Re: He She It They

Marshall Price wrote:
Yowie wrote:

*snip*

I would then suggest, as you have in another post, that English
speakers ought to develop an acceptable set of gender neutral
pronouns to avoid situations like the one above.

But don't underestimate the task at hand. It was no easy thing to
get the entire world to switch from the Julian calendar to the
Gregorian one, even though the arguments for doing so were
overwhelming. The pope alone couldn't do it by fiat. It required
the consent of many governing bodies the world over to fall into
line, one by one.
Getting broad consent to artificial (for they will require
artifice!) modifications to English usage will require convincing
speakers of English the world over that such changes are needed,
proper, and feasible, not only in the corridors of power, but also
around the breakfast table.

Such modifications must be easy and not interfere much in our
day-to-day thought processes. They must correct the problem, and
nothing more.

Language, as you point out, is fluid. What may sound aweful and indeed
'wrong' to you ears may sound perfectly acceptable to mine. And thus
language evolves, mostly without our active awareness of the changes (except
perhaps the older generation when listening to a younger generation), but
quite often there are a group of human beings conciously trying to change at
least a part of it.

Many folks, probably influenced by feminism, want to remove what they see as
the bias towards the male gender in the English language. We don't yet have
gender neutral pronouns, but 'se' (prounounced 'see') for the gender neutral
equivalent for what we would now use 'he or she' or 's/he' and 'hir'
(prounounced like 'hear') for him / her seems like a good start to me.

However, I think the best thing of all is simply being *aware* that English
does have a gender bias (which in no way means that other languages don't),
and to work around it (or create new words) where necessary. For example,
instead of "Policeman", "Police Officer", Instead of "Fireman", "Fire
Fighter" etc etc.

My apologies, I said I was going to drop this subject, but haven't.

Please don't drop it. I recognize my own need to understand
different perspectives on these issues, and this topic may not get a
full airing in other newsgroups.

Ok, not a problem... I wanted to drop it because I foresaw (incorrectly) we
were heading into "is too, is not" territory, and have no wish to clutter up
SRQ or indeed any newsgroup with such apointless argument. I am glad my
'prediction' didn't come true in this case, this is a good conversation.

Yowie
--
"because its more fun to be evil" - Jarppi, _The Dudesons_


.

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