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Originally Posted by Casiopea Mike, that's really cool!
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) :) |
I'll respond point by point to some objections.
1. "Hu" is omophonic with the name Hugh.
--I don't think there will be much confusion about it: Hugh meets only
once in 1666 males; the name's popularity rank in the U.S. is #254. Even
more popular proper names are safe from their common name doubles.
Nobody confuses Ann with the article "an," or Nick with a small cut, or
Rick with a stack of hay.
2. "Hu" [hju:] may be confused with "who" [hu:].
--The phonetic distinction between these words belongs to the
differential structurec. [j] is a separate phoneme that serves to
distinguish lexical units. Cf. feud [fju:d] and food [fu:d]; nuke [nju:k] and
nook [nu:k]; hew [hju:] and who [hu:].
3. "Hu" can be pronounced or heard as "you"
--Well, there are many dialects and manners of pronunciation, but
nobody suggests to ban the word "air" because it may be confused with
"hair" or to drop the word "hear" because it may sound similar to
"ear" (even as they are collocutives, in many contexts).
Some people say that their preferable technique to avoid gender-biased
pronouns is to change the noun into plural. I find such a solution
problematic and even detrimental to the language's ethical and conceptual
capacity to deal with individuals. Compare:
A hero is one who places huself at risk for another.
Heros are those who place themselves at risk for others.
To convey this idea. I would like to imagine A HERO, a heroic
human being, rather than a group of heros, a mass of heros.
They-language successfully eliminates not only gender, but
individuality as well. Should we speak and think about people
only in terms of multitudes? I think it's important to talk
about a student, an emploee, an author, a doctor, a
physicist, a person, rather than to refer to faceless
students, authors, doctors, persons, etc.We need to
accommodate grammar to ethical concerns, not the other
way around. Gaining a gender-neutral grammar at the
expense of an individual reference is a self-defeating
achievement.
http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/Index.html