New Fix To The Pronoun Problem: `Hu' Latest Substitute For `He,' And `She'

[lin robinson]

Know what sucks, is that solutions to grammatical deficiencies that arise from the people who use the language, like "aint" and "y'all" and "youse" get ostracized and declared non-legitimate...while some idiocy like this or the many non-gender pronoun freakshows get taken seriously.

 

[dustinzgirl]

Know what sucks, is that solutions to grammatical deficiencies that arise from the people who use the language, like "aint" and "y'all" and "youse" get ostracized and declared non-legitimate...while some idiocy like this or the many non-gender pronoun freakshows get taken seriously.

yep. I use those words a lot.

 

[Pyan]

And those words ain't all slangy anyway: Ain't first appears in the 1750s, and is used by Lewis Carroll in Alice through the Looking Glass....

 

[Michael01]

Sheesh, yet another reason for me to be critical of my daft fellow Americans. The Brits have obviously got the right idea - make singular "they" grammatically correct! It can't be much easier than that. Until then, however, I'll continue to write in awkward manner that is acceptable here - as annoying as it is.

And yeah, I'm just as daft and nonsensical as most other Americans ... (I had to say "most," because there is a very rare breed of Yanks aren't too bad ... I, uh, think ... hope ...)

Hu? Huh?

EDIT: Besides, language evolves, right? And usually through usage by the people who speak it, not the academics who think they can make up words for convenience's sake. "Ain't" is a good example. It may still be ostracized now, but in the future will likely be considered correct usage in American English. There are just too many people using it for this not to happen.

At least, that's my take on it, anyway.

 

[lin robinson]

[QUOTEThe argument is in replacing it when the sex is unknown.[/quote]

ALWAYS a problem. I ran into one of those "sex unknown" things in Tijuana last year and it still creeps me out.

(Hu was a 'ho')

 

[areader]

Why not use the noun...the alien ..? Ok it gets repetitive but after a while you stop noticing it ....like 'I' in first person narrative.

 

[jastius]

we could just start to use thee and thy again.. it would sound so pretty we would probably forget we were being ridiculous..

when i was in school we would use the the all encompassing term 'guys' for either or both..ie, ' hey guys, what's up?'
and 'somebody' as a gender neutral term for an individual.

 

[MPorter]

I have a gender-neutral character in the story I'm working on right now and it has been a bit of a challenge. 'They' is serviceable but sometimes has an awkward flow/feel to it. I tried using one of the faddish "hir" but it reads like "her" so no real point there.

~Mike

 

[Mirannan]

The problem with "it" for sapients is that the word is not a personal pronoun - except very marginally, in the case of an unborn baby of yet-to-be-discovered sex. (BTW, I hate the use of the word "gender", which started out as a grammatical term, for people.)

Ursula K. LeGuin had a fascinating take on humans with no fixed sex; the story there was that in one of her novels the humans (who had been mucked about with by an alien race) on one particular planet were neuter most of the time and for about two days per month were susceptible to changing to one sex or the other. The interesting point was that if two were involved the changes were opposite - but the matter of which was which was random.

We don't need it yet, but what are we going to do when non-human sapients turn up - most likely to be non-biological into the bargain? A gender-neutral personal pronoun will then be necessary. After all, in most cases a robot will be of indeterminate sex or none at all.

 

[Glisterspeck]

I have a gender-neutral character in the story I'm working on right now and it has been a bit of a challenge. 'They' is serviceable but sometimes has an awkward flow/feel to it. I tried using one of the faddish "hir" but it reads like "her" so no real point there.

~Mike

I have tried to write fiction using gender neutral pronouns thinking they'd disappear like Nadsat, but they most definitely did not. Too bad. I have a race of creatures who reproduce asexually, and they themselves had no concept of gender until they met humans. When speaking in the human language, they use he, because they've mostly been exposed to men. Otherwise, they use it.

I was using ge, ger and gi (these folks have a limited alphabet).

 

[jastius]

how about using the name? of the individuals.. i once saw a very good short story by an english author where he used the prep school thing of using the last name..then in the end you found out the character was a female.

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't think the proposed pronoun works. Seeing "Hu did it" in print makes me think that it's either a Welsh or Chinese person, or that the author has spelled "Who" wrong. Although it can be awkward, "They" seems a much better choice. Personally, I'd probably continue with a mixture of "they" and, where it sounds bad (although I can't think of any examples) an occasional generic "him", but others would probably want "they" throughout. Fair enough.

It does raise (at least for me!) the broader issue of mangling the language for the sake of ... hmm... even this is tricky. Is there a neutral form of "political correctness"? Perhaps the rather clumsy "social inclusivity", which sounds like a department of the local council. Anyhow, I wince somewhat whenever I see jargon like "racefail" - partly because it looks like Newspeak and is ugly, but also because it has the effect of excluding well-meaning people from the discussion who don't know the terms of the moment (and they do quite often change).

 

[prizzley]

The need for a neuter pronoun set is obvious; getting one accepted by reactionary stick-in the muds (yes, that's me again) much less so.

We already have a very good neuter pronoun -it. And PC and pedantry don't work very well for readers. I'll stick with he, she, they.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

One in fifteen human babies is born not entirely male nor female - either chromosomes, hormones or physical differences exist. That is before we get to transfolk. My brother has the chromosomes XXY.

We still insist on calling them he or she even when they are very much neither. I think scientists suggest in real life we have around five sexes not two.