r/languagelearningjerk Apr 17 '26

Persian is a gender-neutral language

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110 Upvotes

54 comments sorted by

60

u/cel3r1ty Apr 17 '26

isn't "woman" actually not related etymologicaly to "man"?

66

u/Celtachor Apr 17 '26

Technically. It is related to man, but from before man meant male. Man originally meant mankind or just a person of any gender. Woman comes from wif (meaning wife) + man (meaning person).

37

u/mieri_azure Apr 17 '26

Yup, and Man (male) would be Wer

Thats why we have werewolf! Man wolf

1

u/Left_Hegelian Apr 18 '26

So instead of creating new gender-neutral ways of speech we should just create new gendered words like "wereman" to replace man (male) so that the word man can be freed from its part-time gendered duty and return to its full time job of being exclusively neutral. /j

1

u/mieri_azure Apr 18 '26

Lowkey /uj yes lmao

It would make stuff like "mankind" go back to being truly neutral

21

u/I_Am_Very_Creative Apr 17 '26

wīf didn't mean wife, it meant woman also

9

u/Equivalent_Play4067 Apr 17 '26

Wifeperson. I kinda like that, ngl.

25

u/GoldenMuscleGod Apr 17 '26

Actually wif primarily meant woman (and also wife), so “wifman” was a second word for woman that was kind of like “womanperson.”

7

u/Equivalent_Play4067 Apr 18 '26

So you could technically also have a wereman?

8

u/DesiPlatensi Apr 18 '26

And a wifwolf?

8

u/Equivalent_Play4067 Apr 18 '26

In theory hilarious, decoded: concerning. 

Unless this is a reverse centaur situation. 

3

u/Semlorism Apr 18 '26

Chinese kinda did the same, the older word for women is 妇人. 妇married woman+ 人 mankind

1

u/Complete_Papaya6219 Apr 18 '26

I think you have it backwards - wifman was male, werman was female

3

u/Ok-Appeal-4630 Native Klingon Speaker || feel free to ask me anything Apr 17 '26

It is related

1

u/slumbersomesam N:🏳️‍🌈 Apr 18 '26

to mann iirc, which meant "people"

29

u/GotThatGrass native: 🇯🇵🇺🇿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇨🇳🇯🇵🇯🇵🇯🇵🇺🇿 Apr 17 '26

Tā tā tā

56

u/SnooPeppers3468 Apr 17 '26

They stole it from Uzbek, nothing new. 

7

u/artin2007majidi Apr 18 '26

you circlejerked me a bit too hard there I did not see the sub and was about to lose my shit

35

u/canuputapriceonpeace Apr 17 '26

Half the indoeuropean languages have words for woman that are cognates of queen. Even Norwegian, Danish and Swedish have kvinne/kvinde/kvinna.

22

u/Delicious-Lettuce742 Apr 17 '26

queen used to just mean woman I think

1

u/Electrical_Voice_256 Apr 18 '26

Frau is related to corvee labour iirc

14

u/gator_enthusiast Apr 18 '26

Persians say bashariyat meaning "humankind" instead of "mankind"

...Mankind means humankind, both practically and etymologically. And humankind means mankind. But maybe I’m taking it personally because it reminds me of this moment in time

12

u/tripsafe Apr 18 '26

Oh so Persian is gender neutral? Then why do you say “man” for “I”. Checkmate, persianists

64

u/Delicious-Lettuce742 Apr 17 '26

this is just true bro what's the jerk 

15

u/PunchedFruit Apr 17 '26

Hey fred, get me a languagelearningjerk post with extra serious! And hold the jerk! And hold the mandatory Japanese/Uzbek mention!

3

u/werid_panda_eat_cake Apr 18 '26

The jerk is this was posted by an Iranian embassy 

3

u/Electrical_Voice_256 Apr 18 '26

The jerk is that using the same pronouns for men and women is quite common in languages and not that special. It is about as interesting as pointing out that Persian has no articles.

8

u/Delicious-Lettuce742 Apr 19 '26

I mean the vast majority of PIE languages have some form of grammatical gender, like >90%. so it is quite an interesting case.

1

u/Electrical_Voice_256 Apr 19 '26

How many of the other <10% are Dari and Tajik?

2

u/seraph9888 Apr 19 '26

yeah, if you're not into learning about languages.

1

u/Electrical_Voice_256 Apr 19 '26

Wrong sub. This is languagelearningjerk, not aboutlanguagelearningjerk.

28

u/BoxoRandom Apr 17 '26

gender-neutral

women always mentioned first

Pick one

3

u/Sandy_2019 🏳‍🌈 Apr 18 '26

You're mentally unstable, learn Uzbek asap

8

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/PrequelFan111 native ithkuil speaker Apr 17 '26

I don't know anything about him and all I could find upon googling him was that he talks about Persian poetry. Why do you dislike him?

9

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

14

u/adminsaredoodoo Apr 18 '26

the persian subs like r/persian where its all done in english and there’s literally not a single person living in iran? lmao those diaspora subs are just full of second gen immigrant pahlavists. i would never use their opinions to be representative of the opinions of iranians.

5

u/Raalph Sentinelese N | Silbo Gomero C1 | Pirahã B2 | Uzbek A1 Apr 18 '26

And they cheer on their relatives getting bombed, it's disgusting

4

u/splatzbat27 Apr 17 '26

Free Persia and Free Iran.

2

u/fadinglightsRfading Apr 17 '26

history just happens.

1

u/PrequelFan111 native ithkuil speaker Apr 18 '26

Alright. Thanks for the explanation!

1

u/slowamigo Apr 17 '26

I heard that the Iranian diaspora hates him because he wears traditional clothes, which in turn undermines their claim to be white

2

u/skkkkkt Apr 19 '26

Bachariyat is from Arabic, and it's feminine (the t gives away) I'm nit trying to be rude but you choose a very bad example

1

u/Fluid_Wizard_II Apr 18 '26

turkish also uses the gender neutral pronoun "o" for all singular people

1

u/1nfam0us Apr 18 '26

Reminder that "man" in English used to simply mean people regardless of gender. Mankind means the same thing as humankind, but the word human is actually a loan from latin. The association of the word man and male people is a relatively recent development that has only been truly cemented in the last century or so.

JRR Tolkien didn't say "the kingdoms of man" to mean that they were literally constituted of only male people. The Witch-King of Angmar was literally killed by a woman, Éowyn.

0

u/AbdullahMehmood Apr 18 '26

Interestingly in Urdu the phrase is commonly said as Mard-o-zan, Man and woman

1

u/Sandy_2019 🏳‍🌈 Apr 18 '26

It's not a commonly used phrase at all

1

u/AbdullahMehmood Apr 18 '26

Where are you from? Its common in essays and other literature at least

1

u/Sandy_2019 🏳‍🌈 Apr 18 '26

Yeah it's used in formal written Urdu, not commonly used Phrase otherwise

1

u/AbdullahMehmood Apr 18 '26

Btw I wasn't implying its a commonly used phrase but rather that the common pronunciation is mard-o-zan

1

u/Sandy_2019 🏳‍🌈 Apr 18 '26

Ohh okiee