• Orbituary@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Spanish is my first language. Spanish defaults to masculine of words, but so do all Latin based languages. Here in the states we see Latinx. In Mexico and South America, “latine” is becoming prevalent.

        Linguistically speaking, it’s absurd. Polls in the USA, where Latinx was invented by uncomfortable, uninformed white people to try and be inclusive, show that 93% of the latino / hispanic population either disapprove of or don’t care about it.

        Edit: putting this up higher for visibility.

        https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/

        https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/11/901398248/hispanic-latino-or-latinx-survey-says

        https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/05/us/latinx-gallup-poll-preference-trnd/index.html

          • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Hot take: gendered language doesn’t serve any meaningful purpose and we should just get rid of it. There is no need for inanimate non-gendered objects to have a linguistic gender.

            • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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              1 year ago

              Or, you know, you could just get over it and realize that gender in language is not the same thing as gender in people. There’s one African language, for example, that has 16 different genders.

              Also, you are mistaken that linguistic gender doesn’t serve a purpose. It does and there’s a pretty extensive body of linguistic literature on the subject.

              Fun fact; as with most of the other Germanic languages, English originally had three genders; masculine, feminine and neuter. They got stripped out of the language for reasons having to do with English history that are too technical to go into right now.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                And German still has those genders, and as you rightly said, they have nothing to do with gender identity.

                The only issue here is gendered pronouns and other forms of address that rely on the gender of the person being discussed. Nobody cares whether a table is masculine or feminine, but they do care whether your parent’s sibling is a male or female because in many languages, there’s no word to eliminate that information. That’s the issue here, and the solution isn’t to rewrite the entire concept of gender in languages, but instead to introduce and popularize genderless pronouns and titles. I know I hate saying “how many uncles and aunts do you have,” especially since I know that doesn’t necessarily cover all of the person’s parents’ siblings. Give me words like “cousin” so I don’t need to separate people by gender in casual conversation unless it’s actually relevant.

              • LrdThndr@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Can you link a layman’s explanation of the value of grammatical gender regarding inanimate objects? After years of learning and being frustrated by French, I had come to the conclusion that grammatical gender was stupid and served no purpose, but I’d love to have a better understanding of its value.

                Again, this isn’t coming from a position of “prove me wrong, buttfart”. This is coming from “I’d like to learn more and have a better understanding of something I’m probably just not getting.”

    • Mossmouse@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Like “mix”. It’s fairly simple to most people who have common sense and aren’t actively trying to be offended over nothing.

      • trash80@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Dr. = Doctor. Mr. = Mister. Mrs. = Misses. There is also “Miss”, which has no period because it isn’t an abbreviation.

        Mx. = ?.

        Is “Mx.” an abbreviation? No? Why does it have a period? You pronounce it phonectically, though we do not do that with Dr. or Mr. or Mrs.?

        I don’t oppose the use of gender neutral language, but I don’t think the pronunciation of “Mx.” or the fact that it isn’t an abbreviation is obvious. It conforms to conventions in one way and departs from conventions in another.

        • MxM111@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I pronounce it phonetically precisely because this is not an abbreviation of any word. But honestly I have no idea, this asking.

        • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          ”Good morning, I am Mx. Vary, your science teacher." That’s it, that’s all you need for the entire year.

          • Zron@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Do your classes take place entirely over text? They’re asking how you pronounce that in speech.

            Mr. Is short for “Mister” Mrs is short for mistress, but is usually pronounced “Misses”

            So how does one pronounce Mx.? Mix or Mixter? Mixes? And sometimes Xs are pronounced like Z, so is it just Mmmz?

            Asking how to pronounce someone’s preferred pronouns is entirely reasonable when their preferred pronoun is not a regular part of the English language. I’d rather know how to say something and not offend someone than say it wrong for who knows how long and definitely offend them.

            • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              If they’re saying it, they just told you how to pronounce it. That’s my point.

              • Zron@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, but I’m trying to learn for myself, and have never had anyone say it to me.

                So you’re not really helping by assuming I should know how to pronounce a new word

                • queermunist she/her
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                  1 year ago

                  Okay, but like, if you were in their class you would hear them say it to you and then you’d know.

                  If you actually cared you’d just look it up tbh.

      • Bipta@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        You’re the divisive one here, suggesting people are hateful for having legitimate questions.

        It’s so simple, just like Mr. Is pronounced merr.

        You’re very much part of the problem.

        • Mossmouse@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t remember writing that anyone was hateful. Actively trying to be offended, yes. Legitimate questions ask questions like this “So how is Mx pronounced?”. The comment was I replied to intended to mock it, not ask in good faith. But see, you’d have to come to that conclusion by using common sense, so here we are again.

      • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s not “fairly simple if you have common sense”. The known abbreviations have been in use for a hundred or more years and are widely known. Everyone knows how to pronounce them, the only curveball is Mrs being misses since it was originallymistress but that word later became associated with cheating and “ladies of the night”.

        Mx was made up recently, it stands for nothing AFAIK. They just took the standard M beginning and slapped X on it because X tends to mean “unknown”.

        It’s akin to asking you to address me as “Zf. Cat” because that’s what makes me feel comfortable.

            • queermunist she/her
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              1 year ago

              Actually the floppy part of the disk is inside the plastic case. It’s a floppy piece of magnetic tape.

              But that’s a great example of how language evolves - people don’t even know what the name means, and yet they know what it is.

          • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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            1 year ago

            They weren’t introduced in anything like an analogous way. Mr and Mrs evolved slowly over decades and even centuries from older forms referring to master and mistress.

            I don’t have a strong opinion about Mx either way, but as an amateur linguistics nerd I can assure you that the way it’s been introduced to our lexicon is very different from these much older terms.

            • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Yep, language flows and changes over long periods of time, not through a court order or “marginalized” people screaming “we want our own pronoun that we just came up with to be culturally except! If you don’t comply, you are an insensitive asshole!”

        • Mossmouse@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ok, Zf. Cat :) If that makes you feel comfortable it costs me nothing to be considerate of your preference. See?

          • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Now you have to remember that for every interaction with me. If you happen to call me sometime else, I’ll grit my teeth and have to correct you or if I’m an asshole, I’ll berate you about it, constantly. You will also have to refer to me as Zf. Cat to everyone you know, regardless of whether or not they know me, or are in my presence.

            • Mossmouse@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              You should be asking yourself why you assume the person would react angrily instead of just politely correcting the pronunciation. If someone accidentally mispronounces my name I gently correct them, while smiling, and I have never once been offended or take it personally. You also assume it is a heavy burden on others to simply call people what they’d like to be called. When it is not. Being angry over this is not a healthy attitude. It’s simple manners to be considerate of others and that is precisely what the person is asking for, nothing more.

              • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                If you have to correct someone about your name/title every single time it gets pretty damn annoying. I met a girl years ago whose name was spelled Remy but pronounced Ray-me she said “I hate my parents for it” (I doubt she actually hated her parents, but hated the fact that they gave her a “bad” name).

        • queermunist she/her
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          1 year ago

          Except it’s not like that at all, because you just made that honorific up!

          Mx. has an actual cultural context outside of their classroom. Sure, it’s new, but it’s not like this teacher just made it up themselves.

            • queermunist she/her
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              1 year ago

              The context is Mx. already being used and recognized around the country and around the world. It’s new, but it’s not just something the teacher made up.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            One, it’s virtue signaling at its best.

            Secondly, randomly adding in the letter x to things is not ‘common sense’.

            Common sense is the ability to make practical judgments and behave in a sensible way. It’s the knowledge and experience that most people have, or should have.

            So my original point still stands. ‘Mx’ is not common sense. Knowing not to play a game of chicken with traffic, is common sense. Maybe this is why common sense isn’t so common anymore, people just appropriate words/phrases to mean whatever they want, instead of what they mean.

            This is how we’ve ended up in a world where the word literally no longer means the word literally.

        • SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You’d think someone using the name CaptPretentious would be all in favor of things being made up by niche social circles.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Sorry was I supposed to put my first name, last name, social Security number, and mother’s maiden name as my username?

        • Mossmouse@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well see, common sense would have me ask “hm, how do I say that?” then google it, then when I see that it’s simply pronounced “mix” I’d say “oh, okay”. And then go on about my day… instead of ranting about how hard it is to figure out and how angry it should make everyone. But that’s just me.

          • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            If it were me, I would probably figure out what the person I’m trying to argue arguing with was actually arguing about. Instead of getting up on a soapbox and pretending like I know what I’m arguing about. But that would take effort.

            But you keep using those canned responses you got ready to go.

              • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                My position has fuck all to do with the letters.

                But you really need it to be don’t you. Because your canned responses only work if that’s what I’m arguing about.