[ExI] Language Changing Before Our Very Eyes

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 22/05/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

P.S.  Was anyone who read the above jolted at all by my
> insensitive male-chauvinist use of the generic "he" and "his"
> in the second paragraph?  No?  Well, would you have
> noticed if I had written "she" and "her"?   I conjecture that
> even those under age 30 still notice when the really more
> specific "she" and "her" are used, despite all the efforts of
> the politically correct over the last twenty-five years.


I find "she" and "her" jarring, calling attention to the sexism of the
language where what is really intended is a gender neutral pronoun.
Alternating "she" and "her" with "he" and "him" in the same passage is even
more jarring, and using "they" and "them" when referring to the singular is
just plain wrong. My solution is to try to structure sentences so I don't
use these pronouns unless I intend to refer specifically to a male or a
female, but it isn't always possible. What we really need is something like
Greg Egan's "ve" and "ver". Does anyone know if there are any languages
which do have such pronouns to refer to a person without specifying gender?

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070522/e0d6ff59/attachment.html>