 Re: "Hu," from "human," as a pronoun
Mike, that's really cool!
Years ago when I was a grad student in the faculty of linguistics, we joked about changing he/she to [i:slae'shi], a kind of Bronx, if you will, slang. As I mentioned, we joked about it--it being a heated debate amongst theoretical linguists at the time.
I know there's been a great deal written on the subject since then. But way back in the days, I remember [hju] was rejected down right, given its semantic association to a male first name: "Hugh" [hju] :wink:
By the way, what's wrong with using 'their' instead of s/he? It's economical: It's already in the system. Native speakers use it. The pronoun [hju], on the other hand, posses problems (i.e. the homophonous forms "who", "hu", and, lest we forget the ever present real human "Hugh").
Adopting [hju] is interesting but, in terms of how systems work, it's not very economical. It adds more problems than solutions.
All the best,
Cas (Hughman) :) |