gender neutral pronoun

[r_transpose_p]

If I am ever in a position where I have to use gender-neutral pronouns throughout the body of a long book, I am tempted to borrow pronouns from Cantonese

Comments

[soong]

the convention among people I know when faced with ambiguous gender and needing a pronoun is often to borrow from German and use 'zie'. I think it works pretty well and sounds good being a monosyllabic word with the same vowel sound as he/she.

[r_transpose_p]

I've seen that before, but was not aware it was a German pronoun! I'm still not sure that it is (perhaps you are confusing it with "sie" ("she" or "they") or "Sie" ("you" formal)?)

"Zie/ze/etc" always sounded funny to me (although perhaps "koi" and "using he/she at random irrespective of the gender of the reference" only sound normal due to exposure)

[purplebean]

My grad school roommates did this all the time! It was cute :) The one who'd lived in Canada for college only got it wrong occasionally, but the one who did almost nothing but sit at his desk and study physics got it wrong so often that I think he'd have been better off just sticking with one of them so he'd at least be right 50% of the time!

Brian, I like the idea of replacing both of them with something like 'zie' -- does German also provide a good word for his/hers or her/him?

[r_transpose_p]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Neologisms

Zie Zie laughed I called zir Zir eyes gleam That is zirs Zie likes zirself

I'm pretty sure this is not directly from German, although I can't say whether or not it was inspired by German (gendered!) pronouns.

[queen_elvis]

I generally just cheat by pluralizing it or rewriting the sentence. "He or she" is awkward, but I'd rather use it than just pick one.

[tmaher]

Nowadays, it's mostly acceptable to use "they/them" as a gender-neutral third-person singular, even in fairly formal writing. For example "The lead engineer should document any major changes they make".

If you're writing for a particular organization or publisher, they may have an in-house style guide. Consult as appropriate.

[r_transpose_p]

Yes, consulting in-house style guides is the practical method for "writing what you need while avoiding conflict