#krayts berim dialect

[adragonsfriend]

*emerges out of the mist* I heard something about gender in Amatakka. Please, tell me everything, I want to hear your take on it (can you tell this is also my special interest?)

*falls out of a tree and floats gracefully back and forth several times before alighting on the ground like a leaf* part of this explanation is in my spreadsheet but there's so much more detail and reasoning to talk about.

ok so I started from the claim that there are four accepted genders among Amavikka people (which is a whole other conversation about how if you make a third/fourth gender accepted and normal in a culture you might eventually get a queer bitch (me) going "I need a fifth gender so i can disrupt this paradigm"), female, male, nonbinary, and genderfluid.

introductions

Fialleril said the introductions have a gender particle? word? thing? attached to them. It goes "Ek masa nu [name] [gender particle]." Which is probably best translated as, "I am named [name], [pronouns]."

Feminine: Ek masa nu Shmi ku. 3rd Gender: Ek masa nu Anakin ki. Masculine: Ek masa nu Owen Lars ka. Fluid: Ek masa nu Ekkreth kai.*

*Note: I have seen others use ke for the fluid gender, but I like kai because it's a pun on kai meaning "yes," ala, "What are your pronouns?" "Yes."

Also I said the fluid option could choose to do a "Ek masa nu [name] kai [other gender particle]," to indicate their current pronouns. More casually, maybe you could say, "Ek masa kai [other particle]." or "Ek [other particle]." (I have a thing about how you can drop any subject pronoun in a sentence except "ek," so that's about as short as it can get)

gender assumption

But anyway, the general concept of these gender particles means that it's immediately evident upon introduction what pronouns & gendered words the person you're talking to uses, which is really cool, but it still leaves the gap of people that you haven't been introduced to, if you forgot someone's pronouns, if you haven't seen someone in a long time and their pronouns could've changed, if your genderfluid friend hasn't told you what gender they're feeling today, etcetera. Basically, there are still lots of situations where you wouldn't know someone's gender.

I haven't introduced grammatical gender (ala french where nouns have gender that affects what articles you use), but since people have gender, and that affects both adjectives and verbs, that means that there has to be a choice made about what gender is assumed when you don't know someone's gender.

In English we are blessed to have singular they available to use for both unknown gender and (the majority of) nonbinary people, but I didn't want to make the assumption that this overlap was the same in Amatakka.

Instead what I landed on is that the feminine forms are assumed in the case of unknown gender, for two reasons. First, I think it presents more of a different look at gender to have the third gender not be associated with neutrality at all. Second, in the mythology we get Ar-amu, a woman, as the most foundational figure, as well as the story keepers being called Grandmothers in general despite the lack of any apparent prohibition on men or 3rd gender ppl taking on the role. Point being, Fialleril has already introduced the feminine as the assumptive gender.

translating gender

This creates an interesting little translation tidbit when translating back to english, where if you said, say,

"Zeechev masabu Mos Espa sip. Shu masabu uumanu*," -> "A stranger is in Mos Espa. They are human." --an imagined statement about Qui-Gon Jinn in the phantom menace

*i decided just now that human, and most other species, are probably cognates with other languages in Amatakka, hence uuman is the base form of the adjective "human"

you actually are translating "shu" (she) in Amatakka into singular they in English. If someone actually knew Qui-Gon and knew he was a man they would use the masculine pronoun, conjugation and agreement,

"Qui-gon masaba Mos Espa sip. Sha masaba uumana." -> "Qui-Gon is in Most Espa. He is human."

Talking about Padme being in Mos Espa, you would use the feminine form if you didn't know her gender, and then continue to use it once you found out she was a woman.

For the plural, there's just one third person pronoun for all three genders regardless of the make up of the group being talked about, which would translate as plural they in english. It's "shun," which is obviously using the feminine "shu" as a base.

So going back to the 3rd gender pronouns, it wouldn't be incorrect to translate them (the subject pronoun is "shi") as singular they/them since those cover a range of non-binary genders in English, but because I specifically don't really want the 3rd gender in Amatakka to be associated with neutrality at all, I usually translate 3rd gender pronouns as ze/zir neopronouns.

disrespectful form

There is also the disrespectful form, used to talk about slavers (depuran) and other people who actively uphold the system of slavery, and (sometimes) people who are in keekta-du or depukreta type situations, which isn't gendered at all in the pronouns, conjugation, or agreement, though of course other gendered words are still relevant to those people. The disrespectful form would be translated to English as whatever gender that person would usually use.

"Jabba Hutt reeue du. Sur masue du Amavikke." -> "Jabba the Hutt doesn't fly. He is not Amavikka."

The reason I'm actually attached to the disrespectful form as a concept is because of the "sometimes" I mentioned with depukreta people. Specifically because it means that by the end of Return of the Jedi, where another Amavikka person might say,

"Darth Vader masur depukrete," -> "Darth Vader is a chain-healer."

Luke would say,

"Shi masabi depukretu." -> "He is a chain-healer."

Ergo his decision to try and redeem Anakin would be evident even down to his word choice.

inanimate objects

Oh also there's a separate pronouns, conjugations, and agreements for inanimate objects

Anyway this has been a lecture on gender and other things that function in the same area of grammar in Amatakka, according to me. i hope it all made sense. if anyone feels like asking me more questions about this or has their own opinions about Amatakka i will include you in my will