And “han” will confuse people because in English it might make you think of a Chinese dynasty, and “hon” will confuse people because in English it’s a contraction for a term of endearment … and “han” is 3rd person plural present indicative of the verb “to have” in Spanish, and “hon” is short for “honourable” … and seriously, they pretended to worry about “hen” meaning a bird in another language from another country altogether?!?!?! Wow.
Um, this is really just to say – hi and thanks; reading with interest. Also the Magna Carta bit. (And marvelling at the weird troll who pretends to think that condescension out of the blue makes a good “hello” (and who thinks anyone would refer to anyone else as their “fellow sisters”).
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
@WwTH
I know you’re talking about mostly trolls and rape apologists, but I’d like to add that some of us actually did grow up with the assumption that if you report a crime, of which you are the victim, people will protect you and the police will make sure the perpetrator is arrested and brought to justice. This was mostly as a consequence of never personally having to deal with law enforcement at all.
When I was, let’s say, in my late teens or early 20s, I probably thought “just report it to the police!” was a reasonable response to someone who said they’d been raped. Of course, I was always of the mindset that one should be able to change one’s mind and assumptions when faced with evidence, and I have often thanked feminists for bringing tons of things to my attention which I would’ve probably never discovered on my own.
So I would say this does actually happen, but maybe not in the context of talking to obnoxious rape apologists on the internet.
@Skiriki & Alan
No worries about the name thing, I honestly didn’t even notice. :p
rhuu
8 years ago
@imaginary petals: that was really interesting, thank you! I’d love an English equivalent, though repurposing ‘they’ when i’m unsure about the gender/pronouns of the person i’m talking about has worked so far.
I need to go and look up this Timecube now…
@SFHC: Your job is AMAZING.
Monzach
8 years ago
@Imaginary Petal
The fact that the Ă land Islands (or Ahvenanmaa in Finnish) belongs to Finland is actually the last decision of the League of Nations that’s still in force. When you start to think about it, it’s pretty appropriate that the situation is seen as fairly unfortunate by the inhabitants of Ă land who would much rather belong to Sweden. đ
guy
8 years ago
I am quite up for foreign grammar discussions. Incidentally, the reason why second-language learners have trouble with han and hon is probably from Latin; a is used as part of the endings in the first declension, which is mostly feminine, while o is used for several of the endings in the second declension, which is at least mostly masculine or neuter. a is also used for neuter nominative and accusative plurals, but that doesn’t seem to have much impact on the Romance Languages.
A. Noyd
8 years ago
One might as well complain that “hen” is Japanese for “peculiar.”
Cerberus
8 years ago
IP- Thanks so so much for that. I’ve got a few non-binary students in my classes who ask about non-binary pronouns in other languages and so knowing more about the specific history of “hen” in Sweden is super useful for me. So yeah, thank you.
WWTH- Very true. And it’s probably where a lot of these harasser types started using that as a means of dismissing victims.
kupo
8 years ago
That was really interesting, Imaginary Petal. Language is an interesting subject. It was very controversial here when we started changing the books from using terms like “fireman” to “firefighter.” I believe that was also considered PC gone out of control. I remember lots of news stories about it in probably the 80s. With our current political climate I can’t see the US ever changing pronouns even if the rest of the world did. Heck, I can’t see the US giving maternity leave or holidays to workers (these are benefits an employer can choose to give or not) or adopting the metric system. We fight change hard and for no good reason.
guy
8 years ago
I’d say the US is actually pretty well on the way to standardizing singular they. It’s gotten into major newspaper manuals of style. Some people complain about having the same pronoun be singular and plural, but it’s rarely a practical issue. I have literally only seen it being an issue reading an English-Japanese dictionary, because Japanese does not have grammatical plurals but does have some specific words that are always plural and also has gender-ambiguous pronouns.
Though there is a slight point I want to bring up; there’s a difference between gender-ambiguous and genderless. “They” can mean male, female, both, or neither, while “it” is explicitly neither. Since “it” is for things and not people to the point where it’s fiction shorthand for “does not think X are people”, English does not presently have a widely accepted pronoun to specifically refer to someone who is neither, so if people who are neither care I can support an effort to make/popularize one.
Skiriki
8 years ago
Re: Finnish pronouns.
“Hän” covers all cases, ambiguous or not or totally genderless — it is a word intended to be used for humans (and in case of fiction, also for other sapient people).
“Se” (“it”) is a word for everything else — animals, inanimate objects, etc. Could be used if you write a story about making a point regarding AI rights etc. No gendered significance, either.
Of course there’s some overlap in less formal usage. Pet owners can eagerly extend ‘hän’ for their beloved animals, and sometimes people dish ‘se’ for everyone, type of being be damned.
So roughly put (singular to plural):
People pronouns:
Minä
Sinä
Hän
Me
Te
He
Not-people pronouns:
Tämä
Tuo
Se
Nämä
Nuo
Ne
Then there’s the old-fashioned plural-you, aka “teitittely”. Normally, Finns are very much about “being on singular-you” basis after first introduction, but it is not that long time ago when it was polite to ask strangers “What would you like” (“Mitä teille saisi olla?”) (for example), where “you” is the plural form (“te”), a bit like “royal we”, but instead used by others about you and giving you a slight boost of status/respect.
It was also a sign of age when people stopped using singular-you and swapped to plural-you (usually 30-40 years of age), which may explain why it went out of fashion in 80s and 90s when being forever young became a thing.
guy
8 years ago
Yeah, Se sounds like it would have similar connotations to it if used to refer to a person. English basically has a stock conversation for sci-fi about nonhuman/humans treated as nonhuman that goes “Recently, he*-” “It’s not a he, it’s an it”. In stories where the conversation happens onscreen the audience is generally assumed to side with “he is a person, not a thing.”
*Or she; prior to singular they becoming widely accepted in the modern era he was the standard default; for a period he technically was neutral but connotated masculine. Anyways, she is used if discussing an AI that seems female/nonhuman that is female, he has historically been used otherwise.
jenninsb
8 years ago
@Cerberus
Thank you for this explanation.
I’ve seen this pattern before on this WHTM, and been confused. I think if I came in to a new space, offered a bunch of people my incredibly wise insights, and they didn’t want them, I’d just leave. I wouldn’t go on for a bazillion words trying to convince them of my wisdom.
Maybe there’s a distinction between trolling and arguing in bad faith to be made. Sometimes, diverting from the original topic seems to be the whole point, but in this case, the original topic was so trivial that doesn’t make sense.
The whole thing annoying nevertheless.
Alan Robertshaw
8 years ago
I’d never considered before that the ‘o’/’a’ thing for girls’ and boys’ names comes from the Latin. It’s funny how some names just sound male or female, but of course presumably that’s just because I’m conditioned by what I’ve heard all my life.
I’m thinking now of created names for sci if and fantasy works. A lot of those seem to just ‘sound’ male of female, even though they’re completely made up and have all sorts of random letters and punctuation marks. Again that’s presumably because there’s some underlying rules based on how we gender names in real language?
guy
8 years ago
I think English feminine names tend to contain more vowels and end with them more frequently. That’s definitely true of some of the ones that started masculine and drifted to feminine like Claire. Or Christopher vs. Christine. English gets stuff from a lot of languages, but my “masculine or feminine?” sense tends to match Latin rules.
Skiriki
8 years ago
Re: names.
Finnish names tend to get funny here, because there doesn’t seem to be any significance regarding ‘a’/’o’ division, even if Latin and Biblical names have been influencing us for over ten centuries.
Quick, pick which names are men’s and which are women’s (and don’t Google either!):
What is weird is that names are fairly strongly gendered, and in a manner “you just gotta know what’s what”, although there are couple of names that have, during the years, occasionally swapped camps or coexisted peacefully in both.
As a fun bonus: if you know how to pronounce Japanese, then you can pretty easily speak Finnish (and vice versa). Our syllablic structures are fairly close to each other… and sometimes, Finnish words resemble Japanese words.
To the point of embarrassment.
For example, we used to have Prime Minister whose name was Esko Aho.
Homework: Figure out why this was a tad hilarious combo! đ
My Japanese is somewhat limited, but I’m guessing “stupid girl” or similar depending on kanji.
Skiriki
8 years ago
In that ballpark, yeah. “Aho”, slightly depending on dialect, occasionally swaps meanings with “Baka”, but if we go with “daft” as a non-ableist compromise, I think we can say “close enough”.
Shiny gold star for you!
Mind, in my opinion, he was a pretty daft dude and I had immense dislike for his policies, but in retrospect when compared to some ministerial people we got right now, he’s downright charming and solid thinker. *sigh*
EJ (The Other One)
8 years ago
@Alan:
It’s because most languages invented for fantasy books by white people borrow extremely heavily from Latin.
Leda Atomica
8 years ago
Is it me or are there a lot of us Nordics here? I know Skiriki is a Finnish comrade and IP a Swede. đ
ETA: Thanks so much for the language talk, the vast knowledge of the commenters here is not low on the list of things why I come here.
opposablethumbs
8 years ago
Absolutely, we get so accustomed to certain associations we tend to make them without thinking.
(Which is why I keep having to remind myself every time that Andrea is typically a man’s name in Italy.)
Skiriki
8 years ago
Leda Atomica: yeah and there’s Arctic Ape who is a Finn and tons of more people who are from Nordic regions, yup yup.
IMHO, the mix of various nationalities is one of the best things in this place. Because it gives healthy perspective, if one manages to really listen… er, read people, who share their experiences.
And side discussions are fun! Even if the main topics are rather grim.
Imaginary Petal (formerly dhag85, trying out pronouns - they/their)
8 years ago
Lanariel is Swedish, Monzach is Finnish, right?
Monzach
8 years ago
@Skiriki and @Leda Atomica
A fellow Finnish person over here! *waves*
Shall we meet at a market place somewhere? ^_^
ETA: It seems I got ninja’d by Imaginary Petal… Ă´.Ă
Alan Robertshaw
8 years ago
@ skiriki
Is everybody in Finland named after a rally driver? đ
@EJ
That’s what I guessed. I was going to ask about writers from other countries, but that’s sort of been answered.
Dalillama
8 years ago
@Skikiri
(well, actual Icelandic Odin-worshippers said âplease stop, this is not what Odin is aboutâ, but hey, who cares about that when it is getting on the way of hate?).
That particular split has been going on pretty much since the beginning of the neopagan revival. The non-racist ones call themselves Asatruar, the racist ones call themselves ‘folkish’ Asatruar, or often Odinists, and the two groups hate each other like poison.
Then thereâs the old-fashioned plural-you, aka âteitittelyâ. Normally, Finns are very much about âbeing on singular-youâ basis after first introduction, but it is not that long time ago when it was polite to ask strangers âWhat would you likeâ (âMitä teille saisi olla?â) (for example), where âyouâ is the plural form (âteâ), a bit like âroyal weâ, but instead used by others about you and giving you a slight boost of status/respect.
French is similar, and English used to be, although not for a few centuries now (thee/thou was the singular/informal form, you was the plural/formal form, but is now the only form.)
Quick, pick which names are menâs and which are womenâs (and donât Google either!
I actually knew Pirkko, but that’s only because there was a story in a folktale collection I had as a kid where the protagonists were Pirkko and her brother whose name escapes me. IIRC they played cruel jokes on the king until he died and they took his place or something.
We Hunted The Mammoth
And “han” will confuse people because in English it might make you think of a Chinese dynasty, and “hon” will confuse people because in English it’s a contraction for a term of endearment … and “han” is 3rd person plural present indicative of the verb “to have” in Spanish, and “hon” is short for “honourable” … and seriously, they pretended to worry about “hen” meaning a bird in another language from another country altogether?!?!?! Wow.
Um, this is really just to say – hi and thanks; reading with interest. Also the Magna Carta bit. (And marvelling at the weird troll who pretends to think that condescension out of the blue makes a good “hello” (and who thinks anyone would refer to anyone else as their “fellow sisters”).
@WwTH
I know you’re talking about mostly trolls and rape apologists, but I’d like to add that some of us actually did grow up with the assumption that if you report a crime, of which you are the victim, people will protect you and the police will make sure the perpetrator is arrested and brought to justice. This was mostly as a consequence of never personally having to deal with law enforcement at all.
When I was, let’s say, in my late teens or early 20s, I probably thought “just report it to the police!” was a reasonable response to someone who said they’d been raped. Of course, I was always of the mindset that one should be able to change one’s mind and assumptions when faced with evidence, and I have often thanked feminists for bringing tons of things to my attention which I would’ve probably never discovered on my own.
So I would say this does actually happen, but maybe not in the context of talking to obnoxious rape apologists on the internet.
@Skiriki & Alan
No worries about the name thing, I honestly didn’t even notice. :p
@imaginary petals: that was really interesting, thank you! I’d love an English equivalent, though repurposing ‘they’ when i’m unsure about the gender/pronouns of the person i’m talking about has worked so far.
I need to go and look up this Timecube now…
@SFHC: Your job is AMAZING.
@Imaginary Petal
The fact that the Ă land Islands (or Ahvenanmaa in Finnish) belongs to Finland is actually the last decision of the League of Nations that’s still in force. When you start to think about it, it’s pretty appropriate that the situation is seen as fairly unfortunate by the inhabitants of Ă land who would much rather belong to Sweden. đ
I am quite up for foreign grammar discussions. Incidentally, the reason why second-language learners have trouble with han and hon is probably from Latin; a is used as part of the endings in the first declension, which is mostly feminine, while o is used for several of the endings in the second declension, which is at least mostly masculine or neuter. a is also used for neuter nominative and accusative plurals, but that doesn’t seem to have much impact on the Romance Languages.
One might as well complain that “hen” is Japanese for “peculiar.”
IP- Thanks so so much for that. I’ve got a few non-binary students in my classes who ask about non-binary pronouns in other languages and so knowing more about the specific history of “hen” in Sweden is super useful for me. So yeah, thank you.
WWTH- Very true. And it’s probably where a lot of these harasser types started using that as a means of dismissing victims.
That was really interesting, Imaginary Petal. Language is an interesting subject. It was very controversial here when we started changing the books from using terms like “fireman” to “firefighter.” I believe that was also considered PC gone out of control. I remember lots of news stories about it in probably the 80s. With our current political climate I can’t see the US ever changing pronouns even if the rest of the world did. Heck, I can’t see the US giving maternity leave or holidays to workers (these are benefits an employer can choose to give or not) or adopting the metric system. We fight change hard and for no good reason.
I’d say the US is actually pretty well on the way to standardizing singular they. It’s gotten into major newspaper manuals of style. Some people complain about having the same pronoun be singular and plural, but it’s rarely a practical issue. I have literally only seen it being an issue reading an English-Japanese dictionary, because Japanese does not have grammatical plurals but does have some specific words that are always plural and also has gender-ambiguous pronouns.
Though there is a slight point I want to bring up; there’s a difference between gender-ambiguous and genderless. “They” can mean male, female, both, or neither, while “it” is explicitly neither. Since “it” is for things and not people to the point where it’s fiction shorthand for “does not think X are people”, English does not presently have a widely accepted pronoun to specifically refer to someone who is neither, so if people who are neither care I can support an effort to make/popularize one.
Re: Finnish pronouns.
“Hän” covers all cases, ambiguous or not or totally genderless — it is a word intended to be used for humans (and in case of fiction, also for other sapient people).
“Se” (“it”) is a word for everything else — animals, inanimate objects, etc. Could be used if you write a story about making a point regarding AI rights etc. No gendered significance, either.
Of course there’s some overlap in less formal usage. Pet owners can eagerly extend ‘hän’ for their beloved animals, and sometimes people dish ‘se’ for everyone, type of being be damned.
So roughly put (singular to plural):
People pronouns:
Minä
Sinä
Hän
Me
Te
He
Not-people pronouns:
Tämä
Tuo
Se
Nämä
Nuo
Ne
Then there’s the old-fashioned plural-you, aka “teitittely”. Normally, Finns are very much about “being on singular-you” basis after first introduction, but it is not that long time ago when it was polite to ask strangers “What would you like” (“Mitä teille saisi olla?”) (for example), where “you” is the plural form (“te”), a bit like “royal we”, but instead used by others about you and giving you a slight boost of status/respect.
It was also a sign of age when people stopped using singular-you and swapped to plural-you (usually 30-40 years of age), which may explain why it went out of fashion in 80s and 90s when being forever young became a thing.
Yeah, Se sounds like it would have similar connotations to it if used to refer to a person. English basically has a stock conversation for sci-fi about nonhuman/humans treated as nonhuman that goes “Recently, he*-” “It’s not a he, it’s an it”. In stories where the conversation happens onscreen the audience is generally assumed to side with “he is a person, not a thing.”
*Or she; prior to singular they becoming widely accepted in the modern era he was the standard default; for a period he technically was neutral but connotated masculine. Anyways, she is used if discussing an AI that seems female/nonhuman that is female, he has historically been used otherwise.
@Cerberus
Thank you for this explanation.
I’ve seen this pattern before on this WHTM, and been confused. I think if I came in to a new space, offered a bunch of people my incredibly wise insights, and they didn’t want them, I’d just leave. I wouldn’t go on for a bazillion words trying to convince them of my wisdom.
Maybe there’s a distinction between trolling and arguing in bad faith to be made. Sometimes, diverting from the original topic seems to be the whole point, but in this case, the original topic was so trivial that doesn’t make sense.
The whole thing annoying nevertheless.
I’d never considered before that the ‘o’/’a’ thing for girls’ and boys’ names comes from the Latin. It’s funny how some names just sound male or female, but of course presumably that’s just because I’m conditioned by what I’ve heard all my life.
I’m thinking now of created names for sci if and fantasy works. A lot of those seem to just ‘sound’ male of female, even though they’re completely made up and have all sorts of random letters and punctuation marks. Again that’s presumably because there’s some underlying rules based on how we gender names in real language?
I think English feminine names tend to contain more vowels and end with them more frequently. That’s definitely true of some of the ones that started masculine and drifted to feminine like Claire. Or Christopher vs. Christine. English gets stuff from a lot of languages, but my “masculine or feminine?” sense tends to match Latin rules.
Re: names.
Finnish names tend to get funny here, because there doesn’t seem to be any significance regarding ‘a’/’o’ division, even if Latin and Biblical names have been influencing us for over ten centuries.
Quick, pick which names are men’s and which are women’s (and don’t Google either!):
Niko, Jukka, Pirjo, Mikko, Antti, Miika, Pirkko, Esko, Panu, Niilo, Esa, Veli, Sinita, Sisko, Anniina, Pertti, Rauha, Onni, Aino, Juho, Satu, Saku, Valo, Iro, Kielo.
What is weird is that names are fairly strongly gendered, and in a manner “you just gotta know what’s what”, although there are couple of names that have, during the years, occasionally swapped camps or coexisted peacefully in both.
Did you guess? Countdown time!
10…
9…
8…
6…
“Six? What happened to seven?”
“Just kidding!”
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
Men’s names: Niko, Jukka, Mikko, Antti, Miika, Esko, Panu, Niilo, Esa, Veli, Pertti, Onni, Juho, Saku, Valo.
Women’s names: Pirjo, Pirkko, Sinita, Sisko, Anniina, Rauha, Aino, Satu, Iro, Kielo.
As a fun bonus: if you know how to pronounce Japanese, then you can pretty easily speak Finnish (and vice versa). Our syllablic structures are fairly close to each other… and sometimes, Finnish words resemble Japanese words.
To the point of embarrassment.
For example, we used to have Prime Minister whose name was Esko Aho.
Homework: Figure out why this was a tad hilarious combo! đ
My Japanese is somewhat limited, but I’m guessing “stupid girl” or similar depending on kanji.
In that ballpark, yeah. “Aho”, slightly depending on dialect, occasionally swaps meanings with “Baka”, but if we go with “daft” as a non-ableist compromise, I think we can say “close enough”.
Shiny gold star for you!
Mind, in my opinion, he was a pretty daft dude and I had immense dislike for his policies, but in retrospect when compared to some ministerial people we got right now, he’s downright charming and solid thinker. *sigh*
@Alan:
It’s because most languages invented for fantasy books by white people borrow extremely heavily from Latin.
Is it me or are there a lot of us Nordics here? I know Skiriki is a Finnish comrade and IP a Swede. đ
ETA: Thanks so much for the language talk, the vast knowledge of the commenters here is not low on the list of things why I come here.
Absolutely, we get so accustomed to certain associations we tend to make them without thinking.
(Which is why I keep having to remind myself every time that Andrea is typically a man’s name in Italy.)
Leda Atomica: yeah and there’s Arctic Ape who is a Finn and tons of more people who are from Nordic regions, yup yup.
IMHO, the mix of various nationalities is one of the best things in this place. Because it gives healthy perspective, if one manages to really listen… er, read people, who share their experiences.
And side discussions are fun! Even if the main topics are rather grim.
Lanariel is Swedish, Monzach is Finnish, right?
@Skiriki and @Leda Atomica
A fellow Finnish person over here! *waves*
Shall we meet at a market place somewhere? ^_^
ETA: It seems I got ninja’d by Imaginary Petal… Ă´.Ă
@ skiriki
Is everybody in Finland named after a rally driver? đ
@EJ
That’s what I guessed. I was going to ask about writers from other countries, but that’s sort of been answered.
@Skikiri
That particular split has been going on pretty much since the beginning of the neopagan revival. The non-racist ones call themselves Asatruar, the racist ones call themselves ‘folkish’ Asatruar, or often Odinists, and the two groups hate each other like poison.
French is similar, and English used to be, although not for a few centuries now (thee/thou was the singular/informal form, you was the plural/formal form, but is now the only form.)
I actually knew Pirkko, but that’s only because there was a story in a folktale collection I had as a kid where the protagonists were Pirkko and her brother whose name escapes me. IIRC they played cruel jokes on the king until he died and they took his place or something.