NationStates

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Striton wrote:

Saint Kitten wrote:One could refer to the singular body itself, not the multiple spirits/deities/whatever inhabiting it.

He's talking about the people born with two heads, hence two people.

"Multiple System" is a tumblrism that refers to people who feel there are multiple entities or individuals inhabiting their one body.

Striton wrote:

Infected Mushroom wrote:
I have at least some idea, having gone to a French-speaking primary school

... Every single noun in French has a gender. A table, une table, is a "she". The world, la monde, is a "she". An atm, un distributeur automatique, is a "he", etc.

You can't just remove the "le" and the "la" because suddenly you destroy almost all singular articles, and, not to mention, gender agreement rules.

All 3rd person pronouns have a gender attached, even plural pronouns.

Trying to change French to a gender neutral language is almost like scrapping it altogether.

Yes but this approach only serves to reinforce harmful gender labelling

So, I'm going to join, I need to join more conversations on the forums. Why would we use 'one'? I don't want to be called the one, I want to be called by my name or he. It's not really a stereotype or offensive as it's words that people use to address people who have ding dongs, and people who do not have it. Also, if your transgender, aren't you transitioning throughout your life?

I mean f you look like a dude, but don't have it, then your a woman, regardless of how you look. I mean, it's the same as allowing a man to think he's a chair when he is not, so it's like a mental illness if you think about it. I'm mentioning this as many transgender people want to use the word 'they'.

Infected Mushroom wrote:

Striton wrote:... Every single noun in French has a gender. A table, une table, is a "she". The world, la monde, is a "she". An atm, un distributeur automatique, is a "he", etc.

You can't just remove the "le" and the "la" because suddenly you destroy almost all singular articles, and, not to mention, gender agreement rules.

All 3rd person pronouns have a gender attached, even plural pronouns.

Trying to change French to a gender neutral language is almost like scrapping it altogether.

Yes but this approach only serves to reinforce harmful gender labelling

So... what do you think we should do? Create a new language?
Weren't we suppose to find a solution to the nonspecific pronoun problem (Something which actually happens not all that often)? If you use a pronoun like she to describe someone you know is female that's not really part of the problem, so I don't see why we need to scrap pronouns. And if we're describing someone nonspecific there's already they, or you could simply alternate from time to time.

Quokkastan wrote:

The Archregimancy wrote:
One is not entirely sure one wholly agrees.

The trick is to type with a British accent while wearing a monocle, preferably shortly after waxing one's mustache (where one has one; those of the female persuasion can instead type shortly after recovering from a fit of the vapours).

I have decided that whenever one mentions a "British accent," otherwise unspecified, I am going to assume they mean "Geordie."

I encourage others to do likewise.

One wholly agrees.

Infected Mushroom wrote:

The Two Jerseys wrote:But the word "Wrong" can't be a common noun, because being common and not proper would hurt one's feelings.

Clearly we need to abolish lowercase letters, because feelings.

Nope

I Think One Is On To Something Here. This Way We Don't Hurt The Feelings Of Anyone Or Any Word.

Infected Mushroom wrote:

Striton wrote:... Every single noun in French has a gender. A table, une table, is a "she". The world, la monde, is a "she". An atm, un distributeur automatique, is a "he", etc.

You can't just remove the "le" and the "la" because suddenly you destroy almost all singular articles, and, not to mention, gender agreement rules.

All 3rd person pronouns have a gender attached, even plural pronouns.

Trying to change French to a gender neutral language is almost like scrapping it altogether.

Yes but this approach only serves to reinforce harmful gender labelling

Yes scraping the language would be harmful.

The Alexanderians wrote:

Infected Mushroom wrote:
Yes but this approach only serves to reinforce harmful gender labelling

Yes scraping the language would be harmful.

But Think Of The Poor Transgender Tables!

The Two Jerseys wrote:

The Alexanderians wrote:Yes scraping the language would be harmful.

But Think Of The Poor Transgender Tables!

I Would Love To Accommodate Them But The Necessity Of Equality Outweighs It!

The Alexanderians wrote:Yes scraping the language would be harmful.

Given that I hate the phonology of the French language, I find it difficult to agree.

...So I have no idea what parts of this thread I'm meant to be being offended by.

Vassenor wrote:...So I have no idea what parts of this thread I'm meant to be being offended by.

Just nod and move on. It's best not to feel anything really...except utter and complete disappointment.

Conscentia wrote:

New confederate ramenia wrote:There are languages where EVERYTHING is gendered. What do you do?

Infected Mushroom isn't talking about grammatical gender.

Irrespective. English has no grammatical gender, whilst other languages do. In other languages, pronouns are ENTIERLY affected by grammatical gender

Conscentia wrote:

The Alexanderians wrote:Yes scraping the language would be harmful.

Given that I hate the phonology of the French language, I find it difficult to agree.

Not just Franch. Many, many, MANY other languages. Hebrew being one of them
Let's eliminate half the world's friken' languages just because the vast minority of people don't work around the grammatical structure of it

Australian Republic wrote:

Conscentia wrote:Infected Mushroom isn't talking about grammatical gender.

Irrespective. English has no grammatical gender, whilst other languages do. In other languages, pronouns are ENTIERLY affected by grammatical gender

Irrelevant. This thread, as is clear from the OP, is concerned with the English language specifically.

Striton wrote:

Infected Mushroom wrote:
I have at least some idea, having gone to a French-speaking primary school

... Every single noun in French has a gender. A table, une table, is a "she". The world, la monde, is a "she". An atm, un distributeur automatique, is a "he", etc.

You can't just remove the "le" and the "la" because suddenly you destroy almost all singular articles, and, not to mention, gender agreement rules.

All 3rd person pronouns have a gender attached, even plural pronouns.

Trying to change French to a gender neutral language is almost like scrapping it altogether.

Hang on, this isn't making too much sense.

I'm fairly certain whoever it is (IM?) is suggesting that une table simply becomes un table or un distributeur automatique becomes une distributeur automatique or that it ceases to be relevant which one you choose (un/e table). How, then, can you have problems with gender agreement rules? What they (i.e. proponents of no grammatical gender) are saying is that the rules don't matter... just ignore them. Unless this would somehow cause ambiguity (which this link suggests would not be the case), what is the actual problem? The point is that the "table is a feminine noun" rule is to not actually be a rule... un table and une table are now both equally valid (and thus un table intéressant and un table intéressante are both equally correct too), because grammatical gender is determined to be arbitrary and useless.* Besides, it is hardly non-arbitrary... see plurals.

There just seems to be something completely illogical to worrying about what happens to gender agreement, when you are discussing the consequences of declaring grammatical gender to be irrelevant. And unlike, say, genitive cases the existence of grammatical gender doesn't really seem to do anything other than add in complexity. (And, occasionally, the avoidance of punctuation... e.g. Wikipedia's "a flowerbed in the garden which I maintain", note the difference between "a flowerbed, in the garden which I maintain" and "a flowerbed, in the garden, which I maintain".)

As a non-French speaker, I have absolutely no idea what the aesthetic impact of the irrelevancy of grammatical gender would be.

*It is, on the the other hand, still not gender discriminatory.

Nazgul, clearly.

Vassenor wrote:Pretty sure using "one" as a pronoun just makes you sound pretentious.

Or, you know, educated in regards to proper English grammar and desiring a gender-neutral pronoun.

Italios wrote:

Infected Mushroom wrote:
At this point I feel that the English language as it currently exists, may be too deeply steeped in sexist rhetoric to be salvaged by words in the existing domain; what may well be needed is for someone to break the wheel, shake up the table, and introduce some new elements into the system to change the starting assumptions

Why though? They is already used. The new pronouns may be faced with hostility and just create more problems. They is perfectly usable in my opinion. The circumstances "they" is used in can easily clarify if the meaning is in plural or singular by itself.

They is grammatical wrong and it's confusing. Honestly, yes we should have a non gendered pronoun. But make a new word up or something.

Mike the Progressive wrote:

Italios wrote:Why though? They is already used. The new pronouns may be faced with hostility and just create more problems. They is perfectly usable in my opinion. The circumstances "they" is used in can easily clarify if the meaning is in plural or singular by itself.

They is grammatical wrong and it's confusing. Honestly, yes we should have a non gendered pronoun. But make a new word up or something.

How is it confusing?
Also, Shakespeare and Jane Austen seemed to think it was fine.

Conscentia wrote:Singular 'they' is by far the most practical option. No invented pronoun meant to fulfil this function has ever had close to the popularity of the singular 'they', and there is precedent in English literature for the singular 'they'. IIRC, Shakespeare and Jane Austen used it. As I said earlier in the thread, there is also a precedent in English for plural pronouns to supplant singular pronouns - 'you' was once exclusively plural (with 'thou/thee' being the singular) and now serves as both plural and singular.

Mike the Progressive wrote:

Italios wrote:Why though? They is already used. The new pronouns may be faced with hostility and just create more problems. They is perfectly usable in my opinion. The circumstances "they" is used in can easily clarify if the meaning is in plural or singular by itself.

They is grammatical wrong and it's confusing. Honestly, yes we should have a non gendered pronoun. But make a new word up or something.

Singular they is not grammatically incorrect, and personally I've never found it confusing. And really, make up a new word? Any number of people on Tumblr try shit like that, and the internet hates Tumblr with the fire of a thousand suns.

Mike the Progressive wrote:

Italios wrote:Why though? They is already used. The new pronouns may be faced with hostility and just create more problems. They is perfectly usable in my opinion. The circumstances "they" is used in can easily clarify if the meaning is in plural or singular by itself.

They is grammatical wrong and it's confusing. Honestly, yes we should have a non gendered pronoun. But make a new word up or something.

If you have a basic understanding of grammar it shouldn't be confusing.

Infected Mushroom wrote:

Striton wrote:... Every single noun in French has a gender. A table, une table, is a "she". The world, la monde, is a "she". An atm, un distributeur automatique, is a "he", etc.

You can't just remove the "le" and the "la" because suddenly you destroy almost all singular articles, and, not to mention, gender agreement rules.

All 3rd person pronouns have a gender attached, even plural pronouns.

Trying to change French to a gender neutral language is almost like scrapping it altogether.

Yes but this approach only serves to reinforce harmful gender labelling

Whether a noun is masculine or feminine in another language does not necessarily equate to gender labeling.

El vestido is a masculine spanish word. It's significance in English is "the dress"

Ifreann wrote:

Mike the Progressive wrote:
They is grammatical wrong and it's confusing. Honestly, yes we should have a non gendered pronoun. But make a new word up or something.

Singular they is not grammatically incorrect, and personally I've never found it confusing. And really, make up a new word? Any number of people on Tumblr try shit like that, and the internet hates Tumblr with the fire of a thousand suns.

To be fair, Tumblr usually wasn't the original cause of words like "xe." They simply tried to popularize it.