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Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

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Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#11

Post by rmc »

skrebbel wrote: post #7
henrikschroder wrote: post #3

Destroying the language indeed... Now if only there were some way of measuring that. Perhaps if a neighbouring country with a similar social structure, with a similar government, with a similar school system, with similar core values, already had a gender-neutral pronoun in their language? Then we could look at that country, measure the language development and gender confusion among school children in that country a…

The great thing is that the word for "he/she" in Finnish is "hän". Pronounced almost the same as the Swedish proposal. (for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages)

(for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages)

I believe Finnish is wildly different from just about every other language. Hindi and English are closerly related.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#12

Post by white_devil »

rmc wrote: post #11
skrebbel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing is that the word for "he/she" in Finnish is "hän". Pronounced almost the same as the Swedish proposal. (for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages)

(for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages) I believe Finnish is wildly different from just about every other language. Hindi and English are closerly related.

Finnish and Estonian are really close.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#13

Post by jholman »

saulrh wrote: post #8

Morgan Freeman: I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history. Mike Wallace: How are we going to get rid of racism...? Morgan Freeman: Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man. And I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You know me as Morgan Freeman.

Now, suppose you (the reader of this comment) are assigned the task of promoting Morgan Freeman's proposed strategy, but with respect to sexism. With that hypothetical in mind, I ask you: is an organized program of introducing novel gender-neutral pronouns an aide to your task, or a hindrance?

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#14

Post by ttttannebaum »

>Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen

>A country tries to banish gender.

And then I stopped reading. At least with printed news media you have the weight of the fact that what you write will be printed permanently on physical materials to perhaps keep you from producing taglines as embarrassingly juvenile as "A country tries to BANISH GENDER"

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#15

Post by stevoski »

bergie wrote: post #9

The gender-specific pronouns are one of the usual things to trip up native Finnish speakers in Germanic languages. In Finnish we've never had them, which may explain some of the early gender neutrality in the country. From Wikipedia: The first European country to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Duchy of Finland—then a part of the Russian Empire with autonomous powers—which also produced the world's first fem…

The theory that a people's language affects their cultural values? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

My country was the first in the world to introduce universal suffrage, in 1893. We speak English with its gender-specific pronouns.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#17

Post by jcbrand »

I would be in favour of a gender neutral pronoun, but some of the things mentioned in the article just seem off to me.

> One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys "gender-coded" them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys.

"gender-coded"? Is it because the boys said that only men/boys can drive/play with cars?

If the adults allowed girls equal access to play with the cars, they could, either explicitly or via the fact of girls playing with the cars, negate that notion.

> Another preschool removed "free playtime" from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely "stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying.

I wonder how these micro-managed and sheltered children will fare when they one day have to travel to or live in a different society where there is chauvinism, bullying, elbowing for hierarchy etc.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#18

Post by ttttannebaum »

ttttannebaum wrote: post #14

>Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen >A country tries to banish gender. And then I stopped reading. At least with printed news media you have the weight of the fact that what you write will be printed permanently on physical materials to perhaps keep you from producing taglines as embarrassingly juvenile as "A country tries to BANISH GENDER"

Just to make sure Sweden wasn't actually trying to banish gender, I kept reading:

"The idea is that names should not be at all tied to gender, so it would be acceptable for parents to, say, name a girl Jack or a boy Lisa."

The funny thing is that this is the opposite of the idea; at the very least it's stated in a pretty uninformed way. This should read "The idea is that any name within reason would be acceptable for any human being that is born." The way the article puts it is subtly incredulous that a BOY would be named LISA??

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#19

Post by jcbrand »

rmc wrote: post #11
skrebbel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing is that the word for "he/she" in Finnish is "hän". Pronounced almost the same as the Swedish proposal. (for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages)

(for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages) I believe Finnish is wildly different from just about every other language. Hindi and English are closerly related.

Strangely enough, Finnish and Hungarian are related, even though they are relatively isolated geographically.
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