Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!jarthur!ucivax!gateway From: Damian.Cugley@prg.oxford.ac.UK (Damian Cugley) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Return of the killer pronouns Message-ID: Date: 17 Jan 91 19:17:48 GMT Organization: Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK Lines: 36 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: blanche.ics.uci.edu (This is probably a tired subject but never mind.) Several people have over the last umpteen years proposed new pronouns to fill the lack of non-gender-specific third-person pronouns in English. (Also one of my biggest disappointments about Esperanto.) I'd be interested (more with an eye to using them in fiction than everyday writing) to know (a) who coined them, and (b) if any of them have achieved any real currency. I've seen the following: Nominative (he, she): E they Objective (him, her): hir/hyr them Possesive (his, her): hir/hyr Eir their Whatever (his, hers): theirs Reflexive (himself, hirself/ themself herself): hyrself [my grasp of gramatical terms is rather dodgy] Hir etc. I've seen in more than one place so it might be the more popular? E etc. is from the AmSTeX manual. Is hir spelled with a y or an i? Can anyone fill in the blanks above? Any other fun sets. Thanks in advance (that is, "advTHANKSance") //- Damian Cugley ---------------------------------------------------\ || Oxford University Computing Laboratory, 11 Keble Rd, Oxford, UK || || pdc@prg.ox.ac.uk or pdc@uk.ac.ox.prg in UK DON'T PANIC! || \-------------------------------------------------------------------//