Global : Ideas : Bank - Gender-neutral third-person pronoun

		09 February 2010

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Gender-neutral third-person pronoun

Score
50%

14 votes, Feasibility 41% Originality 36% Humour 28%

The Problem:
We have words for "he" and "she", but no word that makes no gender distinction. This leads us to say "he" when we mean "he or she." It also requires us to know what gender a person is when it is otherwise not necessary.

The Social Invention:
I propose we use a gender-neutral third-person pronoun, which means "he" or "she" without specifying gender. The word I suggest is "ta," which comes from Mandarin Chinese. Instead of "He went to the store" or "She went to the store", we would say, "Ta went to the store." Similarly, "I met him last week" or "I met her last week" would become "I met ta last week." We don't have to give up using the words "he" or "she" if we don't want to.

For those of you who think it's a radical idea, consider this: We don't have gendered words for "I/me" and "you" (but some languages do). Also, many languages have a word that means the same thing as "ta."

The Author - Josh McFly (galactonerd)

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Your Comments (4)

steel jewelry 04 Jan '10 22:30	Subject: Wholesale Jewelry Guide Replica Clothing and Shoes Michele Replica Watches

botey 17 Feb '05 18:25	Subject: good idea I think it's a good idea, but agree that it would be hard to get it to catch on. But it's still worht trying. I have heard about zie (he/she) or hir (his/her) primarily used in the queer community.

smartcookie 28 Oct '04 20:45	Subject: What about? There already is a gender neutral third-person pronoun. It's called "they". People just are too lazy to consistently use it in singular contexts where gender should be left neutral.

mungojelly 25 Oct '04 02:35	Subject: How do you get anyone to use it? There are already lots of proposals for gender neutral pronouns. The most popular one seems to be zie/zir. The trick is getting one to catch on-- most English speakers are presently extremely resistant to change. <3
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