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>If you spend a lot of time writing copy for the web or answering support emails, you know what I’m talking about. When you start a sentence, you can feel the n
by nickolai 15y ago
>If you spend a lot of time writing copy for the web or answering support emails, you know what I’m talking about. When you start a sentence, you can feel the nausea coming on from a mile away: there’s no gender neutral third person singular pronoun.
Technically, there is such a thing. "it" is a gender neutral third person singular pronoun[1] and even more amusingly it is not part of the proposed "replacement" list. It does sound very weird in most cases - and would definitely look dehumanizing in a support reply, but technically speaking the language is not broken.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_%28pronoun%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_%28pronoun%29 . Example given: "Is it a boy or a girl?"
- GiraffeNecktie 15y agoI like the Mandarin Chinese approach: he, she and it: ta his, hers, and its: ta de they and their: ta men and ta men de Clean, simple and consistent (although the ambiguity is another problem).
- jfruh 15y agoMy college girlfriend's dad's first language was Chinese and he would often refer to either her or her brother as "it." "Tell it to come down for dinner!"