Yep. I’m a native Spanish speaker and I’m also old. Spanish is similar to German in that the male version of words is already gender neutral. But there’s a huge effort to make it truly gender neutral, and I understand the reason and support the idea. Having lived many years in an English speaking country and in corporate environments, I use “they” in English without even thinking. It comes naturally to me, especially as a manager talking about people I manage, to protect their identity.
But there’s no way I’m hell I’m using gender neutral Spanish because it sounds extremely stupid to me. It’s a complete distortion of the language, and I have to make a huge effort not to think less of people who use it. None of my friends or family uses it.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
As a Russian language speaker, I can tell you any gender-neutral language is absolutely impossible with Russian. The old kind of egalitarian (just normal really) language was to use the same form and gender of the word denoting profession or position as with male person, when it’s a woman. Because the old feminitives usually meant “wife of someone of that profession”, with a good deal of confusion whether they mean that or actually a woman of that role, and also they have sort of a flavor of vulgarity.
There’s a modern (very limited to leftist fashion) tendency of inventing feminitives not common before.
Like for “author” there’s “автор” (male form usually used for women too), “авторша” (traditional feminitive with a flavor of rudeness), “авторка” (new fashionable feminitive nobody really uses).
Or for “psychologist” there’s “психолог” (normal male form), “психологичка” (not traditional, kinda rude feminitive), “психологиня” (new feminitive really used often enough, but that’s when it means someone your age with that being like below 35).