…there have been ‘more than 100 attempts to coin a gender-neutral pronoun over the course of more than 150 years’, including heesh, hse, kin, ve, ta, tey, fm, z, ze, shem, se, j/e, jee, ey, ho, po, ae, et, heshe, hann…

Our language blog on the times when “he and she” just won’t do (via theeconomist)

The author argues “they” will win as the accepted gender-neutral pronoun, since it’s already in wide-spread use.  Any completely new word (ze) will have to compete with it.  Though “they” is plural and thus grammatically incorrect (and annoying), it could evolve to become singular and plural in grammatically acceptable usage before any other words take on real meaning.  Just like “you” has become both a singular and plural second-person pronoun.

Source: theeconomist

44 Notes/ Hide

  1. clintongonsalvez reblogged this from theeconomist
  2. ultraelectromagneticcrap reblogged this from theeconomist
  3. elsi reblogged this from theeconomist
  4. imaginenoheaven reblogged this from koolzmcrulez and added:
    Well I don’t mind using either “he” or “she,” but I don’t like using terms like mankind, or using the term man in any...
  5. rabblevolunteer reblogged this from accordingtosami
  6. khairete-ailourion reblogged this from koolzmcrulez
  7. accordingtosami reblogged this from rabblevolunteer
  8. andrewgraham reblogged this from theeconomist
  9. koolzmcrulez reblogged this from caramelbaloney
  10. caramelbaloney reblogged this from theeconomist
  11. labellaprincipessa reblogged this from theeconomist
  12. theonlyplfrmat reblogged this from theeconomist and added:
    @companionablesniffles
  13. exclamate reblogged this from theeconomist
  14. 4907 reblogged this from theeconomist
  15. theeconomist posted this

Recent comments

Blog comments powered by Disqus