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At times I can speak English fluently enough. The biggest issue bothering me is that when not carefully speaking, I mix 'he' and 'she' pronouns randomly. Example: "Jane's not here today. He's on a holiday."
When writing, I don't have this problem. The reason for this issue is that my native language has only gender-neutral pronouns so my brain is not wired for this kind of thing.
The question is: How to teach myself to use 'he' and 'she' automatically correctly when speaking?
Regel
Posted 2016-06-15T18:12:36.330
Reputation: 153
4Short of something like shock therapy, I'm not sure there's any magic "trick" that will make you automatically remember the correct pronoun. This is like asking, "How can I automatically put my fingers on the right frets while playing guitar?" or, "How can I automatically hit the right letters on my computer keyboard?" Some things are only learned through practice. – J.R. – 2016-06-15T19:30:47.380
1I'm not really looking for a magic trick. I've been using English in my workplace for 6 years or so, and despite speaking English almost daily, this particular issue doesn't seem to get any easier. – Regel – 2016-06-15T19:35:06.703
I don't think there is any way except "practice a lot". English is really pretty simple this way: men and boys are "he", women and girls are "she". Animals, maybe you call "he" or "she" if they're kind of "personal" or it actually makes a difference to the sentence. If you feel like English is tough, be glad you're not learning German or Spanish, in which every single object has a gender, or Japanese, where you have to learn how to pluralize just about every single thing differently...
– stangdon – 2016-06-15T21:17:24.713My suggestion to you, Regel, would be to start from something you're comfortable with. English has something called the Singular They which you can use as a stop-gap while you start familiarizing yourself with the proper gender-specific pronouns. When you're not sure, fall back on the Singular They, and when you are sure, use the appropriate gender-specific pronoun. That way, you can ease yourself into it with practice.
– Omnidisciplinarianist – 2016-06-15T23:31:56.8531@stangdon, English is plenty hard enough. Talk about pluralization: do we just add an -s (tree => trees)? Or perhaps we need -es (box => boxes)? Then again, might we need to add -en (ox => oxen)? Or are we talking about an irregular noun (nucelus => nuclei; goose => geese)? What about the irregular nouns that need an additional suffix (leaf => leaves)? Or those nouns that just ignore all of that and use the same form and no suffixes regardless of count (1 deer => 27 deer; 1 sheep => 4028 sheep)? – Omnidisciplinarianist – 2016-06-15T23:53:21.710
3@Sina - That suggestion should really be an answer. It's quite good. Instead of trying to get it right in day-to-day conversation, pick a time where you just practice gender pronouns. – J.R. – 2016-06-16T10:06:45.933
@Sina - I'd rather upvote your answer than your comment. – J.R. – 2016-06-16T21:38:45.783