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From: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: pronouns for Bryce
Message-ID: <2214@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Aug-87 02:30:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.2214
Posted: Fri Aug 21 02:30:35 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 19:15:20 EDT
References: <8708191546.AA07324@cogsci.berkeley.edu> <2793@hoptoad.uucp> <8708200011.AA09857@cogsci.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: kent@xanth.UUCP (Kent Paul Dolan)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 31
Summary: se, ser, sim will do just fine
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.mac:5823 comp.sys.amiga:7618

In article <8708200011.AA09857@cogsci.berkeley.edu> bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) writes:
>~~ Some linguist should come up with a neuter personal pronoun and eliminate
>this sexist "he" or "she" stuff from modern literature.

Actually, one pretty good attempt I've seen uses "ser", which sounds like a
possessive case, with the vowel sound a little shorter and less structured
than "sayer", but having the same average sound.  Perhaps "se", same
vowel as "see", but a tad shorter, would do for a visually pleasing
nominative case, and "sim" for an objective case?  Worth a try.

(This has zip to do with Amigas, but that's where the question was
posed, and we're all readers and writers of English on this net, so I
thought I'd toss this proposal back.  Comments welcome as to the
euphony of the proposal.  Religious war flames as to whether it's
worth mucking up a working language to protect gender sensitive ears
go to /dev/null.  It's important to some people, that's good enough.)

Kent, the man from xanth.

( Certainly not a linguist, but child of a past vice president of the
International Society for General Semantics, Chester Virl Dolan.
( Anybody seen my Dad the last twenty years or so?  Lost him in the
vague vicinity of California.  He'd be about 70 by now, 5' 9",
slender, mostly bald.  Used to have family in L.A.  Writes tech
manuals. ) )

Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student	 // Yet
UUCP  :  kent@xanth.UUCP   or    ...{sun,harvard}!xanth!kent	// Another
CSNET :  kent@odu.csnet    ARPA  :  kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu   \\ // Happy
USPost:  P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Virginia 23501-1559	     \// Amigan!
Voice :  (804) 587-7760    -=][> Last one to Ceres is a rotten egg! -=][>