AS THE AUTHOR of textbooks, I have posted bail quite a few times for the language police who inflict their sandbox rules upon our culture and mediocrity upon our literature. In my neophyte days, I employed the masculine pronoun in my texts, using only "he" and ˜him," in the anthropomorphic sense. People began jumping from windows, so I embraced pluralism. Every example had its participants and pronouns doubled. I used "theys,""thems," and even "yuns," whenever western Pennsylvania coal-mining roots overpowered the grammar hammer.
When my dedication to pluralism resulted in two CEOs running one company, I returned to singularism and mixed my "he's and "she's" together.
Users began counting the number of "he's" and "she's," checking for equal pronoun distribution. An editor vetoed my suggested dedication for the first gender equity edition: "AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION TEXT. ALL PRONOUNS WELCOME." . . .
English cannot be modified all so easily, but let’s see how these modifiers do with Arabic. That will be entertaining.
Why, why, why can’t liberals just leave speech alone? The language is probably their most-favored tool...they think if they can control the language, they can ultimately control the world.
“Hu”, eh? I have seen “hir” in lieu of him or her, but only by moonbats over the internet. Same for “womyn”, another affectation.
Well, I’m in favor of using the plural. The Romance languages have gender neutral pronouns, it seems the only place they survive in English is in the plural. Besides, I don’t think it is so bad.
Hey no flaming if any of youse disagree with me!
Things were much easier (and more gramatically correct) back in the old days, when “he” was the universal pronoun, representing man, woman, and, for all I know, the rest of the animal kingdom. “Anyone,” “everyone,” “everybody” and “anybody” are all singular, so it’s grating to hear someone say: “If anyone is interested, THEY should call.” Or “Every parent should bring THEIR child to school.” Our society is getting dumb and dumber in the name of political correctness. I’m a woman, but I still use “he” as the universal pronoun.
How about this, for “he, she, or it”: “h’rshit”, drop that a few times in conversation with one of these kooks and see what happens.
DeLuna says "hu" has been well-received within the transgender community.
Well, then, that's good enough for me. I think we should all embrace it.
"When hu opens hu's book, hu will read from it." That's kind of stupid.
Didn’t Don Imus get in a lot of trouble for using a gender-neutral pronoun? Didn’t he refer to some Palasaides Princesses as “nappy-headed hus”?
If the idea were simply to communicate, we would not be having this discussion. The whole point of "gender-neutrality" is to intimidate and indoctrinate, not to communicate.
But in Hebrew, “hu” is “he” and “he” is “she” and, oh fuggetaboutit.
“He” as representative of both genders has been perfectly acceptable for a long time. I see no reason to change.
“If anyone asks, tell them what they need to know.”
What is wrong with, “If anyone asks, answer the question?”
For every sexual sin the atheists/liberals want to decriminalize, there is something they want to outlaw in the name of "reason" and "justice."
Most people are still unclear about the rules for it’s and its, many on this forum sad to say.
As for the he/she connundrum -—lots of ways to avoid that problem.
“DeLuna says “hu” has been well-received within the transgender community”
And when everyone knows this it should put an end to this nonsense. For most purposes language is better the more precise it is. This person wants sacrifice precision on the altar of political correctness. If you want change, don’t worry. Pretty soon we’ll be using El, La, and Usted.
I really wanted to say, "Ma'am, I'm sorry the English language offends you, but I see no reason to change a thousand years of the King's English to placate your sensibilities." Because we were trying to sell our proposal, I instead said "I'm sorry. I'll be more clear. 'He or she'."
Man, that gagged me.
Apparently these jerks never took Latin, French, or German classes either.
The English language already has a gender-neutral single object and subject pronoun (it) and a corresponding possessive pronoun (its). We typically use this pronoun for persons who disclaim identity with male and female genders, but declare theirs as “other/please specify.” We also use “it” to refer to nonliving things, entities without gender, asexually reproducing organisms, hermaphrodites, and animals of unknown or irrelevant gender.
BS. Only to a certain kind of hyper-sensitive modern ears.
I've seen a lot of textbooks that use "she" instead. I fail to see how that's an improvement.
Sounds like something from Dr. Seuss.