Thursday, October 16, 2008

We need gender-neutral pronouns

Who's in charge of the English language these days?  I'd like to make a suggestion:  Gender-neutral pronouns.  Back in the old days, it was perfectly acceptable to use male programs (he/his) in times when you don't know the gender of the person you're referring to.  This is standard practice in many other cultures and languages in modern times as well, but with the politically correct nature of modern English, this is often frowned upon and we're forced to result to saying and writing "he or she" or "his or her" to refer to a single person.

What I propose is the addition of a few pronouns to refer to these cases.  I'm leaning towards "ve" for the subjective and "vir" for the possessive, though I'm open to suggestions.

Maybe if we all start using these words, they'll make it into the dictionary.  Rappers make up words all the time.  Why can't we make up some that are actually useful?

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