.thomasnl

[limber radish]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[pulsar swift]

Oh and how do french people keep up with whether someone is talking about a male or a female? I was listening to a podcast about this woman, but because i'm not yet used to "Son" being used even though it refers to a woman, i kept thinking there were different persons.

[night relic]

"ils" when talking about a mixed group
"ils ou elles" if you don't know and want to convey uncertainty
you can also use constructions using nouns like "ces gens-là" which do not depend on gender (just the gender of the noun you're using)

[night relic]

different languages, different ways to convey things.
possessive articles do not convey the gender of the possessor in French, it's just not an information that's being given using this construction and most of the time you just don't need it.

[torn blade]

It's not really about living in a men's world, it's just how the gender system worked. Blame Proto-Indo-European for that. Anyway, as Flynn said, you can use nouns and use that noun's gender as reference. Because of this, you can actually refer a group of just men with feminine pronouns and agreements if the noun you use to describe them is a feminine noun.

[lyric atlas]

ultimately depends on more specific context

[torn blade]

An example would be the word « recrue (recruit) » where the people you're describing are men but because the word « recrue » is feminine, you use feminine agreements

[hollow pewter]

note that there's the "iels" pronoun, but it's not "official" and is a controversial topic in France
so using it will often be associated to some kind of lgbt+/feminism militancy

[unborn cargo]

fwiw, most English possessive adjectives also don't indicate the gender of the person
"his" and "her" do, but "my", "our", "your", and "their" don't

[pulsar swift]

thanks for the insights everyone!

[pulsar swift]

Yeah, it is exactly the fact that they technically use "his" and "her" based on the noun instead of the person which is the confusing thing. But it is just something you need to get used too i guess.

[night relic]

with most possessives btw. mon/ma/mes, ton/ta/tes, son/sa/ses...

it's pretty consistent. A lot of English speakers struggle on son/sa/ses specifically despite these articles following the same exact rules as the other possessives, just because of his/her following a different logic in English

(notre/nos, votre/vos, leur/leurs only check for singular vs plural though)

[unborn cargo]

note also that for situations where you absolutely need to differentiate between his and hers you can add that information

Son chien à elle -> her dog
Sa voiture à lui -> his car
Son bureau à lui -> his desk/office
Sa maison à elle -> her house

[pulsar swift]

my first instinct is translating that to "his dog of hers". This is going to take time :p