In either your native language or a second language have you ever made mistakes with the gender of nouns and adjectives when you are speaking to describe yourself?

I remember early in my gender awakening I started to identity more with the female forms of nouns in French and one day I was at a language camp and one of the staff asked if I was okay and I replied: Ouais, j'suis très contente ('I am very happy',  with the final consonant sounded) and everyone laughed and the staff member corrected by saying Tu es "content", tu es un garçon, pas une fille! (You are "happy" [with final consonant silent], you're a boy, not a girl). It was a very embarrassing experience because I was kicking myself for getting it wrong and I was going red also because I had in some small way (unbeknownst to the others present) stated that I felt female.

In the intervening years I have studied many languages and in the course of my studies used both male and female forms depending on whether I was in public and in boy mode or writing online to people who knew I was trans. I would be addressed by the male forms in class and then when I was at home I'd write the female forms online to pen pals and such. Just today, in fact, I have an essay to write for one of my classes and found that in a few places I had written down the female forms so have to go back and rewrite the essay to make sure the forms are all male. I have an oral exam coming up and I'm having to mentally prepare myself for using the male forms.

(Thing is that I do most of my language use online and so am female but every so often find myself needing to use those languages face to face. Normally though the languages I use in the RL do not significantly mark gender).

It is interesting (and somewhat annoying) how gender is such an intrinsic feature of many European languages. It seems to be much stronger in the Romance languages than in the Germanic languages (such as English) but it's so intrinsic that it seems you can't speak about a person without mentioning their gender. Of course, language and culture are inextricably linked, so this means that in our cultures it is impossible to think of a person without automatically thinking of their gender. If we're sensitive to such things, it's difficult to be reminded of others' perception of our gender on a daily basis.

One of the things I've always liked about the Southern African languages is the lower reliance on gender in some of them. In Zulu, for example, you usually mention the identity of the person at the beginning of the conversation so your listener knows who you're talking about (for example, 'my sister') - and then the rest of the conversation is pretty much gender-neutral. You just talk about the events that took place, without directly referencing the person (their presence is implied) because the listener already knows who you're talking about.

Another Southern African language - Afrikaans - has a peculiar custom: you have to listen very carefully to the sentence structure to work out whether they're talking about a male or a female, because they use the same word for 'his' and 'she'. The basic male pronouns are 'hy' for 'he' and 'sy' for 'his'; female pronouns are 'sy' for 'she' and 'haar' for 'her'. So your sentence is likely to contain 'sy' either way and you have to actively look out for where it used in the sentence to figure out whether they mean 'his' or 'she'. 

Well I have addressed my sister using male pronouns when speaking French. She wasn't too happy. 

Quote from: Anna on January 15, 2013, 03:15:07 PM
Well I have addressed my sister using male pronouns when speaking French. She wasn't too happy. 

I've stopped even trying to speak French since every French speaker just corrects me, even my wife, (whose first language is French). But I have also said the wring thing on occasion when trying.

Spanish is my second language. In spanish gender is very important. In the beginning I often made errors when referring to myself.

I strive constantly to use the right gender when I'm talking about me. In Catalan and Spanish gender is very differentiated, and I'm still in the early stages of transition.... so it's not an automatic thing yet.

I used to deliberately get gender 'wrong' when speaking about myself in Afrikaans, particularly when referring to myself as somebody's friend ('vriend' = male; 'vriendin' = female).

I did this for the lulz because Afrikaner society is deeply patriarchal and very sexist so they'd always try to correct me, thinking I was a stupid English-speaker making a grammatical error. But I knew exactly what I was saying.

We used to joke that if you landed in Johannesburg, you should set your watch back 25 years...

QuoteIn either your native language or a second language have you ever made mistakes with the gender of nouns and adjectives when you are speaking to describe yourself?

Yes. A brother speaking to a sister is a different word than a sister speaking to a sister, so oops.
It was embarrassing at first, then funny, then a strong declaration to change the word as I changed myself.

In my native language Finnish, there is no pronouns for gender.

With English which I use at my work, people from English speaking countries have for years used She when talking about me in emails or other written documents, if they have never met me. I think their presumption comes from the fact, that the name that I was given at birth, resembles a lot a common female name in English speaking countries.

I have never corrected the She pronoun from emails, been just glad about it 

My native language is Czech, we have some nice things, verb in sentence have ending according to gender so we don't have to use pronouns, subject (like colleague, cook, skier... ) have also ending according to gender and best things surnames, most of them have have different form to male and female
Oh what a language and also some difference in writing which don't affect pronunciation 
So when I say: I am sorry for coming late. Then it is gender specific. I still have some uncertainties when I speak with someone at work for example, because when they speak about me to someone, speak as I'm girl, but when they speak to me they are little confused how to speak and I also  But it is going better
With unknown people I have no problem, because they see me just as a girl

My native language is Chinese, and fortunately there are no forms for nouns and adjectives referring genders. In a normal conversation, one will not know the gender of who you are talking about unless you clearly mention it (like using Mr, Ms, sister, brother, etc.). Although the written forms of "he" and "she" are slightly different, when pronounced they are exactly the same. However, when I am titled with a "Mr", I always feel something is wrong. Once I was traveling by metro in Nanjing where I took my university study, a little girl said "thank you ma'am" when I gave my seat to her. Her parents felt sorry for that, but in fact I was glad to be referred as a female. Of course the parents only thought I was too polite...

Quote from: sylvannus on January 19, 2013, 05:28:25 AM
My native language is Chinese, and fortunately there are no forms for nouns and adjectives referring genders. In a normal conversation, one will not know the gender of who you are talking about unless you clearly mention it (like using Mr, Ms, sister, brother, etc.). Although the written forms of "he" and "she" are slightly different, when pronounced they are exactly the same.

Adding to this, the difference in pronoun is still considered a recent change to the language influenced by western culture. They've since added a female set and the only difference is usually the switching the man radical for the woman/female radical. Some argue that the original character represented a male, because the radical is the same for man. It's only a man (like mankind) in the sense of a human or person. Anyway, it's not wrong to to use the original form when writing about someone who's female. Just depends on what you feel like. It just leaves it more ambiguous until you add other details that help you define the person. Therefore, if you get misgendered male by a Chinese elder struggling to speak English and are called 'he' (they do that to everyone), it probably isn't intentional; the ones with a better grasp of the language will try and self-correct, but the ones who trying to make it to the punctuation are not even going to realize what they just said. 

Jeeze...I'm still trying to master English (my only language).  Luckily I'm only 59 so there's still time to get it right.