Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirtel
No. If you say "I saw him" or "She sat down" in Estonian, there is no way to convey the gender of the person you saw or the person who sat down. You must specify that separately, if it's necessary, or not use the third-person pronoun at all. For example, there often are dialogues between a man and a woman in English-language books where only pronouns are used to indicate who spoke (He said - She said). Can't do that in Estonian, as there is only one gender-neutral third person pronoun. So you must use other methods, like in a dialogue between two men or two women, to indicate the speaker (Martin said, the nurse said, the girl said and so on).
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Interesting, thanks. It makes me wonder how much work must involved translating into English from languages with dozens of genders, suddenly having to be compressed.
