“I find it amusing that a language which produces sesquipedalian cannot manage a gender neutral third person singular pronoun.”
2007-12-09 Quote of the Day
“I find it amusing that a language which produces sesquipedalian cannot manage a gender neutral third person singular pronoun.”
Uhm…
It?
My $.02 Weed
Insulting…
That term is insulting when directed toward a person. I was thinking about it while on the toilet later, and arrived at the term “himher”. “Herhim” sounds a bit too much like “harem”… but “himher” sounds a bit too much like a hummer.
You can’t win.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
How about ‘One’
Or is that too formal?
My $.02 Weed
The use of one…
I thought that “one” was used for formal first and second person, not third person? Like, I can use “one” to mean “I”, as in “One cannot live on sex alone, but one can die trying”. Or as in a hypothetical, like, “How does one go about saving one million dollars in one year?”
Of course, I think the word is problematic mainly due to this sentence:
“The first one won the one-dollar prize.”
—
Matthew P. Barnson
A possible winner
Actually, there’s a number of grammatacists who are now saying that in the wake of numerous failed attempts to introduce a new word for a third person gender-neutral, we might as well just finally canonize what most people have been doing all along and go with ‘they.’ As in, “If a person wants to access this site, they first need to log in.”
Some grammar prudes are up in arms about it, but these are mostly the people who believe that to ever split infinitives is satanic, and that ending sentences with prepositions is the sort of thing no one should have to put up with.
And, in English’s defense, it’s not like it’s the only language with this problem. Spanish also lacks this. For third person singluar, they have ‘el’ (he), ‘ella’ (she), and ‘usted,’ which is actually less of a third person and more of a formal ‘you.’
On a related note, this is interestingly why, after my time down South, I’ve actually adopted y’all into my vocabulary, as I believe it’s a valuable addition to a language that was previously lacking a second person plural.
Y’all’s for everyone!
I second the motion. Everybody should use “y’all”. Except we have to drop that apostrophe at some point.
—
Matthew P. Barnson