[UbuntuWomen] Gender specific pronouns in applications

[Fred H Olson]

Ireene-Sointu wrote:

>I would like this to be taken into account if/when anything relating to
>gender pronouns is determined:
>per = she or he
>pers = her or his
>pershelf = herself or himself
>This would do away with a need to differentiate genders for those people
>who do not want it; who want to emphasize our common humanity rather
>than our differencies like I do.
>
>With best wishes,
>Ireene-Sointu

A complication with gender neutral English pronouns is that it suffers
from the "too many standards" syndrome and none have achieved dominance.
Wikipedia has a table with 12 sets of them (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Modern_solutions )
It also mentions a few others including the one's Ireene-Sointu suggests
outside the table.  The "per" set is listed more specifically
( and somewhat differently) at:
http://www.glasswings.com.au/Storytronics/Odysseus/notes/pronouns.htm
namely:
SUBJECT  OBJECT  POSSESSIVE POSSESSIVE REFLEXIVE
                 ADJECTIVE  PRONOUN
she      her     her        hers       herself
he       him     his        his        himself
phe      per     pers       pers       perself
they *   them    their      theirs     themself   ( * singular)

My wife thinks the "singular they" solution (see wikipedia table)
is most widely used in her experience.  Maybe in a few decades
a one standard will evolve.

On reviewing Jennie's original post I note that it specifically
is for "applications" rather than for web communication as I
had misremembered.  Tho I guess the example "He/she is busy"
would be sent over the net.  But since only third person English
pronouns incorporate gender, net communications seems like
where the problem is most often encountered.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
     Email:        fholson at cohousing.org      612-588-9532
My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org         My org:
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