journal: Add #10: Mercurian pronouns

1 files changed, 74 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/journal/10-mercurian-pronouns.rst b/src/journal/10-mercurian-pronouns.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea3b35a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/journal/10-mercurian-pronouns.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,74 @@
+.. frontmatter
+   title: Mercurian pronouns
+   date: 2015-03-11
+   author: Johannes Löthberg
+   author_link: /~kyrias/about.html
+
+So, you might or might not know that English pronouns are sort of annoying in
+some regards.
+For example, there aren’t a canonical set of singular third-person,
+gender-neutral pronouns.
+
+Some people, past-me included, use “they” as a singular pronoun.
+There are people that try to use unfounded arguments to prove that use somehow
+wrong, but they generally use rather flawed arguments.
+Using it as a singular pronoun has been done for literally centuries, and some
+people compare the use of singular *they* to the use of a singular *you*
+instead of *thou*, though I have gotten no reasonable reply from people arguing
+against singular *they* about that point yet.
+
+There are alternatives to the singular “they” however.
+One set, which is commonly, though inaccurately [1]_, known as the Spivak
+pronouns, was first used by James Rogers in 1890, who created his set from the
+pronouns “he” and “them”.
+Later, in 1975, Christine Elverson created what she called her “transgender
+pronouns” by dropping the ”th” from the pronouns “they”, “them”, and “their”.
+Michael Spivak, who is often attributed with the invention of the set of
+pronouns, used his versions of in the manual `The Joy of TeX`_ (1983), though
+said in 2006 that he did not invent them himself. [2]_
+
+Personally I prefer the Elverson pronoun set since a simple “E” isn’t easily
+distinguishable from “he” audibly in some contexts.
+
+The previous incarnations haven't been complete though, and have left the
+possessive pronoun and reflexive versions undefined, so HalosGhost_ and I have
+decided to use what we call the Mercurian set, using the same system as
+Elverson did and dropping the “th” from the third-person plural pronouns, but
+properly defining all possibilities.
+
+The rule for making the Mercurian pronouns is just to drop the “th” from the
+plural pronouns, which makes it easily generalizable to any plural third-person
+constructs.
+
+Following is a non-exhaustive table of some of the pronoun sets: [3]_
+
+.. table::
+   :class: pronoun-table
+
+   =========  ====  ====  ==========  ======  ========
+   Type       Nom.  Obj.  Poss. Adj.  Poss.   Refl.
+   =========  ====  ====  ==========  ======  ========
+   Masculine  he    him   his         his     himself
+   Feminine   she   her   her         hers    herself
+   Plural     they  them  their       theirs  themself
+   Rogers     e     em    es
+   Elverson   ey    em    eir
+   Spivak     E     Em    Eir
+   Mercurian  ey    em    eir         eirs    emself
+   =========  ====  ====  ==========  ======  ========
+
+.. [1] The different sets of gender-neutral third-person singular pronouns
+       commonly called the “Spivak pronouns” were in fact invented independently
+       by multiple people, Spivak being one of the later ones to use them, so
+       calling them the “Spivak pronouns” is a misnomer
+
+.. [2] In 2006 Spivak admitted that he had originally read about the pronouns in
+       a newspaper, but had later forgotten who it was credited to, so could not
+       give proper credits in his manual.
+
+.. [3] The table headings are abbreviated from the following: Nominative,
+       Objective, Possessive Adjective, Possessive, and Reflexive,
+       respectively.
+
+.. _`The Joy of TeX`: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=523252
+.. _HalosGhost: https://halosgho.st/