Nonspecific gender pronouns (Article)

[jamaesi]

That's sad. People ought to know better.

And people get even more upset when people want to be a different gender. It makes me sick.

[Ardent Listener]

Originally Posted by jamaesi

And people get even more upset when people want to be a different gender. It makes me sick.

Do not ever let them make you ill dear one. But on this issue, we can agree.

[Unedited]

I like the idea of nonspecific gender pronouns, but I don't like 'sie' and 'hir.' Mainly, because the way I approach the pronunciation of unknown words, leads me to see them as prounounced identically to 'she' and 'her.'

I usually use 'they' and 'their' and 'them' when I'm trying to be nonspecific. It'd be nice to have something that doesn't require me to use bad grammar.

[Jaymes]

The other variants (zie, zir, zu, xe) don't (to me, anyway) sound like she or her; to me sie actually reminds me more of he than she Hir's rather feminine, but it looks to me like a splicing of her and his, so I'm content with it.

[michel]

Originally Posted by Unedited

I like the idea of nonspecific gender pronouns, but I don't like 'sie' and 'hir.' Mainly, because the way I approach the pronunciation of unknown words, leads me to see them as prounounced identically to 'she' and 'her.'

I usually use 'they' and 'their' and 'them' when I'm trying to be nonspecific. It'd be nice to have something that doesn't require me to use bad grammar.

Actually, that was pretty much my reaction - for some reason, sie and hir sound Germanic, and don't seem to 'fit' in our language; maybe it's just me.........

But if anyone specifically says that they'd rather be addressed that way, it's no big deal to me..............

[Unedited]

Originally Posted by michel

Actually, that was pretty much my reaction - for some reason, sie and hir sound Germanic, and don't seem to 'fit' in our language; maybe it's just me.........

That's exactly what I thought! Before I clicked on the link, I thought we were discussing German!

[Lintu]

I speak Finnish, which is almost entirely gender-neutral. There are words for girl, woman, and mother (and also queen), but the "human" pronoun is completely neutral, as are most of the people-nouns. It's nice that you don't have to deal with the "everyone find his or her coat" annoyance, but it also makes it a little more difficult to distinguish people.

[michel]

Originally Posted by Lintu

I speak Finnish, which is almost entirely gender-neutral. There are words for girl, woman, and mother (and also queen), but the "human" pronoun is completely neutral, as are most of the people-nouns. It's nice that you don't have to deal with the "everyone find his or her coat" annoyance, but it also makes it a little more difficult to distinguish people.

As a French and Spanish speaker, I am more used to making distinctions in sexes, gramatically - you would need many new words to define the distinctions if you were to stretch your idea to those laguages.

[Shadow Wolf]

I think using nutral gender words is dumb. If we did use them, it would be hard to tell who is who in a news article in a paper.
I just thought this up, it would be a man beating his wife.

Sie hit hir, and then hir hit hir back. Sie screamed I am not yours, but Sie strongly replied, yes you are as sie struck hir in the face, breaking hirs nose. Out of a fit of rage, Sie picked up a crowbar and hit hir on the head, collapsing sir's skull. The police arrested sie, and hir's is awaiting trial.
That is why using gender-nuetral pronouns can be dumb. It would be much better just using he and she, him and her, because, like Kreeden said, we all have a gender.