The need for a gender neutral pronoun has been around for a bit, so those who aren't one of the traditional genders (man or woman) won't feel dysphoric in verbal and written communication. Another reason is if the gender of the person is unknown. Before I continue, gender does NOT equal biological sex. Gender is how you act and what you mentally perceive yourself as. Biological sex is what you physically are.
Anyway, this need for a new pronoun has been around since the 19th century, as this 19th century magazine states: “We need a new pronoun. The need of a personal pronoun of the singular number and common gender is so desperate, urgent, imperative, that according to the established theories it should long have grown in our speech, as the tails grew off monkeys.”
However, any attempt to make a gender neutral pronoun was squashed pretty quickly. Even today in an attempting to be more accepting society, most people aren't even aware of this concept. So, to educate, here is a chart of some of the most common pronouns with information and pronunciations below.
| Nominative (subject) | Objective (object) | Possessive determiner | Possessive Pronoun | Reflexive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional pronouns | |||||
| He | He laughed | I called him | His eyes gleam | That is his | He likeshimself |
| She | She laughed | I called her | Her eyes gleam | That is hers | She likesherself |
| It | It laughed | I called it | Its eyes gleam | That is its | It likes itself |
| They | They laughed | I called them | Their eyes gleam | That is theirs | They likethemselves |
| Invented pronouns | |||||
| Ne | Ne laughed | I called nem | Nir eyes gleam | That is nirs | Ne likesnemself |
| Ve | Ve laughed | I called ver | Vis eyes gleam | That is vis | Ve likesverself |
| Spivak | Ey laughed | I called em | Eir eyes gleam | That is eirs | Ey likes emself |
| Ze (or zie) and hir | Ze laughed | I called hir | Hir eyes gleam | That is hirs | Ze likeshirself |
| Ze (or zie) and zir | Ze laughed | I called zir | Zir eyes gleam | That is zirs | Ze likeszirself |
| Xe | Xe laughed | I called xem | Xyr eyes gleam | That is xyrs | Xe likesxemself |
"1. Ne/nem/nir/nirs/nemself
Ease of pronunciation: 4/5Distinction from other pronouns: 4/5
Gender neutrality: 4.5/5
Although relatively obscure, this has become my favorite contender. It follows the formats of existing pronouns while staying more gender-neutral than any but Spivak – you could call it gender-balanced. “Ne” is n+(he or she), “nem” is n+her+him, “nir” isn+him+her. Because it has a different form for each declension, it doesn’t lean towards following male or female patterns – patterns made very obvious when you read works about obviously male characters with female-patterned pronoun forms. The letter “n” itself can stand for “neutral” – a property we are searching for. A reader may be uncertain how to pronounce “ne” at first glance, but pronunciation of the other forms is relatively obvious. One problem when reading aloud is that the “n” sometimes blends with words ending in “n” or “m,” but it didn’t occur as often and wasn’t as problematic as “zir” with words ending in an “s” or “z” sound (see entry #4).
2. Ve/ver/vis/vis/verself
Ease of pronunciation: 4/5
Distinction from other pronouns: 4/5
Gender neutrality: 4/5
“Ve” is another good option, found in some science fiction, without a specific bias towards either gender. The declension is again gender-balanced, being evenly split between forms that resemble “he” and “she.” But it does feel a bit more gender-heavy than “ne” – since “ver” and “vis” directly derive from “her” and “his,” readers are more easily reminded of the gendered forms. There are some cases where “ve” will bleed with words ending in “f” or “v” sounds, like “of” or “if,” but this wasn’t a problem very often – maybe about as often as with “ne.”
3. Spivak (ey/em/eir/eirs/eirself)
Ease of pronunciation: 4/5
Distinction from other pronouns:2/5
Gender neutrality: 5/5
Spivak is the most gender-free pronoun that parses well in English (as opposed to “ta” or “thon,” which are also gender-free but simply don’t work in the English language), since it derives from “they” rather than from a mix of “he” and “she.” The problem is, not only does it remove the “th” from “they,” it also changes its grammatical structure. Even ‘singular’ they is grammatically plural (i.e. you would say “they were in the building” rather than “they was in the building”), while Spivak is grammatically singular. The claim that the Spivak pronoun is “more natural” to say than other neologisms is undercut by the fact that it doesn’t actually have the same structure as the already-existing forms.
Furthermore, when spoken aloud, not only does “em” sound like “him” in speech, but people already write a plural “them” as em or ‘em in informal writing, making the Spivak pronoun more ambiguous.
4. Ze/Hir and its derivatives
(ze/hir/hir/hirs/hirself) (zie/hir/hir/hirs/hirself)
(ze/zir/zir/zirs/zirself) (zie/zir/zir/zirs/zirself)
Ease of pronunciation: 3/5
Distinction from other pronouns: 2/5
Gender neutrality: 2.5/5
“Ze and hir” is the most popular form of gender-free pronouns, derived from the earlier “sie and hir,” which were considered too feminine/female-sounding since “sie” is German for “she” (among other things), and “hir” was a feminine pronoun in Middle English. The current forms are still leaning on feminine, by using the same declensions as “she.” “Hir,” although it’s supposed to be pronounced “here,” is read as “her” by many people unfamiliar with the term, and the less-gendered alternative, “zir,” along with “ze” itself, often runs into problems when it follows a word ending in an “s” or “z” (or “th”) sound, sometimes sounding just like “her” and “he.” For example, read this sentence aloud: “As ze looked up at the stars, ze realized that this was zir favorite moment of them all.” This isn’t as much of a problem with “ze,” which doesn’t follow words ending in s/z terribly often, but the problem occurs much more often with “zir” than it did with any of the declensions of “ne” or “ve.”
5. Xe/xem/xyr/xyrs/xemself
Ease of pronunciation: 2/5
Distinction from other pronouns: 2.5/5
Gender neutrality: 3/5
“Xe,” it turns out, is supposed to be pronounced the same as “ze” – apparently it was an aesthetic change in order to distance the pronoun from its “sie/hir” roots one step further. It also balances the genders in the way “ze” does not – but it runs into the same pronunciation problems when following words ending in “s” or “z” sounds, and the pronunciation is much more difficult to guess at – I assumed the “x” would be pronounced “sh” or “ks,” which would be either much too gendered or much too unpronounceable to even be considered. All in all, it has slight advantages over zie/hir in its gender-neutrality, but it keeps the same difficulties in pronunciation and is even more difficult to read than the original."
Sources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/gender-neutral-pronouns-when-they-doesnt-identify-as-either-male-or-female/2014/10/27/41965f5e-5ac0-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html
https://genderneutralpronoun.wordpress.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment