Gender-neutral Talossan

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

While I'm working on a new version of the Grammar (i swear miestră its coming), I wanted to raise the issue of gender neutrality in the Talossan language. I figured since we have two non-binary prospectives we might want to find ways to make Talossan more inclusive.

Gender marking is already way less prevalent in Talossan than in other Romance languages (most adjectives are epicene, -escu with participles etc), but el Glheþ still lacks gender-neutral third person pronouns for instance, and the English way of just using the 3rd person plural doesnt work since -- surprise! -- the plural forms are gendered as well. What would you suggest we should do?

@Miestrâ Schiva, UrN

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

While I'm working on a new version of the Grammar (i swear miestră its coming), I wanted to raise the issue of gender neutrality in the Talossan language. I figured since we have two non-binary prospectives we might want to find ways to make Talossan more inclusive.

Gender marking is already way less prevalent in Talossan than in other Romance languages (most adjectives are epicene, -escu with participles etc), but el Glheþ still lacks gender-neutral third person pronouns for instance, and the English way of just using the 3rd person plural doesnt work since -- surprise! -- the plural forms are gendered as well. What would you suggest we should do?

This is an excellent question which I don't have a ready answer to.

The only Romance language I can think of that has a neuter gender is Romanian. Is their pronoun system a possible source of innovations? Looking at it briefly, it looks like Romanian neuter nouns take masculine singular pronouns and feminine plural pronouns. Can we do that? Or the other way around?

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

The only Romance language I can think of that has a neuter gender is Romanian. Is their pronoun system a possible source of innovations? Looking at it briefly, it looks like Romanian neuter nouns take masculine singular pronouns and feminine plural pronouns. Can we do that? Or the other way around?

Romanian's neuter gender is a relic of Latin's neuter gender, restricted to inanimate objects. People still have to follow the binary, and there are no gender-neutral third person pronouns either. Those are some unpleasant connotations that I'd really like to avoid, perhaps by coining new pronouns altogether...

[Ián S.G. Txaglh]

The only Romance language I can think of that has a neuter gender is Romanian. Is their pronoun system a possible source of innovations? Looking at it briefly, it looks like Romanian neuter nouns take masculine singular pronouns and feminine plural pronouns. Can we do that? Or the other way around?

Romanian's neuter gender is a relic of Latin's neuter gender, restricted to inanimate objects. People still have to follow the binary, and there are no gender-neutral third person pronouns either. Those are some unpleasant connotations that I'd really like to avoid, perhaps by coining new pronouns altogether...

i would go the "easiest" way devising the gender-neutral animate pronouns from existing gender ones.

sg. o / a > u; i and e are taken in certain way. i also avoid unnecessary similarities to masculine/feminine versions so, e.g. pl. ullu.

we have to accept that even in a created language such as talossan, these are created newly inside the paradigm. it is an important social construct and there is no shame that it "looks" created. it is a language revolt, in fact, cos language it-self, along with the social majority does not meet the necessity to deal with situations involving gender neutrality on a daily basis. from the other side of the barricade, estonian is developing new gender affixes -tar/-nna for nouns (profession names) in a feminist attempt (inspired by german sekretär / sektretärin). apparent gender neutrality was too much cognitively perceived as implicit masculinity, under pressure of reality of in parallel used indoeuropean language (russian).

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

i would go the "easiest" way devising the gender-neutral animate pronouns from existing gender ones.

sg. o / a > u; i and e are taken in certain way. i also avoid unnecessary similarities to masculine/feminine versions so, e.g. pl. ullu.

The problem with that one is that "o" is already pronounced [­u], so "u" is taken. My idea would be to have something like:

subject singular: e
subject plural: es
object: le, l'
prepositional: le

All other pronominal forms (object/prepositional plural, possessives) are already gender-neutral.

Using E as the gender-neutral vowel would theoretically allow us to use -e endings with gender-marked adjectives (ben, bună, bune), though in those circumstances the gender-neutral ending would sound identical to the feminine one (both schwa)... I may need to think about this more.

we have to accept that even in a created language such as talossan, these are created newly inside the paradigm. it is an important social construct and there is no shame that it "looks" created. it is a language revolt, in fact, cos language it-self, along with the social majority does not meet the necessity to deal with situations involving gender neutrality on a daily basis.

Given the Ladintsch population of approximately 10 at the very most, I doubt that this is much of an issue.

[Ián S.G. Txaglh]

The problem with that one is that "o" is already pronounced [­u], so "u" is taken. My idea would be to have something like:

subject singular: e
subject plural: es
object: le, l'
prepositional: le

All other pronominal forms (object/prepositional plural, possessives) are already gender-neutral.

Using E as the gender-neutral vowel would theoretically allow us to use -e endings with gender-marked adjectives (ben, bună, bune), though in those circumstances the gender-neutral ending would sound identical to the feminine one (both schwa)... I may need to think about this more.

i like that. a lot.