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Gender-neutral pronoun for "he/she" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| pfwillard Pro Member United States Joined 5699 days ago 169 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French Personal Language Map | Message 49 of 74 17 November 2009 at 3:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
"Chinaman" is inherently racist because of historic usage. It was never used as a nationality name, everyone from Asia was called "chinaman" so it was always a derogatory racial epithet. I can't help but quote Walter from the Big Lebowski The chinaman is not the issue here, Dude. I'm talking about drawing a line in the sand, Dude. Across this line, you DO NOT... Also, Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.
Some people do care about sexist usage in Spanish and it's exactly the same point: the assumption that male is generic.
I propose "meyew" and "meanthemannaeye". 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| pookiebear79 Groupie United States Joined 6030 days ago 76 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Swedish, Italian | Message 50 of 74 17 November 2009 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Wow...
I would agree with your example in the second paragraph, that the issue of some feminists preferring the term 'herstory' is an issue involving only small percentage of women, but I strongly disagree with any attempt to imply that this "fringe" issue is anywhere near the same thing as objection to using 'he, him' for everybody and claiming it's 'gender neutral.' However, this extreme statement is another story:
As has already been exhaustively discussed, since 'they' and 'their' in English can be (and are, and actually have been for quite some time) used and are closer to being gender neutral than referring to everybody as he, I don't see how it's 'etymologically unsound,' it's not like we're proposing the adoption of some invented 'new age' pronoun. It's not like there exists no alternative in English, there just isn't an 'exact' one. In other languages there may well be no neutral alternative, but since the dicussion has been (mostly) about English (and since your examples were of English speakers,)I am under the impression that the parts of your post which I quoted are in reference to English. Many women would object to being referred to as he, him and I really don't believe that even a majority of them are "radical feminists,' nor are they trying to "pervert" the English language by not wishing everybody to be referred to as (thus presumed to be) male. While it may not be a perfect solution, (or "perfect English") is it really some 'radical feminist perversion' to you that some people would prefer something like "the reader should decide for themself" (ok, maybe that wasn't quite correct..I'm not a grammar manual) than assuming "the reader should decide for HIMSELF" ? Just as an aside, when I hit quote it counted as a vote. I know I hit the right link because it pulled up the quote for the post I was replying to, and yet it also says 'your vote will show in a few hours." How is it that I managed to both quote and (unintentionally) vote with only one click???? EDIT... never mind, now it doesn't say I voted. Bizarre. Edited by pookiebear79 on 17 November 2009 at 3:40am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5967 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 51 of 74 17 November 2009 at 5:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I remembered reading an article on the gender pronoun issue recently, and I went back and found it again:
http://cnn.com/2009/LIVING/03/06/words/language.pc/index.htm According to this, pronouns, as basic function words, are very long-lived, while other words such as adjectives change far more rapidly. Thus, efforts to impose a new pronoun into English, such as "ip," have not worked. My concern as a reader is more with the quality of thought and expression contained in a piece of writing than with the pronouns used. I did not use a pronoun in that last sentence, because, who knows, maybe there is an ip out there reading this who might be offended! All the same, I suppose that if I read a publication regularly and only saw the pronoun "he" in writing, all the time, I'd start to question it. One million years ago when I was a little female child learning to read and write, I remember being told the "he" was inclusive of both males and females. By the time I reached university age, all that had changed. So, consider the source: When was it written? For what kind of audience? In anything older than thirty years or so, "he" as a general pronoun does not sound strange; yet, it can sometimes be odd-sounding if overused in more recent work. I've noticed that some writers, when giving examples to support a statement, alternate between male and female pronouns. So, if someone refers to me as a "he" reader once or twice, I'll just laugh. If it happens all the time, I might begin to wonder. About the author, I mean. I've become accustomed to more general-sounding pronoun use, now. And I could get used to "they" as a word to refer to any singular individual, too. But the really important thing to remember is: adjectives change quickly! This article says the the word "dirty" will fall out of use within 750 years, so if you want to write something unsavory, do it now! EDIT: WHAT am I doing wrong with links? Am I mistyping something? Edited by meramarina on 17 November 2009 at 5:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 52 of 74 17 November 2009 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Every reasonable person realises that there is nothing inherently wrong with having one pronoun that can be neutral OR male, and one that can only be female. It is only the perception that woman is or has been oppressed that the neutral usage of "he" has become a problem, because radical feminists looking for sport construe this as an example of the domination and oppressiveness of "the male norm". Just like the word "negro" needn't be any more offensive than the word "white", something that in itself is entirely unoffensive has been confused with a real or imagined political situation, that really has very little to do with it.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 53 of 74 17 November 2009 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's simply silly to have the same pronoun for one gender and neutral, and another for another gender. Female/neutral is just as silly as male/neutral is, as clearly shown by attempts to use 'she' as a neutral pronoun. It's not a matter of radical feminism to point this out; it's a simple consequence of how human brains work. Disregarding neuroscience and hiding behind phrases like "every reasonable person" isn't a particularly good rhetorical point, and lacks any substance beyond that. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5669 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 54 of 74 17 November 2009 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Of course, but languages aren't created based on logic. There are loads of things that are silly about English. Picking on the fact that "he" is usable as a gender neutral pronoun seems very nit-picky. By the same token, is the word "mankind" equally problematic (even though it is exclusively gender neutral)? Similarly, how about picking on the word "hero" for having a seemingly feminine root?
That is interesting, and I would be very interested in reading up on this. Do you have some links? Certainly, I never thought about gender-neutral use of man as being controversial until feminists got their knickers in a twist over it. So, some "brain science" that shows we are born to be offended by it would be intriguing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 55 of 74 17 November 2009 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I would also be interested in the latest findings in brainology about this. My guess is that constantly taking offense is very much an aqcuired characteristic, a symptom of too much time, to few real problems. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5783 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 56 of 74 17 November 2009 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If my understanding is correct, in Italian Lei (polite you) and lei (her) are pronounced the same, though transcribed slightly differently. I'm curious to know if arguments and problems like this arise in Italian or any other languages with similar features?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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