Nongendered Animate Pronouns

[packbat]

Ideally a gender-free pronoun set will fulfill a certain set of criteria. Primarily we should consider essential criteria, these must be met in order for a pronoun set to qualify as gender-free. A gender-free pronoun set must have no obviously gendered linguistic root, be it from this language or borrowed from, or influenced by, another. A gender-free pronoun must be applicable to all people rather than generally being used to only refer to one specific group. Regardless of whether this group is something which is conventionally considered a gender, if use of the pronoun implies something about the person in question then it may not be considered gender-free. Once a pronoun set qualifies as gender-free there are a number of desirable criteria which may be used to rate it against others. Our pronouns should be just one syllable long and easily pronounced. The set should be intuitive and easy to remember, this is helped if the set has some kind of internal logic. The set should be interchangable with the existing singular animate third person pronouns. Using our pronouns should not require rewording or restructuring of the rest of the sentance. Each of the pronouns in the set should be unique from each other while still appearing connected (we are only interested in making the gender of our subject ambiguous not anything else). It should be obvious where each pronoun in the set fits, this can be helped by the pronoun set having some kind of non-gendered linguistic root. Ideally our pronouns should be recognisable as pronouns. Our chosen gender-free pronoun set should meet as many desired criteria as possible. With this in mind we will now move on to an examination of the most currently popular and well known gender-free and potentially gender-free pronouns.

From this page on pronouns.
Edit 2005-10-20: The page appears to have expired. Internet Archive mirror of page on pronouns

I like the idea of ungendered (Look Ma! No consistency of terms!) pronouns. My gender on LJ is easy to figure out, of course, but one of my favorite conceits is to use gender-ambiguous handles on bulletin boards, and treat erroneous pronouns the same as correct ones. I hate the idea that either gender is superior, or even intellectually very different, and I find it entertaining to be gender-anonymous online.

I do answer direct questions, however. No sense in lying, really, or at least not direct lying.

Comments

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Referring to thee with the old informal pronouns sounds strange as well. The problem is whether any particular system is too strange to gain common acceptance.

*ey grins impishly*