One of the many, many reasons I love Thai:
Gender is a self spoken expression. We end our sentences with the gender marker we feel to, ka for female or krub for male, we are free to use either as we wish to. In conversation we would never assume the gender of another person, though we would make a guess about whether they were older or younger than us. In Thai culture an age based honorific is used, addressing our elders as P’ or Ba or Yai, etc or someone younger than us as Nong.
When I first encountered this, I didn’t want to disclose my age, my American self had some inner ageism at play. But the longer I’m here the more I love it, to be someone’s P’Lek 😻 is some serious Auntie love. Or to be tucked into the kindness of Nong Lek, I know that I’m being cared for.
And, to be able to end my sentences on my own terms, a “ka” when I’m feeling in my ladyness or a gentle “kub” when I’m just a little guy. No gender imposed except what I speak it to be, this is a kindness I didn’t know existed.
#thailand #thai #genderbend
miki
in reply to Jenica Lake • • •Polish does something similar, past tense verbs are declinated based on the gender of the subject. A sentence like "I went to the bank today" declinates differently depending on whether it's a woman or a man going to the bank.
It's very hard to adapt this for non-binary (people have tried, but there's no universally accepted system.)
It also makes software translation (and sometimes all other kinds of translation) literally hell.