine and neuter
Proto-Indo-European, the language which most European (and some South Asian languages) originate from, had a three gender system
Even English used to have a three gender system before it disappeared in the Middle English period
Despite the name, the neuter gender tends to not be used for people, although in some languages (such as Polish) the use of the neuter gender to refer to non-binary people is gaining traction
OrganicMustard@lemmy.world 2 months ago
German is woke
jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
It totally isn’t unfortunately, the gender neutral pronoun (if that’s what it’s called?) doesn’t work for humans.
9bananas@feddit.org 2 months ago
oh, it does work…
…if you’re bigoted enough.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 1 month ago
Or if you’re so progressive that you know how to Entgendern nach Phettberg.
dankm@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
The neuter pronoun (“it”) doesn’t work for humans in English either.
jlow@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Yeah, but in English you don’t go around and label EVERYTHING with the other two genders (only if you’re a bit weird and pretend your car is a she or something) and our they is the same as the female pronoun (sie), which makes that unusable as well.
Hjalamanger@feddit.nu 2 months ago
Why not though? Just because it sounds rude or something?
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 2 months ago
Yes.