Pronouns
Unsure what pronouns to use when addressing me? Don't worry, it's not that complicated. If a language has a gender-neutral pronoun (that is not seen as a prejorative when referring to humans, such as neuter in most cases), I'm fine with it. Otherwise, I generally prefer feminine grammatical variants.
Below are some pronouns I prefer in languages I speak.
English
Singular "they", so they/them/their/theirs/themself. The plural reflexive "themselves" is also okay.
German
As a German native speaker I am entitled to say this language sucks when addressing non-binary people.
The German language has no widely-used gender neutral pronouns, so I am okay with the gramatically feminine form ("sie").
There are however movements to establish gender neutral pronouns, the (seemingly?) most widely covered one being the "sier" and "xier" pronouns by Illi Anna Heger. Out of those, I'm cool with "xier".
I also found (initially through a mistake) "xie" to be a nice pronoun in German. It's basically "sie" (feminine) but starting with an "x". It's more or less homebrew though.
Here are some tables relating all of the pronouns I accept in German.
Personal pronouns
| "Family" | Nominative | Genitive | Dative | Accusative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xie | xie | xihrer | xihr | xie |
| xier | xier | xieser | xiem | xien |
| sie | sie | ihrer | ihr | sie |
Relative pronouns
| "Family" | Nominative | Genitive | Dative | Accusative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xie | die | deren/derer | der | die |
| xier | dier | dies | diem | dien |
| sie | die | deren/derer | der | die |
Possesive pronouns
Possesive pronouns relate two nouns. They can occur together with a noun or as a stand-in for a noun which are two distict variants. Possesive pronouns also vary based on the grammatical gender of the noun they refer to and the grammatical gender of the noun they relate to (and of course the grammatical case). This would be a four-dimensional cube, so I've ommitted spelling those out here. In general:
- xie (how I've defined it at least) uses the same ending as sie but the base (Stamm) is "xihr".
- Sie hat ihre Tasche vergessen. (Reference example only using "sie" pronouns.)
- Xie hat xihre Tasche vergessen.
- Xie hat xihrer Freundin geholfen. ("Freundin" is referred to with "sie" pronouns.)
- Sie hat das ihrer Freundin zu verdanken. ("Freundin" is referred to with "xie" pronouns.)
- xier uses "xies" as the base form and suggests "-a" as the ending.
- Xier hat xieser Freundin geholfen. ("Freundin" is referred to with "sie" pronouns.)
- Sie hat das ihra Freundin zu verdanken. ("Freundin" is referred to wie "xier" pronouns.)
If in doubt, defaulting to the feminine form is fine.