[quote="Mike Epstein"]Thanks to everybody for criticism and constructive comments. I'd like to summarize the objections to the use of "hu" as a gender-neutral pronoun. I'll respond point by point, first regarding the oral "hu" [hju:], then the written "hu".


Overall I don't see any grave inconsistencies or
difficulties in hu-language. Furthermore, there are several
considerable advantages of "hu" over other contenders for the
vacancy:

1. "Hu" is a short, one syllable word.
The use of "hu" (2 keystrokes) cuts effectively the
time needed to type "he or she" (9 keystrokes);
cf. "huself" (6) and "himself or herself," (18) etc. This is a
substantial economy of time, space,
and effort in our frequent daily use of gender-neutral pronouns,
especially in e-mails.

2. "Hu" is fully motivated, semantically and etymologically
justified, as a shortened form of "HUman." Whenever the pronoun is
used, you have the idea of the noun behind it making it memorable,
inherently meaningful and suggestive (unlike purely
conditional, artificial pronouns earlier suggested such as "e,
et, mon, na, ne, po, se, tey").

3. "Hu" fits the pattern of existing 3rd person pronouns ("he" and "she"),
first, by including the consonant "h" common to all of
them; second, by containing only one vowel, like all of
them. "Hu - he - she" - these words, all open syllables,
one consonant plus one vowel, are good partners in
distributing the gender roles within one lexical family.

4. The spelling of "hu" coincides with its pronunciation; there
are no irregularities of the kind that damages, for example, the
"s/he" pronoun, making it good in writing but unpronouncable.

5. "Hu" is used in a regular grammatical manner, in
contrast to "they." "Hu" can be used automatically, without
twisting the sentence to put all nouns in plural or
exploiting "they" in a disagreeable manner to refer to a
singular person.

6. It is easy to form derivatives from "hu" following the
existing patterns: "hus," "hu" ("hum"), and "huself".

7. If we decide to borrow a gender-neutral pronoun from
another language, we'll have to consider the Persian "u,"
Arabic "hu" and Old English "ou." All of them could be
easily incorporated in contemporary English with the
addition or preservation of "h", as a shortened form of the
genderless "human".

So far, I don't see any strong logical or historical
arguments against hu-language. Its advantages over other
contenders are too obvious to ignore.

I acknowledge, however, that language rarely is guided by logic or even by
historical parallels and precedents. Words have their own magic, and, like
books, have their fate. I feel this magic and potential
in the "hu" language. It is the language of undivided HUmanness.

In the near future, this HUmaness will need even better articulation to
distinguish our species from artificial "it" forms of intelligence that are
rising to a more active role in civilization and language. Soon we'll have to
answer such questions as "Who is reading, writing, calculating, speaking, even thinking?" The answer may be "hu" (human) or "it" (machine). We need "hu" not only to speak equally about men and women, but in order to speak differently about humans and non-humans who share with us many similar qualities and predicates and fulfill many comparable tasks.
We increasingly need "hu" as a sign of a humanly specific
actor or agent in the language of mental actions and symbolical
interactions.

In a celebrated episode of "Star Trek: The Next
Generation," the crew of the Enterprise manages to liberate an
individual from the hive-like structure of the maleficent Borg
Collective. They name hum, of course, Hu(gh)!