Hi, so I use any pronouns now but I tend to gravitate towards they/them as I’m nonbinary and faintly bigender. I saw a thread on Reddit asking people what pronouns would be used instead of they/them in Russian but it was full of people calling them weirdos and saying no one has to respect them. Because, you know, it’s Reddit. Anyway, anyone familiar with Russian, what pronouns can I use?
This is a thing that is avoided heavily in Russian because of general animosity towards LGBTQ topics in Russia. It can even be prosecuted as the Russian Supreme Court deemed the LGBT movement as an extremist group in 2023.
There isn’t a concept of a singular “they” in Russian. Using “они” for yourself would sound very strange because it changes verb and adjective endings as well unlike in English.
“Оно” is only used for inanimate objects.
You can kind of get away with not using gendered pronouns/endings by using passive voice like: “Мне думалось” instead of “я думал/а”
It will be easier on you and on whoever you’re speaking with in Russian to just choose between он/она (which ever you most closely present as) since so much of the language is grammatically gendered unlike English.
you could probably use the neuter pronoun “оно” maybe, but idk how that would work or if people use it. you could also just use он/она
I think они would work better no?
I faintly remember women getting an “-ova” appended to their name. How does that work? I’m totally clueless about Russian language and just curious btw.
Most Russian surnames end in ов for men and ова for women. Their Patronymic middle names also change depending on sex.
So a man named Ivan whose father’s name was Nikolai and surname is Fedotov would be:
Ivan Nikolaevich Fedotov (Иван Николаевич Федотов)
While his sister, Irina, would be:
Irina Nikolaevna Fedotova (Ирина Николаевна Федотова)
If you wanted to talk about their family as a whole their surname would become plural with a y at the end.
Fedotovy (Федотовы)
This was really interesting. Thank you.
