[ExI] need a new word/suffix
Brian Manning Delaney
listsb at infinitefaculty.org
Tue Jan 12 11:01:20 UTC 2016
El 2016-01-12 a las 11:44, Anders Sandberg escribió:
> There is
> nothing like having people explicitly condemn a neologism to make it
> spread.
>
> Case in point: the new pronoun "hen" in Swedish. Constructed to mean
> "he/she", introduced in a children's book. The combination of gender
> equality, children, and language made it the great topic of arguments
> back in 2011 - political correctness gone mad! Most people groaned about
> it... and now it is used unironically by most, including media.
I live in Stockholm, so I'm familiar with "hen". I actually haven't seen
it much at all, but I hang out with culturally conservative types, mostly.
Googling [ hen site:dn.se ], for ex., comes up with hits that mostly are
about the use of and controversy surrounding "hen", not it's unironic use.
But I agree that controversy makes for the potential for something to
spread like wildfire! If Americans had chosen, say "ho", instead of
"co", as a gender neutral pronoun, they would have been much more
successful....
In the case of Sweden, we have a small enough country (with a sheep-like
enough population -- compared, at least, to the US), that "hen" could be
normalized via a state- or institution-mediated intervention, like the
elimination of the formal "Ni" (or the switch to right-side driving).
El 2016-01-12 a las 10:49, Dan TheBookMan escribió:
> > A parallel problem: trying to distinguish between "anti-immigration" and "anti–illegal immigration".
> While one can make such a distinction, it seems arbitrary from my view.
Not sure I understand. Do you believe there's no non-arbitrary diff.
between immigration in general and illegal immigration?
- Brian
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