Have you ever felt stuck writing to someone who you do not, like when applying for a job, and not knowing whether you are writing to a male or female? It is baffling to me that we do not have a gender neutral pronoun.
I heard an npr story about this problem. It said that linguists and grammarians have tried to invent gender neutral pronouns like zee or zeer, but they haven't caught on.
But, according to the story, a teacher in Baltimore heard her students using a pronoun "yo" for either male or female and when they do not know, as in "yo" left a sweatshirt on the desk.
Find the story here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/25/178788893/yo-said-what
This kind of pronoun would certainly be useful in English, but without a consensus among the people, even NPR can't "make fetch happen."
ReplyDeleteI can see why "zee" and "zeer" have not caught on, I could not see myself using it in a sentence. As for "yo" I find it interesting that students were using "yo" for a gender neutral substitute for "male" or "female." I always thought of "yo" as being slang for "hi" or "hey."
ReplyDeleteFascinating article -- thank you for sharing. When I was at a very liberal college from 2007-2011, several of my classmates asked that people use the pronoun "ze" for them. More common was for people to prefer the pronoun "they."
ReplyDeleteIf there is a gender neutral pronoun, it seems like it wouldn't be "yo" at my school: that's already taken! Yo is "I' in Spanish! Still, so interesting.