It's really interesting how much Turkish and Hungarian have in common, we Turks also only have one gender pronoun and it's "O". So practically the same thing.
I guess it's the Ottoman influence, perhaps? They were half-occupied by the Ottomans for several centuries. Otherwise, they are completely unrelated languages.
Pronouns tend to be some of the most durable parts of a language, and the Ottomans didn't have much contact until the 1400s. I would say it's more likely similar patterns of speech traded between Uralic and Turkic-speaking peoples in north-central Eurasia.
It's really interesting how much Turkish and Hungarian have in common, we Turks also only have one gender pronoun and it's "O". So practically the same thing.
So far example:
He = O
She = O
They = Onlar (literally the plural of "O")
apparently the two words are unrelated
That's even more interesting then, I'm always fascinated by how different cultures can invent very similar ideas independently.
it's a pretty popular idea, not having noun classes:
https://wals.info/feature/30A#2/26.7/149.1
https://wals.info/feature/44A#2/18.0/149.1
I was more talking about how similar they are pronounced, not about having non-gendered pronouns, I know that is a fairly common thing.
oh, right. yeah, you get that kind of coincidence a lot i think
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I heard somewhere that 他 is originally a genderless pronoun and that 她 was invented much later as a variant after contact with european languages
apparently on taiwan they even have the gendered you: 妳, but i've never seen it used by mainlanders.
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I guess it's the Ottoman influence, perhaps? They were half-occupied by the Ottomans for several centuries. Otherwise, they are completely unrelated languages.
Pronouns tend to be some of the most durable parts of a language, and the Ottomans didn't have much contact until the 1400s. I would say it's more likely similar patterns of speech traded between Uralic and Turkic-speaking peoples in north-central Eurasia.