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I am trying to translate some things into Russia which use pronoun «ze». I would prefer not to have to make stuff up or use footnotes. Is there a gender neutral pronoun in Russian language?
(Перевод)
Я пытаюсь перевести некоторые вещи на русский язык, которые используют местоимение «ze». Мне-бы не хотелось придумывать несуществующие слова или использовать сноски. Существуют-ли гендерно-нейтральные местоимения в русском?
Uh, that's difficult. As it was said, you can use imperative constructions to hide gender, but you can't use them always. Other option is plural forms (most of them are genderless), but again, you will need to explain why these creatures are called in plural form.
As a person with amount of LGBT friends and close to LARP community in Russia, I can say that there is always big mess with gender-specific forms words and constructions. There is no way to really avoid them...
Sometimes we use neuter, but it doesn't sound really good. Sometimes we just use masculine as "default" grammatical gender. By the way, in laws and contracts two workarounds are used: something like "лицо, совершившее..." (neuter) or things like "человек должен..." (masculine as default gender).
Problem with neuter is that it sounds like no gender at all, not like unknown gender.
Maybe you could give some examples for better understanding of question?
Лицо, совершившее преступление... - neutral, fine, I do not care! 2) Персона, посетившая наш город... - female, fine! I do not care :) 3) Человек человеку - друг, товарищ и брат! - male, ok, I do not care :)
– Stack Exchange User
Jul 27 '14 at 12:19
They do not. As you may have heard from video games localisation companies, there are ways to translate things to obfuscate the gender of a person. But they are not quite natural — actually, any direct usage of an adjective or a Past tense verb applied to that person will immediately require it to take masculine or feminine agreement.
он/она. Another widely used option is to inflect pronoun according to the actual noun, e.g. сторона (в договоре) = она, пользователь = он.
– Eugene Pankov
Jul 8 '14 at 10:13
There are no gender-neutral pronouns that can be applied to a person. "Оно" has pretty much the same connotations as "it" in English. You can probably make something up, if you're familiar with how verbs and adjectives are formed in Russian, but I doubt it will be easy to read for a native speaker.
There are, however, ways to conceal one's gender in speech. That includes using passive verbs instead of active ones when it comes to past tense, but this is not always feasible (it can be done to a phrase like "я оплатила счёт", turning it into "счёт был оплачен мною", but good luck doing the same for stuff like "я вышел на улицу"). If the bulk of a text is written in past tense, you may try using present tense instead ("я вышел на улицу" becomes "я выхожу на улицу").
You can also refer to a person by name instead of using a third-person pronoun, but it's generally recommended that you avoid using tautology.
Some people use the so-called "gender gaps". The practice is controversial to say the least, as many find them confusing and hard to read. Basically you just put an underline after the gender-neutral part of the word is over, and then write a gender-specific ending, usually feminine, but usage of masculine is not unheard of. That way, the adjective "жёлтый/жёлтая" becomes "жёлт_ая" or "жёлт_ый". Thread with caution, however, as how acceptable its usage is largely depends on the audience it's meant for. If it's meant for the general population (and has nothing to do with feminism and so on), then I suggest using something else.
There's a different, but more accepted way of gender-neutral speech - putting the alternative ending in parentheses. "Грустный/грустная" can either be written as "грустный(ая)", "грустн(ый/ая)" (that's a bit weird though) or left as it is.
And some people just use masculine pronouns everywhere when they mean common gender. Some people do mind it, some don't.
Hope that helps.
Ze is quite new word, isn't it? So, why don't you just invent another word for your russian translations?
But keep in mind Russian gender is way less related to sex. I mean English has no idea of gender (in common sense, i.e. grammatical gender) by contrast with Russian, where every thing has gender: bridge (male), tower (female), bird (f), dog (primary female), rhino (m), ring (neutral), shoulder (n), body (n), et cetera. And native speakers don't mind.
Sure you know it. I mentioned it just to emphasis that the idea of gender neutralization in language is borrowed from narrow English, so your any try will probably look strange and alien to Russian. You should creatively work on every sentence.
