[DISCLAIMER: This isn’t a post against a more gender neutral language, much to the contrary. I personally think it is totally unnecessary to always convey a gender while speaking about or addressing a person.]

Neopronouns in and itself aren’t really that bad when used right. If they are used as some kind of inside joke between friends to cope with the fact, that someone isn’t comfortable with their usual pronouns, the usage of them is totally justified. Now, where I think it goes onto problematic territory is, when people demand from strangers, that they use their made-up pronouns, expecting everyone to understand them and use them correctly, despite the fact that people might have a disability which prevents them from using these pronouns (because even for people, who aren’t disabled it can become quite confusing) or… and now, we’re getting to the actual theme of this post:

People who aren’t from an English speaking country either don’t understand how to use neopronouns in English and/or how to implement neopronouns into their native tongue.

Every time I see a neopronoun-user fighting with non-native speakers, who tries to explain to them, that their pronouns aren’t usable in their language, I see how former is getting angry and accuses the non-native-speaker of transphobia.

Even though is this scenario, it’s actually the neopronoun-user who is the ignorant one. Because they just assume, that every language works like English and you can just replace their pronouns with the usual ones.

Which isn’t the case and is a very xenophobic way of thinking.

I can’t speak for other languages besides German; I just saw posts about how it isn’t possible in Spanish to use these pronouns, because the gender of the subject is still conveyed in the adjectives. And I can’t imagine how they could work in languages which are even farther away from the western ones.

Now, to German.

As anyone who is learning German most likely already knows, we have a WHOLE lot of pronouns and articles, which are all gendered.

This article here which is in German sadly introduces a new set of gender neutral pronouns, which the German language doesn’t have. (We have ‘es’ but this is just as offensive as calling someone an ‘it’ in English, because it’s used for object and animals, not for people.)

As you can see, the author shows, that you actually need three sets of new pronouns (personal, relative [aka articles], and possessive) which all need to be flexed to fit the case (nominative, genitive etc.)

Which would mean, if you add everything together you come up 24 (read: twentyfour) new words, which you have to learn and use correctly.

Now, this wouldn’t be too bad, if we just take this as one new set of pronouns and implement it as an alternative to the already established one.

But can you already see where the problem with personalized pronouns would be?

Where in English, you basically have 4 new words to learn (example: bun/buns/bun/bunself) in German you’d have to learn 24 new words for every person you meet who wants you to use neopronouns.

And this is the first reason why this couldn’t work. This absolutely defies the purpose of pronouns, which is to simplify language and being able to substitute a name for a word which can be used in a more general sense (like for all women you use she, for all men you use he). To demand that people basically learn new grammar which they can use for one person only isn’t really realistic.

Another thing is that the German language is also more gendered than the English one.

A lot of words we attach to people are gendered. An example would be ‘friend’ which in German is ‘Freund’ (m) and ‘Freundin’ (f). Of course, you could come up with a gender neutral term, but the thing is: the whole reason for neopronouns is that they aren’t supposed to be gender neutral. So what kind of suffix should someone put at the end of ‘Freund‘ to fit for example bun-pronouns? (Not to mention, bun aka bunny means ‘Kaninchen’ in German, and how can you turn that into a pronoun?)

Same goes for professions. For example a medical doctor would be either an ‘Arzt’ (m) or a ‘Ärztin’ (f). So what should we call a person who uses neopronouns when they are a doctor?

Not only that, but adjectives are gendered as well. In English you would say, for example: ‘A beautiful man’ or ‘A beautiful woman’, in German you would say: ‘Ein schöner Mann’ or ‘Eine schöne Frau’. See the difference? You automatically convey a gender via the articles and the adjectives. Again, we could search for a gender neutral alternative, and again, the problem with neopronouns is, that they aren’t supposed to be gender neutral. So how would you describe a person with neopronouns in the German language? You’d had to walk around certain words as to not gender the person, for example: ‘Diese Person ist schön.’ (‘ist’ is gender neutral) [‘This person is beautiful’], thereby robbing yourself from expressing yourself freely and forming sentences like you want.

All in all: Neopronouns are already confusing and unnecessary in English and are even more impossible in German. But I think we should establish a more genderneutral language or at least a neutral alternative for German agender/neutrois or non-binary folk, so that they aren’t forced into the two sets we have. (Not to be confused with gender inclusive language, which deals with getting rid of the generic masculinum in German and an introduction to gender neutral terms when referring to a group of people [For example: ‘Studierende’ instead of ‘Studenten’]).

Sources:

A short German article about German neutrois

Powerpoint from tumblr user otherkinlogic about the correct usage of neopronouns in English

Gender neutral pronoun alternatives in English which are designed to be practical in use and adaptable for every person who doesn’t like she/he pronouns

P.S. Before you get angry: I’m very open for (CONSTRUCTIVE!!!) criticism, so if you have any ideas how to actually change the language in a practical way, be my guest!