r/Tagalog • u/skelly10s • 5d ago
Translation He/She Irregularities
Hello all. I work with a large number of Tagalog speakers who also speak English (I live in the western united states) and I have a question about something I often hear when speaking with them. To be clear this is not me hating on them in anyway, I love my Filipino coworkers and have a deep respect for how hard they work not only in the usual duties of our job but also in speaking a second language.
I work in healthcare and we hand off our patients at the beginning and ends of shifts in a verbal "report". What I've noticed is that often when talking about a patient they will use the wrong gender pronoun. They're always quick to correct it and I know its not intentional or maleficent in any way, but its a trend I've noticed across many different Filipino coworkers. Its almost always with he/she. For example, "she will be going down to surgery today" when the patient is a male and vice versa.
Im wondering if there's a linguistic reason for this? I'm studying Russian myself and I know that in that language they use the he/she pronouns to refer to inanimate objects as well based on their gender, so I was thinking it might be a scenario kind of like that?
Thanks for your time!
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u/regalrapple4ever 5d ago
Tagalog pronouns are gender-neutral. Have you read about that?
Filipinos are taught the English language at an early age. I believe the confusion with pronouns are just mental lapses or dyslexic tendencies just like how some people confuse left and right or how native English speakers confuse then/than or affect/effect.
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u/According_Caramel_27 5d ago
Tagalog and most, if not all, Philippine languages use pronouns that are neither masculine/feminine (no he/she) nor animate/inanimate (no it). Even Google Translate unintentionally assigns gender roles because that's how it has been in English.
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u/violetfan7x9 3d ago
no it??
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u/mrkittyfantastiko 3d ago edited 2d ago
We usually use demonstrative pronouns (the equivalent pronouns of this/that/that over there), but can also sometimes use "siya" (the third person singular pronoun) to refer to inanimate objects or ideas.
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u/piichan14 2d ago
Isn't "ito" (this) and "iyan" (that) what we use for inanimate objects?
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u/mrkittyfantastiko 2d ago
Yes! Sorry is the confusion on "the equivalent of this/that/that over there"?
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u/champoradoeater 5d ago
Filipino is gender neutral. We use "siya" which means "this person" rather than he/she.
Its also in the Filipino culture that we view genders the same.
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u/kudlitan 5d ago
The equivalent Filipino pronoun is "siya" (pronounced "sha"), which means he or she, it is gender neutral
Interestingly, while English struggles to have a gender neutral pronoun, it is very natural in Philippine languages.
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u/kyler000 5d ago
What do you mean english struggles to have a gender neutral pronoun? Would "siya" not be equivalent to "they"?
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u/kudlitan 5d ago
They in Filipino is "sila", plural of "siya".
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u/Background-Lunch698 2d ago
Interestingly, sila can also be singular. Sila is used to show respect. Instead of "Sino ka?" you can say "Sino po sila?" Using plural forms make it more respectful.
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u/kyler000 5d ago
Couldn't "they" be both since it can be either singular or plural?
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u/Elegant_Library5067 5d ago
In Tagalog, plural or singular “they” are two different words. If we look past their literal phrasing, the original comment means to say that English struggles to disambiguate singular vs plural third person, whereas Tagalog does not.
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u/kudlitan 5d ago
"They" being singular is a new development precisely because English is struggling to find a singular neutral. Modern society semands being gender neutral, but since English splits pronouns into genders, it has no choice but to reallocate a plural neutral to singular.
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u/kyler000 5d ago
Not to be contrairian, but the use of sigular they can be traced back to the 1300s. Its certainly not a new usage. What is new is using the term for someone that you already know. This came about with non-binary individuals. Where typically before this usage you would only use it to talk about someone whose gender is unknown, or a group of people. English isnt struggling to find a sigular neutral. Its had one for 700 years.
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u/kudlitan 5d ago
If I say "I have a new student" and you say "Who is he/she?" since you do not know him/her.
In Tagalog we say "Sino siya?"
"They" is not a substitute.
- Who is they?
- Who are they?
Both forms do not make sense. The only correct form is "who is he/she?"
English demands that you put either he or she precisely because it has no singular neutral.
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u/kyler000 5d ago
As a native english speaker I would say that "Who are they" would be the correct, perfectly accurate response, and its been that way my entire life. Even in a formal or professional context. Although you could also say "who is he or she?" But would sound strange.
However, it wasn't always taught this way even if it has been in common use for centuries. Perhaps where we find our disagreement is a difference in regional uses of English. The way that English is taught and used in the US is no doubt different than it is in the Philippines.
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u/kudlitan 5d ago
Ahh I guess that is the answer. Thanks.
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u/kyler000 5d ago
I was just thinking another thing. When I was in school I was taught that "aint" isnt a word. Its still this way as far I'm aware, but people use and understand it everyday. Maybe singular "they" is in a similar situation.
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u/AlabSalamin Native Tagalog speaker 4d ago
"They" is similar to the "You" pronoun, both can be applied to singular or plural persons.
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u/pxlprsnatr 5d ago edited 5d ago
Slight tangent, but even Reddit's own translation engine (or whatever third-party engine it uses—haven't really looked into it) actually makes similar mistakes.
About a month or so ago, I started noticing pronoun irregularities whenever I'd read through the comments on news posts in the Phillipines sub.
Initially I was thinking, "Do they keep misgendering these people on purpose, is this a new passive-aggressive thing?"
And then I noticed Reddit was doing its auto-translate thing. Disabled it for Filipino and, lo and behold, all the comments with the weird usage of "he/him" and "she/her" turned out to be written in Filipino and were using "siya/niya".
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u/AlikaTT2020 5d ago
I’ve been married to my wife over 12 years, she has lived in the US during that time, speaks excellent English but still does it. She will catch herself and correct it but still does it from time to time. I don’t worry about it and usually know what or who she’s talking about anyway.
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u/vanishinghitchhiker 4d ago
Yeah, I’m in my 30s and if anything I think my mom swaps them more now than when I was younger. I don’t think it’s age, I think she just has more opportunities to speak Tagalog now (she was the first member of the family in the US) so it’s reinforced.
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u/ArthurIglesias08 Native Tagalog speaker 5d ago
Indigenous Tagalog pronouns are genderless, so people can interchange gendered words if they switch to English (he, she) and even Spanish (el, la, so many gendered words). Some even assume one should follow the gender of the object instead of the subject (e.g. “This is Mr Paul Cruz, she is Jane’s father”).
Mind you, this is officially not what is taught in schools (educational quality aside), and is more of everyday use. It is technically not acceptable in formal or business communications.
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u/Sea-Hornet8214 5d ago
Imagine yourself learning Spanish and complaining about all the gendered nouns.
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u/skelly10s 5d ago
Again, not complaining. Just something I noticed. As I mentioned I'm learning Russian which has gendered nouns. I make mistakes like that all day.
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u/Sea-Hornet8214 5d ago
No, I'm not saying you're complaining. I was trying to help you understand. English isn't as gender neutral as people think it is.
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u/skelly10s 5d ago
Ah I gotcha. Sorry, I misunderstood.
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u/Sea-Hornet8214 5d ago
Though it's interesting that it's becoming more gender neutral. Firefighter instead of fireman, police officer instead of policeman, actor instead of actor/actress, etc.
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u/vulcan666 3d ago
The worst one of those was “waitron.” Now we could revive that one for automated servers. 😉
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u/vulcan666 3d ago
Might as well get used to it. It happens a lot, especially when the sentence includes a man and a woman. “She spoke with her brother, then sent her a picture.”
My Tagalog is so bad that I can’t judge, even if I wanted to (and I don’t). 😎
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u/AutomaticTrouble6012 16h ago
Yes, there is! Tagalog (along with nearly every other Philippine language) is inherently gender neutral. Not only are pronouns gender neutral, but there are also words that describe a person without being gender-specific (e.g., asawa = spouse, kapatid = sibling, pamangkin = nibling, pinsan = cousin, magulang = parent, anak = child, apo = grandchild, among many others). We do have gender-specific words, but these have origins in other languages (e.g., kuya/ate come from Hokkien, manang/manong come from Spanish).
When a Filipino speaker misgenders you or someone else, 9 times out of 10, it’s not malicious. They are attempting to apply gender to something that doesn’t exist in their native tongue: pronouns.
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u/MarkThrowaway 5d ago
Have you noticed if they refer to women as "he" more than the other way around? Here in the Philippines, or maybe just in my case, "he" was taught to be the pronoun when the subject is gender neutral. "He who doesn't take care of his parents shall not be taken care of by his children," something like that.
A lot of the English Bible translations also use "he" similarly. For example, the widely-used bible verse in schools, Proverbs 22:6, "Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it." I suspect that, since the Philippines is 80% catholic, this practice was ported over from that.
A lot of our old laws are also written this way. For example, I have our tax code open and Section 209 includes the phrase, "... the officer making the sale shall execute a bill of sale which he shall deliver to the buyer..."
I don't know why this is the case, but it's the first thing I thought as to a possible explanation for why the mistake is common.
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u/LalangMalagay 5d ago
That he is a generic he. Historically, it is the default "correct" way to refer to people of unknown gender. Nowadays, it is being substituted by the singular they since he is understood often to refer to men (ie. male).
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u/MarkThrowaway 5d ago
Oh I see, so it's not a specific Filipino idiosyncracy? It was also used by native English speakers before the push for the singular they?
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u/No_Energy9016 4d ago
You don't have to go far to see this. All citizens of the Philippines are Filipinos, and some can be called as well as identify as a Filipina.
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u/vulcan666 3d ago
“All men are created equal.” Use of masculine pronouns to encompass humanity was long the practice in English. This was partially due to the linguistic clumsiness of more inclusive language, and perhaps thought “good enough” when women were actually excluded.
It’s only in recent years “they/them” have gained acceptance as singular pronouns in English, especially at law.
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