This made me way happier than it should have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH5I5kcxZi0

More or less, I'd say like struggled to grasp it and missed by a mile but the sentiment is right. It's pretty common to use where I'm from.

A pair of fresh socks always makes me happy.

+1!!!!!!!!!!

This makes me wonder: How do non-binary people handle this situation? What conventions have developed in the non-binary community for talking about such people?

I note that, in English, singular "they" is generally not used when talking about a specific person of known gender, unless that person is non-binary or ortherwise identifies with they/them pronouns. Furthermore, some language purists disagree with this usage, but some people will point out that Shakespeare used singuar "they". (Note: Shakespeare's Engish is quite different from modern English, so it might be hard for a modern reader to understand his works, especialy for those who are non-native speakers of English.)

Of course, there is one possible situation that can arise. What if the gender of a specific character is intentionally hidden, and revealing it would be a major spoiler?

(One example of this sort of thing is the NES game Metroid: At the end of the game, if you beat the game fast enough, it is revealed that Samus Aran is a woman. The English manual takes the approach of using male pronouns to refer to her (which I would argue is not correct), so I am wondering if the Slovene manual would need to take the same approach. I am not familiar with the Japanese manual, so I don't know how that was handled, but knowing what little Japanese I know, it could easily have been written without having to refer to her gender.)

Good to know I wasn't completly off, thank you. :)

*sighs* Manual quoting again. I'll figure this out sometime after I'm done with school.
Hm, maybe I can have headings to avoid using extra spaces.

Quote 1:
- "This makes me wonder: How do non-binary people handle this situation? What conventions have developed in the non-binary community for talking about such people?"

I take it you mean in Slovene?

I've never encountered something like that, but one of my professors said he has come across "bili_e", which is good, but also a bit problematic as the immediate implication is the third person plural.
In English this would correspond to "(they) were" - due to the number and person being conveyed by the ending, you don't need to specify the "person" information like you do in English - however each ending corresponds to a grammatical gender: "bili" is grammatically the masculine 3rd person plural, or to if you mean a group of both sexes as the masculine is used for such cases because it is grammatically dominant; and "bile" to the 3rd person feminine gender.

If you had sentences like:

- "Teja so bili na zabavi." - "Teja were at the party."
The sentence is practically ungrammatical, unless you'd used it with the archaic meaning of using the plural to show great respect to someone.
It hasn't been in use for several generations, but in the past, it would be used to refer to grandparents, even if you were referring to just one grandparent the structure would correspond to "Oni so šli." - "They went.", but that's only found in very old books nowadays.

- "Peter bi rad(a) bil(a) kmet(ica)." - "Peter would like to be a (female) farmer."
Since Peter is a male name, the structure must correspond to the masculine grammatical gender so "rad" and "bil", if you used the feminine forms "rada" and "bila" the sentence would automatically be ungrammatical.
And if you had "kemtica" (the feminine form of "farmer") instead of "kmet" (the masculine form of "farmer"), even if the masculine forms are used to implication is that he would like to become a farmer and female, which sounds strange and honestly funny to a Slovene native speaker at first glance - it might work if you had someone undergoing a sex-change operation in the near future and you'd really need to stretch the context for that option, but otherwise the sentence is again ungrammatical.

P.S. To be clear, the extensive commentary here is mine, not my professor's.

On names in Slovene and English:
Oh, "Teja" in the first example is a female name in Slovene, I couldn't think of any neutral ones, sorry.
I'm not sure if that's even possible. Even if you had a name that can be used for males and females in English, like "Alex" or "Sam", you'd still have a male or female used if you used their Slovene counterparts.
"Alex" would become "Aleks" a male name and "Sam" would turn into "Samo" again a male name.
If you had "Alex" as a female character in a book you'd probably get a footnote explaining that's it's short for "Alexandra" and therefore female.
Interestingly, some names are perceived differently in English and Slovene.
E.g. "Sasha" seems to be used for males more than females in English, while in Slovene you'd have "Saša" to refer to a female (and keep the name in its original form) and you'd have to adapt it into "Sašo" to refer to a male - note the different endings for each option.

Quote 2:
- "I note that, in English, singular "they" is generally not used when talking about a specific person of known gender, unless that person is non-binary or otherwise identifies with they/them pronouns."

I'm aware of that, I meant that "they" can be gender-neutral if either the person's gender is unknown or if the speaker doesn't want to specify it. In English this is possible, but not in Slovene.

Quote 3:
- "Of course, there is one possible situation that can arise. What if the gender of a specific character is intentionally hidden, and revealing it would be a major spoiler?"

That wasn't the case in "Aga", but in general, that's how Slovene would have to handle it due to grammatical agreement, and yes it would produce spoilers.

If it were possible, you could just go with how other characters would perceive the one that wasn't revealed yet.
If other character thought of the hidden one as a "he", the structure would go with that and once the character was revealed to be a "she", you'd probably get a moment of "Wait, he's a she?!" (or vice versa, if the character was thought of as a "she" at first and was actually a "he").

If that's not possible you might see "he" like in the example you gave, but I'd be strange to see it used for a specific person and have it correspond to the wrong sex in Slovene.

I guess Slovene isn't grammatically friendly when a person's gender does not match their sex or if they're non-binary. :(


Originally meant as part of the replay to "dtgreene", but I guess the whole thing was too big for a single post.

"Ti" vs. "vi" in Slovene - like "you" vs. "thou" in English:
Oh, since you mentioned Shakespeare, there's something I forgot to mention in my original comment.

While now English would refer to anyone in the second person as "you" regardless or formality, Slovene has two forms in use: "ti" for informal contexts and "vi" if it's a formal situation and especially if you want to refer to someone respectfully.

For example if I would address a person clearly quite a bit older than me, I'd go with "vi" (presupposing I don't know them well enough to be on the informal level of "ti" with them) or if I were to refer to a professor as a sign of respect and formality (unless if I were specifically told to go with "ti", but it'd feel very strange).
A teacher would normally refer to students with "ti", but some (very few in my experience) may go for "vi", but it feels strange to be called like that if you're a lot younger than the speaker and in a socially submissive role.

"Vi" would be used by both parties in a formal setting and as a sign of respect. E.g. two business partners addressing each other.
"Ti" is usually used among peers or friends, but usually not if one speaker is above the other socially (boss - employee), unless the speaker in the socially submissive role has special permission to refer to the other person with "ti".
Clumsily put, but I hope the point is clear.

Obviously, the rest of the structure would need to grammatically agree with the speaker's choice.

Examples:
- "Maja, lahko govorim s tabo?" - "Maja, may I speak with you?"

"Maja" is a Slovene female name like the English "May".

Let's say you're addressing a friend and you'll use a structure corresponding to "ti" because there's no need to be formal.

- "Gospa Novak, lahko govorim z vami?" - "Ms. Novak, may I speak with you?"
Maybe a boss - employee situation and to be even more respectful, you are addressing your female boss by using her last name and also with the structure that corresponds with "vi" due to formality and to be respectful.

You might see a similar difference in English if you take "you" as a less formal address and "thou" as a formal one, but I don't think "thou" would be encountered today outside of Shakespeare's plays.

part 1

Originally meant as part of the replay to "dtgreene", but I guess the whole thing was too big for a single post.

The dual in Slovene:
I had to mention this to complete the overview. ;)

English takes two or more as the plural, while Slovene uses three or more as the plural.

In addition to the singular and plural as the division goes in English, Slovene also has a special category for the dual to refer to two persons or things.
Obviously, the grammatical agreement and all of the cases must be taken into account as well.

Examples:
- "Peter in Marija sta bila na vrtu." - "Peter and Mary were in the garden."

"Sta bila" is a structure that tells you this is in the past tense and that it's two people.
The form is masculine ("bila) even though there a male and a female because the masculine forms are grammatically dominant.

"Marija" is the Slovene version of the English "Mary", you also encounter it in a religious context or in a Slovene translation of the Bible. However, the name would be kept as "Mary" if it referred to a character in a non-religious book, as names are normally left as they are and not transformed into a Slovene counterpart.

You'd also get the same structure if it were two male persons, animals or two inanimate objects of masculine grammatical gender.

If you had two females the structure would change to the corresponding form.

Example:
"Petra in Jana sta bili na vrtu." - "Petra and Jana were in the garden."

"Petra" is the female version of the name "Peter" and "Jana" is a female name as well.

"Sta bili" again tells you about the past tense and the dual, while "bili" signals the past tense specifies feminine grammatical gender.

You'd get the same thing with two female animals or inanimate objects if the grammatical gender was feminine.
The provided example would also apply to neuter grammatical gender, as the form would be the same.

"Sta" is an auxiliary form of the verb to "be" in both examples.

The division of grammatical gender is also present in numbers.
Let's stick to 1, 2, 3 and to a few simple forms, so case can be left aside.

1
- "eden" - "one" with masculine gramatical gender
- "ena" - "one" with feminine gramatical gender
- "eno" - "one" with neuter gramatical gender

2
- "dva" - "two" with masculine gramatical gender
- "dve" - "two" with feminine or neuter gramatical gender

3
- "tri" - "three" with masculine, feminine or neuter grammatical gender

My sincere apologies for going so much in depth, but I had to gather all the wonderful complexity of Slovene in one place. XD
I'm actually quite proud of myself for not going into the difference between the finite and non-finite verb forms and the active vs. passive tenses. ;)

Again, thank you, Grammarly. :D

P.S.
In a previous comment I meant "feminine and masculine declensions".
*glares hatefully at Spelling*

part 2

Realized that a shot of lime goes just as well with whiskey as it does rum. Huh. Things ya learn by trying.

Just performed in a concert, wearing a new dress.

(Actually, I wore that dress in a concert for a different group last weekend, so this isn't the first time I wore the dress (not counting trying it on in the store).)

May I be curious about what kind of concert it was?

P.S. I just wanted to let you know that I made a reply to you above (third post above your own, the one directly below is just extra information), but I apparently broke the reply chain/notification in the process. :(

*sighs* One day I'll hopefully get a hang of posting without butchering the post system.

In case of TL DR: my conclusion was that Slovene is a not friendly language to people whose gender does not match their sex or to people that are non-binary because the grammer is gendered and requires either a structure going with "he" or "she".

Sorry for the mess.
*hopes the reply notification works this time*

It was an orchestra concert. (I play the clarinet in that orchestra; I also play the bassoon.)

Another permaban, so called by certain idiots turned back up.Welcome back rtcvb32.

I used to want to be in an orchestra. I play trumpet, cornet (duh), French horn... pretty much all brass instruments actually. I gave up on that a few decades ago though, sadly. Cool that you get to do it. :)