Gender neutral pronouns

[jack]

I'm sure you all know the history of Gender neutral pronouns. And most think the question is mostly settled, although not agree in favour of what :)

However, it occurs to me some reluctance might come from the fact that although I have a little voice in my head saying "Women and men are the same. Gender neutral is good" I have a great big klaxon blaring "ALL INFORMATION IS GOOD! LEARN THINGS! BE INFORMED! COMMUNICATE FULLY! INF. ORM. ATION. GOOD." :)

That is, apart from not being aesthetically fond of most of the choices of gender-neutral pronouns, I'm not fond that that word choice is deliberately less informative. If you're talking about a genuinely neutral (eg. hypothetical) or ambiguous person, or you don't know, there's no information lost, but I still only use the pronouns where I have good reason.

But today a friend made another reference to the concept of "Geek as gender" and something occurred to me so obvious I couldn't believe it hadn't before.

What if we had two or more pronouns that drew *different* demarcations? We already have special pronouns for royalty and gods. ("Her Royal Highness's" etc and "His" etc).

You could adopt the archaic second-person model and have "te" (pronounced with a long e), "tis" and "ter" and "ve", "vis" and "ver" for intimate acquaintances and others. Or for social acquiantances and work acquaintances.

Or have different pronouns for different groups people can adopt as whatever they feel like identifying as in a certain concept. (Of course, you shouldn't identify solely as one thing, but most people are happy to identify as one thing but others as well.) Perhaps two sets would be most common ("he" and "she" or some other division), but that someone would borrow the Sindarin or Quenya pronouns from Tolkien and use them when affectionately referring to people from the Tolkien society.

Of course, now we near the Chinese problem of having too many, and having to decide when meeting someone whether to use the very formal or the extremely formal version of their pronoun.

But on the other hand, it seems more positive, as choosing to use such a pronoun doesn't sound like "my gender isn't important to me" but "this other aspect of our acquaintance is more important". And if you have a good reason to use other pronouns, it's not so jarring when someone does.

I'm afraid I haven't thought this out in detail, but I thought it was a lovely idea.

Comments

What do you dislike about singular "they"

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Nothing particular, I just don't like how it sounds, although I've got used to it. The information thing just occurred to me as maybe some reason for that. But I think mainly, when I first heard it, it sounded ok for general people ("if the customer froblicates the hypothy, they should something the battery acid with...") but just sounded wrong for specific people ("I can't tell from xxxx's username if they are male or female"). Now I'm used to it, and admit it's probably the most pragmatic solution.

Re: What do you dislike about singular "they"

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

It was good enough for Chaucer, it was good enough for Shakespeare, and the politics of the folks responsible for getting inclusive "he" standardised into the English language are not ones I wish to be associated with, so singular "they" is definitely good enough for me.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

Well, that and the fact that Fowler was just plain wrong about so very, very much - split infinitives my arse, etc. English Ain't Latin.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

*split infinitives your arse*

Oh yes, there's lots and lots of prescripted "accepted" stuff I rejected as soon as I found out that it wasn't the only way to do things.

Re: What do you dislike about singular "they"

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I'm not saying it's inherently wrong (I didn't actually realise that it was such a deliberate thing to get rid of it). It just happens that as I learnt English, it just didn't sound natural to me. (I was never convinced that generic "he" was a sane idea, but it sounded grammatical when it was used. At least for unspecified people and people at all likely to be male, not people who probably weren't.) I've got used to it, I definitely avoid any generic "he"s, and given the history it makes sense to use it and it's probably the best option as a generic pronoun, I just didn't really like it.