Many words about short words
Jul. 31st, 2002 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beetigerAlthough I'm aware that there are quite a few wonderful and underused words already available in the English language, I'm generally a fan of neologisms, if they help us express something we were having trouble expressing otherwise. The lack of epicene, third person singular pronouns, for use when the gender of the person is unknown or irrelevant, is one of those gaps that has plagued the English language for some time now.
Some of those neologisms, are in fact, rather old. Dialectal use of the epicene pronoun “ou” is documented in the 18th century. The neologism “thon”, a contraction of “that one” dates to the nineteenth. (This makes me think of tuna.) The use of “they” as a singular pronoun, and of grammarians complaining about it, goes back about 6 centuries. This is almost acceptable in casual speech, I suppose, but even though Jane Austen used it, I can't bear to write it.
1970's feminism brought an explosion of new gender-neutral pronouns. In the nineties, the Spivak pronoun set (e, em, eir, eirs, emself) gained some popularity. There's the unpronounceable pronoun set “splat” (*e,h*,h*,h*s,h*self), and the sarcastic contraction of “he or she or it”: h'or'sh'it. The standard third-person nongendered pronoun in English, of course, is 'it'. I've heard this used both in fiction and in life by/for people of neuter gender, sometimes. Most people, though, find this to have an upsetting implication of being nonsentient or inanimate.
What is relatively new, I think, is the use of these words by some intersexed, genderqueer, trans, androgynous, third-gendered, neuter, and otherwise radical people who don't want to be referred to as male or female, for themselves. As awareness of people who don't fit into the two-gender model has grown, the gender-neutral pronouns are starting to have new implications. Soon, perhaps, they won't be gender-neutral pronouns at all, but pronouns for other-gendered people, and we'll be back where we started again.
When we developed World Tree, we needed third-gender pronouns for our hermaphroditic species and for our three-gendered species. We started with “sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself”, probably the most popular gender-neutral/ third-gender pronoun set on the internet, and in the furry community. We discovered during playtest that these work well in text but are very awkward in speech, since “hir” and “her” overlap in many people's dialects. We did some research into the history and popularity of different alternative pronouns, ran a lot of them over our tongues, and ended up choosing the “zie, zir, zir, zirs, zirself “set. I'm still happy with the choice.
Interestingly, the place where people tend to trip up is in trying to use gender-variant relationship words. We've had to invent more new words for our third-gender Herethroy colovers: cofille for a child, comari for a spouse. We've used “parent” and “child” for the offspring of our all-hermaphrodite species, perfectly good gender-neutral words, but in play people almost always revert to “son/daughter” or “mother/father”, and stereotype the characters accordingly, once they've done so. I really don't know what variant-gendered people are doing about this in their real lives.
Why am I talking about this? Last night, while having another bout of sleeplessness, I browsed a bunch of LJ communities for/about people who do not identify as male or female. Attention users of alternative pronouns: if you care enough about language and its implications to use new pronouns, use them correctly, please. If you are going to muck with the language, act like you know what you are doing, or you make us all look very stupid, and I will want to wring your little indeterminately-gendered necks.. Zir's *is* not an appropriate form, any more than his's or her's is. “Zir” is a pronoun, not a noun. “Zir” is the word that corresponds to him/her (I saw zir.) and to his/her (Zie ate zir lunch.). “Zirs” corresponds to his/hers (That parakeet is zirs.) You do not have the excuse that you are confusing the possessive with a contraction, as you might with “its” vs. “it's”; the right form in that case would be “zie's” (Zie's coming at six.)Thank you.
By the way, I nearly always use female pronouns for myself. But if you see me dressed for the part, feel free to call me “sir”.
Some of those neologisms, are in fact, rather old. Dialectal use of the epicene pronoun “ou” is documented in the 18th century. The neologism “thon”, a contraction of “that one” dates to the nineteenth. (This makes me think of tuna.) The use of “they” as a singular pronoun, and of grammarians complaining about it, goes back about 6 centuries. This is almost acceptable in casual speech, I suppose, but even though Jane Austen used it, I can't bear to write it.
1970's feminism brought an explosion of new gender-neutral pronouns. In the nineties, the Spivak pronoun set (e, em, eir, eirs, emself) gained some popularity. There's the unpronounceable pronoun set “splat” (*e,h*,h*,h*s,h*self), and the sarcastic contraction of “he or she or it”: h'or'sh'it. The standard third-person nongendered pronoun in English, of course, is 'it'. I've heard this used both in fiction and in life by/for people of neuter gender, sometimes. Most people, though, find this to have an upsetting implication of being nonsentient or inanimate.
What is relatively new, I think, is the use of these words by some intersexed, genderqueer, trans, androgynous, third-gendered, neuter, and otherwise radical people who don't want to be referred to as male or female, for themselves. As awareness of people who don't fit into the two-gender model has grown, the gender-neutral pronouns are starting to have new implications. Soon, perhaps, they won't be gender-neutral pronouns at all, but pronouns for other-gendered people, and we'll be back where we started again.
When we developed World Tree, we needed third-gender pronouns for our hermaphroditic species and for our three-gendered species. We started with “sie, hir, hir, hirs, hirself”, probably the most popular gender-neutral/ third-gender pronoun set on the internet, and in the furry community. We discovered during playtest that these work well in text but are very awkward in speech, since “hir” and “her” overlap in many people's dialects. We did some research into the history and popularity of different alternative pronouns, ran a lot of them over our tongues, and ended up choosing the “zie, zir, zir, zirs, zirself “set. I'm still happy with the choice.
Interestingly, the place where people tend to trip up is in trying to use gender-variant relationship words. We've had to invent more new words for our third-gender Herethroy colovers: cofille for a child, comari for a spouse. We've used “parent” and “child” for the offspring of our all-hermaphrodite species, perfectly good gender-neutral words, but in play people almost always revert to “son/daughter” or “mother/father”, and stereotype the characters accordingly, once they've done so. I really don't know what variant-gendered people are doing about this in their real lives.
Why am I talking about this? Last night, while having another bout of sleeplessness, I browsed a bunch of LJ communities for/about people who do not identify as male or female. Attention users of alternative pronouns: if you care enough about language and its implications to use new pronouns, use them correctly, please. If you are going to muck with the language, act like you know what you are doing, or you make us all look very stupid, and I will want to wring your little indeterminately-gendered necks.. Zir's *is* not an appropriate form, any more than his's or her's is. “Zir” is a pronoun, not a noun. “Zir” is the word that corresponds to him/her (I saw zir.) and to his/her (Zie ate zir lunch.). “Zirs” corresponds to his/hers (That parakeet is zirs.) You do not have the excuse that you are confusing the possessive with a contraction, as you might with “its” vs. “it's”; the right form in that case would be “zie's” (Zie's coming at six.)Thank you.
By the way, I nearly always use female pronouns for myself. But if you see me dressed for the part, feel free to call me “sir”.
