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I don't understand why any request for addressing others the way they wish to be addressed has to immediately trigger imaginings of the apocalyptic end of the world.
I'm imagining my 80 year old curmudgeon neighbor who proudly displays his confederate flag in this Yankee state going ballistic over this pronoun topic, among so many other topics that infuriate him, sitting in his chair well protected from the outside influence of any "woke" society, a strong rural red county as a barrier, and wondering how the heck does any of this directly affect him?
It doesn't.
Me thinks he doth protesteth too much. So I'm leaning towards pity for a person who is besides themselves that 1960 has passed and will never come again. I'm sure he despises the use of Ms NoMansLands, he would prefer that women are defined by their marital status even as men are (of course) not. For him, take any topic at all that doesn't put a white male as king outside of daily food preparation (not chefs of course!) and housekeeping, is that apocalyptic ending of his definition of civilization. Same goes for any topic, gender, sexuality, race, you name it.
Me thinks many people are protesting too much who it doesn't affect directly whatsoever. Should the rare circumstance arise where they are asked to use a chosen pronoun, there will be an immediate fit of tantrum by some. Others like myself will quietly oblige, because it's not really all that much to ask is it? It doesn't take anything AWAY from me. So what's the problem again? is what I want to ask them.
There is a phenomenon called Code Switching, where people naturally "gussy up" their language when an authority (teacher, boss, judge) is around. So when the Language Police are listening, people are likely to stammer out the "correct" pronoun and then revert to natural speech in a less formal setting.
I've been aware of this for longer than I have had a word for it. My mom would have said "officious."
But nowhere was this ever observed on my part with more surprise than walking into a lunchroom and hearing a well-comported, meticulous English speaker switch to ghetto language and delivery with a group of friends.
The German army took them to Germany is 1941. From there they joined other displaced people and scattered throughout the world.
I visited the Soviet Union in 1976 as a tourist, and in 1996 on a business trip.
The Russians commented on my "obsolete" language. So many of the words that I used had fallen out of everyday usage in Russia and replaced with "English" words!!
My parents, kept, their language. Unfortunately, Russia didn't.
The French are just weird people. Language is about communication, not national identity.
One time, I brought a American girlfriend over my parents house. My mom, said something to her. My girlfriend turned to me and said " Your mother just said a complete sentence with words in Spanish, Russian and English".
I just shrugged and said, well you understood her.
One time, I brought a American girlfriend over my parents house. My mom, said something to her. My girlfriend turned to me and said " Your mother just said a complete sentence with words in Spanish, Russian and English".
I just shrugged and said, well you understood her.
When my mother-in-law used to get together with her girlfriends, who were all raised by German immigrant parents in the south of Brazil and then moved to the US, every sentence was part English, part German, and part Portuguese. It was hilarious even though I could only understand about 50%.
A gender neutral singular pronoun suitable for describing a person would be useful in general, not just for LGBTQIA+ stuff. Making everything plural to use "they" is unwieldy and so is saying "he or she" constantly when writing about a theoretical or unidentified person who could be either gender, and "it" just sounds wrong.
This is a hot topic here, although it’s not seen as an American/English import. It’s called ‘inclusive language’.
Context is that nouns, adjectives and adverbs can be masculine or feminine, and the neutral form is inflected like the masculine form. So for instance “all” can be TODOS (m) or TODAS (f), and if a group of people includes both males and females, it’s TODOS (n). It’s been regarded as sexist by some leftists, so they’ve invented an allegedly neutral form using the ‘E’ -> TODES. For written language, some unpronounceable monstrosities such as TODXS and TOD@S are also used. I’ve seen texts really hard to quickly understand due to ‘X’ and ‘@’ appearing every two words, and (obviously) there aren’t any rules about how to read those, or by the way, about the ‘E’ as the choice for the neutral form.
Anyway, it’s apparent that a full usage of a third gender would heavily disrupt the language to the point of having to unlearn it and relearn it, as grammatical gender comes up all the time while writing or speaking.
The main defense of the proponents of the third grammatical gender (besides it being more ‘inclusive’) is that ‘languages have always changed’. While true, it’s a loose statement which doesn’t necessarily apply to every case. Adding words is a thing that naturally happens at common speech and eventually language institutions make them ‘official’. However, adding a third grammatical gender is a huge change that could only be implemented throughout a groundbreaking language reform, and this ship has already sailed long ago when standards were defined and most people got access to education and became literate.
Languages no longer freely drift as they did in the past, when people couldn’t read and just spoke as they heard, any town had their ways, and a couple of generations were enough to bring up a colorful mosaic of dialects.
Me thinks many people are protesting too much who it doesn't affect directly whatsoever. Should the rare circumstance arise where they are asked to use a chosen pronoun, there will be an immediate fit of tantrum by some. Others like myself will quietly oblige, because it's not really all that much to ask is it? It doesn't take anything AWAY from me. So what's the problem again? is what I want to ask them.
It is if my brain can't grasp the logic or reasoning. Sometimes other people have to accept MY preferences, especially when it's on me to take action to satisfy the whims and desires of others.
This is a hot topic here, although it’s not seen as an American/English import. It’s called ‘inclusive language’.
Context is that nouns, adjectives and adverbs can be masculine or feminine, and the neutral form is inflected like the masculine form. So for instance “all” can be TODOS (m) or TODAS (f), and if a group of people includes both males and females, it’s TODOS (n). It’s been regarded as sexist by some leftists, so they’ve invented an allegedly neutral form using the ‘E’ -> TODES.
I mean...it IS sexist. I'm not saying that someone using the language this way is being sexist - it's just the way the language is - but the grammatical feature itself demonstrates how deeply rooted the subordination of females is in society. It's unfortunate with languages that carry grammatical gender into various parts of speech that it's so difficult to make any change without causing a cascade of untenable alterations. (As a speaker of Russian we have similar issues but at least in Russian the plural isn't also gendered like it is in Romance languages, only the singular, which makes it easier to write inclusively without being ungrammatical or confusing.)
I think it's interesting how the prejudices of our ancestors are reflected in modern language...my personal favorite example from Russian is that the word for German person comes from the word for "mute" (as they don't speak a civilized language, obviously).
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