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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/ |