4 ms·

This Hofstadter piece is what got me on board with the idea that long term English should use singular "they" by default. Race doesn't belong in our pronoun sy

by jefftk 4y ago

This Hofstadter piece is what got me on board with the idea that long term English should use singular "they" by default. Race doesn't belong in our pronoun system and neither does gender.

recursive 4y ago
If only this had caught on at the time, imagine how much subsequent strife could have been avoided entirely.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  On the bright side, I believe in 1985 the Post Scriptum was considered necessary to avoid publication having been a career-limiting move, but today it might have been omitted with few other than the deliberately obtuse missing the intended point(s).
mananaysiempre 4y ago
What do we do, then, in languages where noun classes are mandatory and (for animals) aligned with gender, and eliminating them would take a revamp of the entire noun morphology? The masculine-feminine-neuter triple of classes in German does occasionally allow neuter nouns for people, but in Russian a neuter term absolutely implies you’re an inanimate object (possibly a corpse). French, which doesn’t have a neuter at all, can kind of get by with inserting ·e· because there masculine and feminine adjective endings frequently differ by a single e in writing, but the resulting hybrid is impossible to pronounce as the orthography reflects the sounds of five centuries ago.
- jefftk 4y ago
  A lot of the attempts at this for English before the 2000s failed because they didn't integrate well with the rest of the language, and I think the elegant solution for each language will depend on details of that language. For Spanish I think I think -e is solid: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ungendered-spanish https://www.jefftk.com/p/ungendered-spanish Note that you don't need to fully remove grammatical gender to get this benefit, just change the default way of talking about humans.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  I don't think they tackled either pronouns or roles, but as far as titles go, was Товарищ not gender-agnostic? cf https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/5233669/pub_60d59705548a76196fe4b897_60d59824c02b5a59e6189251/scale_1200 https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/5233669/pub_60d5970...
  - mananaysiempre 4y ago
    Technically, before the ideologically-charged forced meme took over, both masculine товарищ tovarišč and feminine товарка tovarka were in use for “comrade”, but only the former was chosen for the newspeak as a gender-neutral title, in line with the Revolution’s professed equal-rights ideals. (Yes, seriously. Of course, the Revolution’s professed ideals at a particular time and place are to be distinguished from its ideals next year, the next town over, or indeed its actual goals or consequences.) The forcing was so effective that the title now only remains in military regulations, the ideology being both out of fashion and rarely relevant, and even the original generic term has essentially fallen out of use with no real replacement (I understand “comrade” in English has also suffered as a result). I’d say titles are a red herring, though,—unlike e.g. Polish, Russian doesn’t really use them outside a few exceptions (a news article might refer to Professor $SURNAME, a letter might be addressed to Master Ambassador), and essentially never to address somebody in person. That role traditionally falls to $NAME $PATRONYMIC (thanks to the Varangians), though you might hear $NAME nowadays as well. The problem is that every adjective, numeral, or possessive that attaches to a noun and every pronoun that refers to it depend on whether the noun is {{{animate,inanimate} {masculine,feminine},neuter} singular,plural} and which case it is in. (Unlike in Romance languages, plural forms are not gendered.) Having a grammatical gender is not optional, and being neuter means that you are either dead or were never alive to begin with. (The converse is not true: тело telo “body” is neuter, труп trup “corpse” is inanimate masculine, мертвец mertvec “dead man or woman” is animate masculine. The sex of the diseased makes no difference.) Common nouns that refer to people—professions, roles, demonyms, agents, patients, etc.—are usually either masculine only whatever the referent or have separate masculine and feminine forms following one of a half-dozen patterns. (This is no Slovak, a single feminine suffix would be much too simple.) Many are formed from other words by productive or long-fossilized but still recognized rules. None can be gender-neutral.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tablespoon 4y ago
> Race doesn't belong in our pronoun system and neither does gender. Neither do a lot of things: gender, irregular verbs and plurals don't need to be in the language at all. It's time to ditch English and force a switch to a wholly synthetic language, carefully engineered to be free of English's pervasive ungoodness.
kodyo 4y ago
How do you distinguish singular they from plural they?
- jefftk 4y ago
  Context, mostly? Though they are slightly different: "Sam hurt themself" not "Sam hurt themselves".
  - kodyo 4y ago
    That’s stupid.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Could be worse: they, they all, all they all... (to borrow some regional distinctions addressing the same lack in the english second person)

by jefftk 4y ago

This Hofstadter piece is what got me on board with the idea that long term English should use singular "they" by default. Race doesn't belong in our pronoun system and neither does gender.

recursive 4y ago

If only this had caught on at the time, imagine how much subsequent strife could have been avoided entirely.

082349872349872 4y ago
On the bright side, I believe in 1985 the Post Scriptum was considered necessary to avoid publication having been a career-limiting move, but today it might have been omitted with few other than the deliberately obtuse missing the intended point(s).

mananaysiempre 4y ago

What do we do, then, in languages where noun classes are mandatory and (for animals) aligned with gender, and eliminating them would take a revamp of the entire noun morphology? The masculine-feminine-neuter triple of classes in German does occasionally allow neuter nouns for people, but in Russian a neuter term absolutely implies you’re an inanimate object (possibly a corpse). French, which doesn’t have a neuter at all, can kind of get by with inserting ·e· because there masculine and feminine adjective endings frequently differ by a single e in writing, but the resulting hybrid is impossible to pronounce as the orthography reflects the sounds of five centuries ago.

jefftk 4y ago
A lot of the attempts at this for English before the 2000s failed because they didn't integrate well with the rest of the language, and I think the elegant solution for each language will depend on details of that language. For Spanish I think I think -e is solid: https://www.jefftk.com/p/ungendered-spanish https://www.jefftk.com/p/ungendered-spanish Note that you don't need to fully remove grammatical gender to get this benefit, just change the default way of talking about humans.
082349872349872 4y ago
I don't think they tackled either pronouns or roles, but as far as titles go, was Товарищ not gender-agnostic? cf https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/5233669/pub_60d59705548a76196fe4b897_60d59824c02b5a59e6189251/scale_1200 https://avatars.dzeninfra.ru/get-zen_doc/5233669/pub_60d5970...
- mananaysiempre 4y ago
  Technically, before the ideologically-charged forced meme took over, both masculine товарищ tovarišč and feminine товарка tovarka were in use for “comrade”, but only the former was chosen for the newspeak as a gender-neutral title, in line with the Revolution’s professed equal-rights ideals. (Yes, seriously. Of course, the Revolution’s professed ideals at a particular time and place are to be distinguished from its ideals next year, the next town over, or indeed its actual goals or consequences.) The forcing was so effective that the title now only remains in military regulations, the ideology being both out of fashion and rarely relevant, and even the original generic term has essentially fallen out of use with no real replacement (I understand “comrade” in English has also suffered as a result). I’d say titles are a red herring, though,—unlike e.g. Polish, Russian doesn’t really use them outside a few exceptions (a news article might refer to Professor $SURNAME, a letter might be addressed to Master Ambassador), and essentially never to address somebody in person. That role traditionally falls to $NAME $PATRONYMIC (thanks to the Varangians), though you might hear $NAME nowadays as well. The problem is that every adjective, numeral, or possessive that attaches to a noun and every pronoun that refers to it depend on whether the noun is {{{animate,inanimate} {masculine,feminine},neuter} singular,plural} and which case it is in. (Unlike in Romance languages, plural forms are not gendered.) Having a grammatical gender is not optional, and being neuter means that you are either dead or were never alive to begin with. (The converse is not true: тело telo “body” is neuter, труп trup “corpse” is inanimate masculine, мертвец mertvec “dead man or woman” is animate masculine. The sex of the diseased makes no difference.) Common nouns that refer to people—professions, roles, demonyms, agents, patients, etc.—are usually either masculine only whatever the referent or have separate masculine and feminine forms following one of a half-dozen patterns. (This is no Slovak, a single feminine suffix would be much too simple.) Many are formed from other words by productive or long-fossilized but still recognized rules. None can be gender-neutral.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tablespoon 4y ago

> Race doesn't belong in our pronoun system and neither does gender. Neither do a lot of things: gender, irregular verbs and plurals don't need to be in the language at all. It's time to ditch English and force a switch to a wholly synthetic language, carefully engineered to be free of English's pervasive ungoodness.

kodyo 4y ago

How do you distinguish singular they from plural they?

jefftk 4y ago
Context, mostly? Though they are slightly different: "Sam hurt themself" not "Sam hurt themselves".
- kodyo 4y ago
  That’s stupid.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Could be worse: they, they all, all they all... (to borrow some regional distinctions addressing the same lack in the english second person)