Swedish Hens

[sophie]

It's all so simple, when you think simply, right?

das Mädchen, das Baby, das Kind, die Schweiz, la gente

le vélo = la biciclette

Ganda has 10 grammatical classes
Swahili has 18

How do you break these up?

 

[Kyriakos]

I just proved you wrong. That indeed was very simple. Try using language correctly in future and no one needs to prove you wrong.

Riiight...

Maybe stop trying to troll me cause it is always boring?

If you really wanted a discussion on language you better have not also been of the view you would cause one by your posts. Fwiw the issue is not as you regard it, in your indeed very simplistic way of viewing language and its ties to things outside of it.

 

[Arwon]

Well, if I am not mistaken, 'gender' means nurtured differences between sexes, 'sex' refers to sexual dimorphism. However, nature and nurture are rather fuzzy here, to the point you might question the usefulness of such distinction, conceptually or otherwise.

The OP is taking about gendered pronouns. Specifically, it's about the use of a relatively new one to refer to someone whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (examples of unknown or irrelevant gender: if the person is unknown to the speaker, if their gender is unknown or ambiguous, and in impersonal contexts such as legal documents).

That would still be a concern even if biological sex and gender presentation and performance were uniformly and deterministicly the same thing. Which of course they aren't. But that's irrelevant here

 

[Verbose]

"Hen" is mostly used instead of the inelegant "han/hon" (he/she), of instead of the unnecessarily unspecific "man" (one), which ALL writing classes ingraines into the budding novelist/journalist/copy-writer to NEVER use. It's the ACME of poor style.

It's new, low in precedent, and people aren't used to it yet — me included (have yet to use it myself) — but it's conceptually pretty elegant.

 

[Lohrenswald]

How is it more elegant than han, hon or man?

 

[Borachio]

"Han" or "hon" aren't inelegant by themselves but "han/hon" is pretty much totally inelegant.

But if you don't like hen, how about hun, or hin? Or hoon?

 

[Lights]

I would love to hear from some of our Spanish/French/Italian posters about how gender studies/people in general feel about how those respective languages approach mixed gender/gender ambiguity.

Namely that in 3rd person plural where the group is of mixed gender the pronouns/adjectives default to masculine 3rd person:

él+él = ellos; ella+ella = ellas; él+ella=ellos.

Spanish also has gender ambiguous demonstratives:

este/ese for masculine; esta/esa for feminine; esto/eso for when the gender is unspecified.

What do people think of these distinctions on the major romance languages, as in the Germanic languages the 3rd person plural pronouns are always gender neutral/ambiguous:

he+he = they, she+she = they, he+she = they; er+er = sie, sie+sie = sie, er+sie = sie

I'll talk about the languages I know.

I've never thought about it. You just learn the "gender" of that word and that's it, there's no neutral in Spanish or Catalan. And if there are females and males you just use plural masculine.
About the word person. In Spanish/Catalan Persona. Persona is a femenine world, La persona, but you can use it with males and females.

 

[warpus]

English itself introduced a gender-ambiguous pronoun to solve a problem in almost the exact way Swedish has done here. "Ze" which has the benefit of being both gender-ambiguous and intuitive; you can slot it in anywhere you'd use a 3rd person singular nominative pronoun (and zem(?) for objective pronouns). However unlike "hen" Ze has not seen adoption by major news or academic publications. English speakers tend to favor "he or she", "s/he", or "they", however, again, these end up stilted and awkward syntactically.

Isn't this only in use by weirdos on tumblr? I can guarantee you that nobody at my work, none of my friends, nobody in my family, etc. would know what the hell I'm talking about if I used the word "Ze" or "Zem".

I don't think anybody's ever going to use this word. But is the Swedish addition just as weird as this one, or is it actually going to catch on?

edit: It seems that you're implying that it has. But somebody else said that it hasn't IIRC

 

[Lillefix]

I'll talk about the languages I know.

I've never thought about it. You just learn the "gender" of that word and that's it, there's no neutral in Spanish or Catalan. And if there are females and males you just use plural masculine.
About the word person. In Spanish/Catalan Persona. Persona is a femenine world, La persona, but you can use it with males and females.

I remember this Italian woman who found it very strange that parents(mother+father) in Spanish are padres. But I suppose it fits into the theme that plural of male+female=male.

 

[Tahuti]

Isn't this only in use by weirdos on tumblr? I can guarantee you that nobody at my work, none of my friends, nobody in my family, etc. would know what the hell I'm talking about if I used the word "Ze" or "Zem".

Honestly, if that were ever to become a standard, every English speaker would sound like a Nazi from Wolfenstein.

 

[warpus]

The only time I ever came across something like that was some post making fun of someone on tumblr who thinks that they are a dragon. It was something like: "Hi, I'm a dragonkin, my pronouns are Zob, Zink, Zilf, and Blerch."

So I sort of assume that only weirdos on that site use pronouns like that. I have seriously never come across anyone else using such things - I can say that 100% of the people I talk to on a regular basis would be lost if I started saying "Ze".

But now I can't figure out if this new Swedish word is a legitimate one or a "weirdo" one used by weirdos and nobody else.

 

[sophie]

Isn't this only in use by weirdos on tumblr? I can guarantee you that nobody at my work, none of my friends, nobody in my family, etc. would know what the hell I'm talking about if I used the word "Ze" or "Zem".

I don't think anybody's ever going to use this word. But is the Swedish addition just as weird as this one, or is it actually going to catch on?

edit: It seems that you're implying that it has. But somebody else said that it hasn't IIRC

Are you reading what I'm writing?

I agree with you. Ze sounds dumb. Which is why nobody's using it. I don't understand why you have to go on this personal crusade deriding it. The execution may be poor, but the reasoning for its existence is very valid. We've actually had a thread on the topic before here in OT about whether or not using the impersonal they is grammatically acceptable (it is). Making multiple posts complaining about how dumb ze is as a pronoun when literally nobody in this thread has advocated for its use makes you sound a bit like the sort of person who might use SJW as a pejorative.

The WHOLE POINT OF THIS THREAD is that major newspaper publications in Sweden have started using hen as a pronoun. So at least amongst the press, yes, yes it's starting to catch on. We'll see if that translates to its adoption in everyday speech.

 

[warpus]

Are you reading what I'm writing?

I agree with you. Ze sounds dumb. Which is why nobody's using it. I don't understand why you have to go on this personal crusade deriding it. The execution may be poor, but the reasoning for its existence is very valid. We've actually had a thread on the topic before here in OT about whether or not using the impersonal they is grammatically acceptable (it is). Making multiple posts complaining about how dumb ze is as a pronoun when literally nobody in this thread has advocated for its use makes you sound a bit like the sort of person who might use SJW as a pejorative.

Well, hold on, I'm not exactly going on a crusade, I just agreed with you and re-stated that nobody I know uses these words. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, but it's early.

And isn't a SJW basically a crazy out of touch with reality person? - isn't "SJW" basically used as a pejorative by most people who use the term?

I'm just trying to make sense of all this - on one hand there seems to be a push by crazy people to use weird pronouns that nobody is ever going to use.. but on the other there does seem to be a legitimate use for some of them, like you have said.

The WHOLE POINT OF THIS THREAD is that major newspaper publications in Sweden have started using hen as a pronoun. So at least amongst the press, yes, yes it's starting to catch on. We'll see if that translates to its adoption in everyday speech.

I see, I hadn't realized that.

Does it.. sound as weird in Swedish as it does in English?

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, hold on, I'm not exactly going on a crusade, I just agreed with you and re-stated that nobody I know uses these words. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, but it's early.

And isn't a SJW basically a crazy out of touch with reality person? - isn't "SJW" basically used as a pejorative by most people who use the term?

By definition nothing at the opposite side of an event horizon can ever affect this world. Consider SJWs as split between one side (their SJW self) and the other side (the Multistrawvac), which is caused by matter lost due to their endless projections.

 

[sophie]

Well, hold on, I'm not exactly going on a crusade, I just agreed with you and re-stated that nobody I know uses these words. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, but it's early.

And isn't a SJW basically a crazy out of touch with reality person? - isn't "SJW" basically used as a pejorative by most people who use the term?

Well you made 2 or 3 posts in a row all deriding the word ze when nobody was advocating for its use. It seemed like you were going overboard, but maybe it was just accident.

As to SJW: it has become a pejorative on the internet, but why should it be? A Social Justice warrior is someone who advocates vociferously for the rights of minorities. Why is that a bad thing? The only people who would complain about that are racist, misogynist asshats on the internet. The problem is the internet has inculcated a culture wherein people should feel afraid or marginalized for being in favor of basic human decency.

I'm just trying to make sense of all this - on one hand there seems to be a push by crazy people to use weird pronouns that nobody is ever going to use.. but on the other there does seem to be a legitimate use for some of them, like you have said.

What crazy people? The word makes total sense. To cover all spectra of gender identity, a concept which previously had not existed (in the context of the English language), you need a totally new word. I do have friends who use it, but they use it primarily because they either are TS or agender or spend a lot of time around TS or agender and so all other presently-existing pronouns marginalize them. As I said before I DO think we need a new word to describe the newly-realized reality. I'd just rather not use ze. Because it sounds kind of dumb.

I see, I hadn't realized that.

Does it.. sound as weird in Swedish as it does in English?

Verbose is, to my knowledge, the only Swede who's weighed in so far. He said it sounds weird, but only because it's not something he's used to, but that the word itself is elegant and makes sense conceptually.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Does it.. sound as weird in Swedish as it does in English?

Hen? it doesn't seem as wierd to me as ze.

Also, I read in sunday's newspaper that this business was started last summer, and that several children book authors and kindergardens already has started using it.

Sweden pfht

 

[warpus]

As to SJW: it has become a pejorative on the internet, but why should it be? A Social Justice warrior is someone who advocates vociferously for the rights of minorities.

See, to me a SJW is someone entirely different from just someone who is fighting for someone's rights. To me a SJW is someone who is so hopelessly out of touch with reality that they go way overboard with their message and end up doing far more harm than actual good.

I was under the impression that most other people understand the term to mean the same thing - a negative term for people like that. The "Warrior" part of the term is what, in my mind, makes a mockery of they are trying to do. It paints them as "over the top" warriors - someone who sits in their basement all day and complaints about every single thing they come across as some sort of a social injustice.

That's my understanding of what the word means. So far I've only ever seen it used this way.

What crazy people?

The people who think they are dragons, anime characters, and who knows what else. That was my first introduction to the whole: "We need new pronouns" phenomenon, so I'm not quite sure where the crazy ends and the sane begins.

Unfortunately when I first read this thread, that's the context I understood it in at first.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Warpus, you must keep in mind that others have not done, seen or thought the same things as you have.

 

[Lillefix]

Hen? it doesn't seem as wierd to me as ze.

Also, I read in sunday's newspaper that this business was started last summer, and that several children book authors and kindergardens already has started using it.

Sweden pfht

This I think is the weirdest thing here.

There are at least three different uses here. My opinion in red.
-A word to use in stead he/she: I agree it's practical.
-A word for transgender people: If that's what they want then OK.
-A word to use on children to avoid identifying them with a certain sex in order to avoid to force them into gender roles. This is politicaly correctness gone maaaad.

 

[Verbose]

How is it more elegant than han, hon or man?

Han/hon.

The use of han and hon when appropriate is the same as ever.