Mindless Talk

Romanian has gender issues, not woke

Hi,

Recently, I have been thinking about how woke Romanian is. Why is it woke? Well, it's because our nouns are gendered and they change gender mid sentence, faster than the gender-affirming-surgery-drive-thrus conservative people seem to claim exist and are runing our world.

Romanian, just like many European languages, has two genders: masculine and feminine. They're called masculine because they have a specific form and when you refer to the object, you refer to it as "he." The same goes for feminine objects, you refer to them as "she."

Here is an example:

Masculine nouns:

  1. un om frumos / doi oameni frumoși (a beautiful human / two beautiful humans)
  2. un câine frumos / doi câini frumoși (a beautiful dog / two beautiful dogs)
  3. un cârnat frumos / doi cârnați frumoși (a beautiful sausage / two beautiful sausages)

As you can tell un and frumos as well as doi and frumoși stay the same. You may also notice all words after doi ending in -i. That's a pattern for masculine nouns. If you talked about humans, dogs and sausages, you would refer to them as "he." For example: "I love this saugage, he just fits perfectly in my big hungry mouth."

Feminine nouns:

  1. o fată frumoasă / două fete frumoase (a beautiful girl / two beautiful girls)
  2. o casă frumoasă / două case frumoase (a beautiful house / two beautiful houses)
  3. o carte frumoasă / două cărți frumoase (a beautiful book / two beautiful books)

Same here: o and frumoasă as well as două and frumoase stay the same. The word either ends with -e or with -i if the word already had an -e in the singular form. This is typical for feminine nouns. If you talked about books, girls and houses you would refer to them as "she." Yes. "I just bought a book and I love her!"; "My girlfriend gave me the tomato and I sliced her" is also perfectly normal because her refers to the tomato.

Romanian they

In Romanian we don't have a gender-neutral word like "they." We have a masculine version and a feminine version of it, kind of like pluralizing "he" and "she"... them hes and them shes, dunno.

  1. El - he, ei - they for MEN (it can also include women if there is at least one man in the room because... men. We are the root of all problems)
  2. Ea - she, ele - they for women.

Genderfluid or, officially, "neuter" nouns

Now.... you know a sausage is a he and a tomato is a she, but... what about a notebook, a calculator, a phone? Well... they're genderfluid af

  1. un caiet frumos, două caiete frumoase (a beautiful notebook, two beautiful notebooks)
  2. un calculator frumos, două calculatoare frumoase (a beautiful calculator, two beautiful calculators)
  3. un telefon frumos, două telefoane frumoase (a beautiful phone, two beautiful phones)

We call this "neuter," but I honestly think we should call it genderfluid. I mean look at it. It has the masculine feature of un and frumos in the singular, but the feminine features of două and frumoase in the plural. Neuter words in Romanian are kind of a mix of both. Like I would refer to one phone as "he", but to many phones as "female they."

gender changing mid sentence

"Did you see the phones she has?" - "I saw them, but I only liked the red one"

If you look at the second sentence them refers to "the phones" which would have the feminine form as shown above, however "the red one" would refer to one phone, therefore the singular form which is masculine.

Isn't that so messed up? It's like saying "Women are my favorite guy". And we just do this and pretend like it's normal. We don't even notice it.

but we have this in Spanish

sorry for being rude, but...

No, you don't. You may think you do because you say things like "el agua," but this is just so you avoid saying "la agua". Once you add an adjective, like "el agua fría," you can see that it's not the same. If it was the same, you'd say frío, and that's fine. You don't have to be as weird as we are in Romanian. Be happy you are kinda normal.

genderfluid II, second neutral

This is not real, but I remember in highschool wondering if we should just do the opposite and use feminine forms in singular and masculine forms in plural?

Here's how that would look:

  1. o carte frumoasă, doi cărți frumoși (NOT două cărți frumoase)
  2. o floare frumoasă, doi flori frumoși (NOT două flori frumoase)
  3. o femeie frumoasă, doi femei frumoși (NOT două femei frumoase)

It sounds absolutely ridiculous and stupid, but honestly so does the actual "neuter gender" that we have, so I guess it takes some getting used to! Also... I just made women men in plural in the third example. Sorry about that. That must be some Germanic influence on me, where little girls and little anything is neuter in languages like German and Dutch. My bad! I will let women be women.

#languages