…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

43 Notes/ Hide

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    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...
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    @companionablesniffles
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