Somethings been bothering for a long while and sounds really silly but I've been wondering if I'm alone in this. My second language is Italian and there have been times in my life when I've been literally years without speaking or writing English, hence the stunted prose you are reading...

The issue is this. Have been avoiding speaking in Italian or contacting my italian friends and family because it forces me into a gender choice. One has to speak as a man or as a woman there is no middle way and no possibility of avoiding the issue. Even switching tenses doesn't really work as sooner or later one comes up against it. On a plus side there is of course no his and her's but he and she remain.

I default to the male but feel terrible doing so as it seems cowardly but on the other hand it feels uncomfortable the other way too. Perhaps in Spanish & Portuguese it is the same, I don't speak either so have no idea as to whether that is true. It's doing my head in. Just today I was having coffee and the guy making it knows and spoke to me in Italian and I replied in English. Felt bad as he's Gay, has me sussed and probably knows why I did that. Paranoia...

Does anyone else who is either a native speaker of Italian/Spanish/Portuguese or uses it frequently encounter the same issues, and if you do what choices do you make?

I suppose, if they are both equally wrong, pick the one that suits the moment best.

I have a lot of Portuguese speaking kids at the school I work in and I always use the feminine form because it makes them smile.

Quote from: Pica Pica on September 20, 2011, 01:59:31 PM
I suppose, if they are both equally wrong, pick the one that suits the moment best.

I have a lot of Portuguese speaking kids at the school I work in and I always use the feminine form because it makes them smile.

Interesting, with little kids perhaps but surly teenagers could be well different. Just wish I had to deal with languages that don't have these issues, it makes me smile when Wolof and Indonesian speaking friends struggle with he and she in English.

In spanish, I do a lot of pronoun dancing. I've been doing it so much that it sort of feels natural, and I do try to make it conscious which gender am I using when talking.

I can't think of any particular example. Basically I get away by third-person-ing like, instead of saying "soy una programadora" (im a programmer) I would say "Yo programo" (I do programming)... i dunno.

Isn't "Yo programo" gender neutral?

Programmatore/programmatrice... see where you're coming from there. Sono andato/sono andata etc are the real unavoidable ones in Italian, I could get round the programmer stuff by saying "I programme computers" and would and do similar.

Quote from: mimpi on September 20, 2011, 02:58:15 PM
Isn't "Yo programo" gender neutral?

Programmatore/programmatrice... see where you're coming from there. Sono andato/sono andata etc are the real unavoidable ones in Italian, I could get round the programmer stuff by saying "I programme computers" and would and do similar.

sono andato = i went (and did) ?
if so, you could say like, "something happened", as in, change the verb from who did it to what happened ?
that sometimes helps

Quote from: ZaidaZadkiel on September 20, 2011, 03:06:44 PM
sono andato = i went (and did) ?
if so, you could say like, "something happened", as in, change the verb from who did it to what happened ?
that sometimes helps

Beh.. as in "sono andato al supermercato" - "gone to the supermarket" for example. Could be shortened to "andato/a al supermercato", "al supermercato" in written form I suppose or verbally as " sono al supermercato" (present).

Wish I knew Spanish or Portuguese instead, would have changed everything, Italian is totally useless as a language and Italy is no longer the country it was in my youth. I miss it.