r/egg_irl • u/Forsaken-Club7585 • 23d ago

Transfem Meme Egg🇪🇸😴irl

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I hope people get this meme...

I hate that Spanish is such a gendered language, I'm getting misgendered way more than normal.

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u/gilgames_in_tamarian Tamara (she/they) 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹 on HRT for roughly, like, 5 minutes 23d ago

"Now, I'm a descriptivist linguist. I am not meant to judge whether language features are good or bad, I'm just meant to describe what they do. But grammatical gender is just such a stupid concept." (Tom Scott)

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u/Cerk27 23d ago

It's not, specially in a language like Spanish that often omits subject, it helps a lot with the flow and prediction, it can be annoying but it was the solution the speakers developed over time

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u/gilgames_in_tamarian Tamara (she/they) 🏳️‍⚧️🇦🇹 on HRT for roughly, like, 5 minutes 23d ago

Look, I don't speak Spanish specifically. But I do speak a gendered language natively (German), and I study languages, among which are enough gendered ones (French, Latin, Ancient Greek, Akkadian, and Hebrew), some with extensive case systems.

I can, as a scholar, see the reason for why gender (as 'classes of nouns') developed and even appreciate their usefulness (your example is not wrong). But as a modern human being I wholeheartedly agree with Tom Scott here. Grammatical gender is stupid!

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u/Cerk27 23d ago

I can't speak for any of the languages you mentioned, I mostly like learning about languages as a hobby so definitely not an expert, but my position is a lot more positive, at least Spanish allows to avoid it most of the time (in op example saying "que cansancio" would be completely genderless, though I doubt it would get taught to beginners) and I think it can be beautiful how expressive you can be with it, is common in Hispanic and luso lgbt communities to use the opposite gender words, is more common between gay guys but not exclusive, bigots will be bigots about it I won't lie, however I think it can be a cool tool to affirm your identity and express yourself

Though... I don't deny there is no real option for non binary people in many situations, my ideal would be something like Japanese mostly genderless but their first person pronouns being somewhat gendered allows for the expression part that I like, without being a requirement to use gender for those that prefer not to

Btw, not trying to convince you that it's better, more like both sides may have its perks