Pronouns are interesting. As a native speaker of English I've never entirely come to grips with the intricacies of pronouns in Te Reo Māori, and that's on me. (2 or 3, including or excluding listener? 🤯)
Very handy though that when you refer to one other person there's just one pronoun to use: ia.
@Miraz Yup. Indian languages have similar pronouns. Heck, even inanimate objects have gendered pronouns. E.g., a chair is female but bed is male. Dunno who or how it is decided but you just know.
@pratik English should have had those gendered pronouns for inanimate objects, but fortunately most of them died out. Now we have a few remnants, such as ships being she. And, of course, the sexist use of the male pronoun where actual gender is unknown: look at that butterfly, he’s so colourful!
@Miraz @pratik Chinese has an inclusive “we”. English has a lot of circumlocutions - “both of us”, “the two of us”, “you and me”. Often “let’s”is used to create both an inclusion and an exclusion. I’m fascinated by instances where usage tells the concept for which we don’t have and don’t make a word.
@mmetcalfe @pratik I love that language will find ways to express the fine differentiations that we feel are useful. And that differs from one group of humans to another.
