4 ms·

For my money the best thing that ever happened to English was abandoning grammatical gender/noun classes centuries ago - no more masculine, feminine or neuter,

For my money the best thing that ever happened to English was abandoning grammatical gender/noun classes centuries ago - no more masculine, feminine or neuter, everything is ‘the’ or ‘a’.[0] Based on that, I propose we push for ‘it’ as a sole singular pronoun (and keep ‘they’ for plural, as knowing if someone is referring to one or many is far more useful in almost all contexts than knowing whether they are referring to a man or a woman (or ship, or country, etc.), and those few contexts where it is relevant should be easy enough to glean from other information. If you think that could never work, I'd point out that Mandarin managed without gender-specific pronouns until contact with Europeans, and even now they are only distinguishable in written form.[1] Alternatively, there's Stallman's proposal for ‘person’, ‘per’ and ‘pers’.[2] I'm doubtful of any proposal that involves creating new words (see ‘xe’, Spivak pronouns, etc. ), but everything else Stallman says seems to come to pass so maybe. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_grammatical_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_g... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns [2] https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

mabbo 7y ago
The problem with "it" is the word's existing use to refer to non-person objects. One could easily interpret being called "it" as an insult, ie: this thing is not even a human. I might not even be willing to refer to a dog as "it" in most circumstances. Honestly though, I'm with you that it's a linguistic gap English needs to fill. Similarly, the second person plural pronoun need to be accepted as "y'all"- and I say that as someone not even from the southern USA.
- Rumperuu 7y ago
  True, which is why it needs to start with people choosing to be called ‘it’. It's yet to happen, but I'll do my bit if/when I'm ever asked for my preferred pronouns. Also, as someone currently leaving in a place rich with Scousers I would put forward ‘yous’ as a second-person plural pronoun that rolls off the tongue a bit better (and, I would conjecture, makes more intuitive sense for learners of English).
  - mkr-hn 7y ago
    I have encountered a few people who use it/its pronouns.
    - Rumperuu 7y ago
      The movement grows
- toupeira 7y ago
  I still don't understand what's the problem with simply using "you" as second-person plural pronoun, most of the time it's perfectly clear from the context whether it's singular or plural. And if not, there's also "everybody" or "everyone". In German we have "sie" which is both third-person singular female, third-person plural, and when written "Sie" also a formal second-person singular/plural. It works just fine.
jimhefferon 7y ago
The well-known mathematician M Spivak is amoung those who has suggested 'e' (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun). Somehow the deliberate proposals often seem not to succeed.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  So what's the possessive? 'er? Sounds accidentally like her in accent.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Interesting. Sounds like a French Canadian speaking English.

mabbo 7y ago

The problem with "it" is the word's existing use to refer to non-person objects. One could easily interpret being called "it" as an insult, ie: this thing is not even a human. I might not even be willing to refer to a dog as "it" in most circumstances. Honestly though, I'm with you that it's a linguistic gap English needs to fill. Similarly, the second person plural pronoun need to be accepted as "y'all"- and I say that as someone not even from the southern USA.

Rumperuu 7y ago
True, which is why it needs to start with people choosing to be called ‘it’. It's yet to happen, but I'll do my bit if/when I'm ever asked for my preferred pronouns. Also, as someone currently leaving in a place rich with Scousers I would put forward ‘yous’ as a second-person plural pronoun that rolls off the tongue a bit better (and, I would conjecture, makes more intuitive sense for learners of English).
- mkr-hn 7y ago
  I have encountered a few people who use it/its pronouns.
  - Rumperuu 7y ago
    The movement grows
toupeira 7y ago
I still don't understand what's the problem with simply using "you" as second-person plural pronoun, most of the time it's perfectly clear from the context whether it's singular or plural. And if not, there's also "everybody" or "everyone". In German we have "sie" which is both third-person singular female, third-person plural, and when written "Sie" also a formal second-person singular/plural. It works just fine.

jimhefferon 7y ago

The well-known mathematician M Spivak is amoung those who has suggested 'e' (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun). Somehow the deliberate proposals often seem not to succeed.

AstralStorm 7y ago
So what's the possessive? 'er? Sounds accidentally like her in accent.
toasterlovin 7y ago
Interesting. Sounds like a French Canadian speaking English.