Gender-neutral language in Welsh?

Hi @chris-43, thanks for posting. I have looked at this thread before because I am non-binary too and have wondered how this works out with Welsh. I never really found the strength to post anything here before, especially since the post has been dormant so long, but I’m so glad you did! You’ve given me the courage, so thank you! I never feel all too comfortable with personal pronouns in English to start with, I’ve never felt like a he or a she, and I find they to be really lovely when other people request it, but for me… who knows? I am curious to see how this will affect my journey with Cymraeg as well.

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Thanks for saying hello @sasha-lathrop! :smile: The more who say hello the more comfortable and confident we’ll be carving out our spot!

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Hi @chris-43 and @sasha-lathrop! It’s so cool to see this thread helping other non-binary people, so thanks very much for resurrecting it :grinning:

If either or both of you would ever like to talk (in Welsh or in English) about handling non-binary-ness in Welsh, I’d definitely be up for that! For me I’m fairly settled in my approach, which in theory is to use “nhw” and not use any gendered mutations (as with “nhw” normally), but I’ve barely put it into practice because I don’t get the opportunity to use my Welsh very much. Feel free to PM me to chat and/or exchange Skype/Slack details, if you’d be interested!

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Thank you so much! I’m keeping tabs on this thread and will certainly keep this offer in mind, especially for when I know the language a little better :slight_smile:
And good to see you’re still part of SSiW!

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Also keeping tabs on this, since my partner is likewise an enby.

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I’m fascinated by this old string, and I’d like to hear views from other native Welsh speakers about the use of “ti” or “chi” as a marker of social position - much like “tu” and “vous” in French. I’ve lived outside Wales for about 50 years, so things may be different now (and a difference for the better), but this was a big though subtle issue of social nicety: address Nain as “ti”, and you’d be in big trouble. I think that’s why the “they” formulation makes me uncomfortable: the plural pronoun is a marker of social distance, at least in my head, and to use it to refer to a friend (who is close enough to be “ti”) who prefers a neutral pronoun makes me want to (though I don’t) apologise for rudeness.

So this issue isn’t quite the same in Welsh, as it is in English. Or am I an anachronism?

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Last year, a petition was submitted to Senedd asking it to introduce a non-gendered pronoun “ŵ”:

Introducing a new pronoun into the Welsh language, “ŵ”, would allow people who identify as a third gender to be referred to in a way that reflects their identity.
Far a possessive, “Ei” still being used, but causing no mutation. For prepositions, the 3rd person ending could be used, but with “w”, rather than “o” or “i”. For example: “Arnw”.
For gendered professions, such as “Athro”, “y” could be added to the end, forming “Athry”, “Adeilady”, and “Meddygy”. (https://petitions.senedd.wales/petitions/200009)

It was rejected because the Senedd can’t legislate on grammar, essentially, but if enough people use it, it might catch on… “ŵ” of course is also not that far off from “nhw” so it might work nicely.

Just to add, though, in my workplace we are encouraged to add a bilingual pair of the following to our e-mail signatures:

English:
My pronouns are She/Her
My pronouns are pronouns He/Him
My pronouns are pronouns They/Them
Welsh:
Fy rhagenwau i yw Hi/Ei
Fy rhagenwau i yw Fe/Ef
Fy rhagenwau i yw Nhw

So ‘nhw’ seems perfectly fine.

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Interesting! I didn’t know about that petition, but it seems quite a lot of thought has gone into it. It probably needs some reasonably big Welsh organisation to start offering it as a possibility, then it would become more debate amongst Welsh speakers. Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

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My instinct would be to kind of adopt “nhw”. Like “Mae nhw’n…” (as opposed to “Maen nhw’n…”). Or you could avoid using any pronoun (Mae’n…) but that gets tricky with other verbs and other tenses. Maybe we could re-adopt “hwy”, the archaic form of “nhw” (hwy + nt > hwynt > nhw)? So “Mae hwy’n…”. Then we could probably use “eu” as the possessive form. And because it does not cause mutation, it is distinguished from the "ei"s. Or we could just spell it “ei” (to differentiate it from the plural form) and have it not cause mutation (though, depending on circumstance, it could be mistaken for the feminine form).
Personally, I would go for “hwy” and “ei” (no mutation) and keep the verb forms singular.

Oh, just noticed I have some real life experience of this now and can contribute! Nothing that hasn’t been suggested, I’m just confirming that where I live (Bangor) this is how I use and have heard other people using gender-neutral pronouns :slight_smile:

I have a couple nonbinary friends I speak Welsh to here (and quite a few more that we might sometimes talk about in Welsh as they’re common friends), and “nhw” is what we go with, I’ve yet to come across someone who was too confused about it to understand! When I text I’ll write “ei” and just not mutate and I’ve seen other people do that as well. (in speech it sounds too similar anyway)

In terms of sharing pronouns, most people I talk to find it weird to follow the pattern of English (she/her, he/him) because it just doesn’t make sense in Welsh (fo/ei, hi/ei… it’s ei either way!), so we’ll just share one: “be di rhagenwau ti?” “jyst nhw” or "dwi’n iawn efo “hi a nhw” or “dwi’n defnyddio ‘fo’” etc… Although I’ve seen all kinds of different ways of trying to stick to the pattern online (I’ve seen people do a northern/southern thing with fo for example), in my experience people won’t do it out in the wild :smile:

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I dont understand the need to identify as anything. Im not bothered if someone calls me mr sir or just my name. Just be polite have manners. I might need educating. Why is it such a big thing

So, it’s less a need, more just a part of who the person is. You (I assume) are a man - you don’t consciously identify as a man, you just are one. It’s pretty much the same with trans people - they don’t consciously identify as their gender, they just are that gender. A trans man (that is, someone that the doctors said was a girl when they were born) knows that they’re a man the same way that you know that you’re a man. In the case of non-binary people, we’re talking about people who know, just as firmly as you know you’re a man, that they are neither a man nor a woman. When we say that someone identifies as a given gender, that means that it’s a part of how they view themselves.

With that in mind, I assume that if somebody insisted on calling you ma’am, and using feminine pronouns to refer to you, you would get upset about it after a while; not because there’s anything wrong with being a woman, but because they’re disrespecting a core part of who you are. That feeling is what many trans people experience on a regular basis, except they’ve had the whole of society treating them like that for most of their lives.

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I find myself nodding away to every thing you’ve said, you say it so well too.

Hi!
Unfortunately I don’t know anything about how gender works in Welsh yet, because I have only just “mastered” challenge number 2 of level 1, but my mothertongue is German, another language with grammatical gender, so I had an idea:
In German you could theoretically avoid having to use someones name all the time while also staying within the traditional grammar rules by taking an extra step like “This is Luca. Said person has an little red car which she loves very much.” where now “she” would only be used as a pronoun because “person” is a female noun, and would not indicate any real gender because even though the word “person” is grammatically female it’s meaning is gender neutral. The construction is a bit clunky because you are now required to move through three different ways of describing someone and do so in a specific order rather than just switching between their name and pronoun whenever you like, but I think it would be functional.
A problem that this would have in German is that people have nowadays (maybe under the influence of English) started “correcting” pronouns to match the real life gender of people even after using nouns with grammatical gender that doesn’t mach, so using female pronouns after “person” (or male ones after “human”) could be misunderstood to actually mean something even though it technically shouldn’t. But maybe (hopefully) Welsh doesn’t have this problem? Could something like this work?

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Maybe that could end up being one of the ways people deal with it :slight_smile: