Non-binary option for characters, please?

[kikix12]

While we are at it, I fraintly remember reading some letters in german that had some fancy endings like "Student/-innen", mind explaining what that is all about? Is that an attempt to address both students male and female? Might be atleast tangentially related to this thread.

I cannot say about German specifically, but I can tell you about Polish. And I believe it IS the same as both languages have the same origin and pretty much the same construction.

Using the /- at the end of the word basically means exchanging the endings. In German and Polish, the endings define both genders and numbers (singular or plural) relevant to word (in addition to time and all that jazz).

Let's take this phrase: "Imię studenta/-tki." which means "(male) students/(female) students name.". In that word, its basic form is "student", with the core being "studen-" followed by a proper ending to show number and gender (and the rest...). It would look like this.

Singular            Plural
Me: Student         We: Studenci
You: Studencie      You: Studenci
He: Student         They (male): Studenci
She: Studentka      They (mixed): Studenci
                    They (female): Studentki

This of course changes depending on all sorts of things, like time and what not (for example "We/you are students" will be "Jesteśmy/-cie studentami" not "Jesteśmy/-ście studenci"), but that's irrelevant here as you are interested in that /- construction.

And here I used it again. Basically, you cut out the ending and offer a different one. You can achieve the same thing by "student/studentka" where you write the whole words out fully or "student lub studenka" (lub = or). But /- is just faster. You can use it multiple times of course "student/-tka/-ci/-tami", in all cases you just remove the defining ending from the first words used "student -> studen-" and replace it with whatever is after the slash "studen- + tka/ci/tami = studenka/studenci/studentami".

Yeah...Sorry for making this post a long one...but I am quite poor at keeping it simple...