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

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

"What if we had two or more pronouns that drew *different* demarcations?"

Take this further - all short, common words could be given variant forms to convey extra nuance. There's a balance between comprehensibility and cramming in as much information as possible, of course, but we can put it where we like.

Personally, one nuance I find very useful is if vs. iff (meaning 'if and only if'). I'd love it to have easy way of making that distinction in speech.

Similarly with other conjunctions. Imagine if there were variant forms of 'because' to distinguish between proximate and ultimate causes, for instance.

While we're at it, I'd like some particles to indicate "I'm generalising; I know there are exceptions" or "This list of things isn't exhaustive" (the last of which I'd use just about here)

All of these would be much more useful than constantly repeating the sex of people you're talking about.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

one nuance I find very useful is if vs. iff (meaning 'if and only if'). I'd love it to have easy way of making that distinction in speech

I do make a distinction there. I pronounce "if" as /Iv/ and "iff" as /If/. Until I took phonetics classes as part of my undergrad degree, I never noticed that pronouncing "if" as /Iv/ was unusual, idiolectal even. I thought everyone did it. (Now, of course, I notice that other people don't!)

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

I've heard it drawn out in a Hannibal Lecter style. This may not be useful :-)

(S)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

There's a balance between comprehensibility and cramming in as much information as possible, of course, but we can put it where we like.

Exactly. What great ideas.

Or perhaps, I don't want to have to learn new declensions to be able to talk, but I want the option to be there.

if vs. iff

Mathematicians often notice this. I think most of the time I say "if" to mean any of the normal meanings of "if" (which can be subtly different, I don't normally specify), but if I mean "iff" I say "iffff" or "if and only if" or "exactly when", etc.

Similarly, I use "or" in normal English either to mean "inclusive or" or "exclusive or" or "and" depending on context, but sometimes say "xor" if I want to disambiguate.

"I'm generalising; I know there are exceptions"

My god! I want this so much. To be frank, that could just be the default declension, and you could preface any sentence that's actually literally true and peer reviewed with something :)

[gerald_duck]

I say something close to "ifuf" for "iff".

Similarly, I wish "xor" (which I pronounce as "ksor" rather than "ex-or") were accepted in general language.

The particle to indicate "I'm generalising; I know there are exceptions" is possibly "-ish"? (-8

[d37373.livejournal.com]

I think most of the people I talk to understand me when I say xor (pronounced witha Z), although that's possibly because I tend to use it as 'either A xor B'. 'Iff' is harder to agree on a pronunciation for.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd pronounce "xor" as "ex-or", it sounds less ambiguous. I'd even say "exclusive-or", being barely longer, if I thought that would actually make more sense to anyone who didn't know the word already (but I don't).

[d37373.livejournal.com]

Having thought about it a bit more, I pronounce the noun 'ex-or' and the verb 'zor'. Not that I would encourage people to noun their conjunctions :)

Also, how is 'exclusive-or' barely longer than any of the others? I count 4 syllables, up from 1 (x)or 2.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

OK, it is definitely longer. Just that syllables in words get scrunched up more so it's not *that* much longer, and I normally got for full names if they're actually more useful.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The one I want English to have is a clear distinction between "I am talking about something I consider a possibility" and "I am talking about something I am absolutely sure is counterfactual"; an optative mode.

[lizzip.livejournal.com]

I think the various types of subjunctive do something approximating this in written German. Not that this is massively helpful when discussing English, but It Does Happen, etc.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

*nod* classical Greek has it; insert my favourite H.D.F. Kitto quotation here.