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Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

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Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#21

Post by quink »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #10

It's a great move. It might cause a slight confusion when translating to other languages, but that's not really important. Some languages (including my native language) had always used gender-neutral pronouns, and it has never caused me (or anyone else that I know of) any problems. So I think the fear that it might destroy the language or cause mass-confusion is pointless. [edit] Aside from Persian, it seems[1] that…

> Chinese

'He', 'she' and 'it' in Chinese are pronounced the same. It's just in writing and from the context that the distinction is made clear. 她，他 and 它。tā, tā and tā.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#22

Post by plq »

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), Hungarian, Japanese and Turkish (which includes the dialects spoken in Anatolia, Azerbaidjan (whose people speak almost the same language that the Persian Azeris speak), Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the Urumqi region of China) are sister languages. To my knowledge, all of them have gender-neutral pronouns. (And actually I'm pretty sure about Anatolian Turkish :))

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#23

Post by goggles99 »

LOL, a bunch of hippies in the late 60s tried doing that for a while here in the USA. Failed miserably. it's nature folks - given a choice between them, you cannot make most boys prefer pink flowers and most girls prefer tractors and dirt. Maybe that is the next step - they won't be given the choice (seems to be happening already according to the article). What is next? are they going to do hormone therapy or genetic alterations so everyone is "hen" and start cloning humans for reproduction.

How annoying, male and female clothing not being labeled? Uhh the proportions are different folks, are they going to ban bras? or make men start wearing them just to be fair? Are they going to stop offering dresses and slacks and replace them with some hybrid piece of clothing? How about letting men in women's locker rooms and men participate in women's pro sports. How about forcing men to take sedatives so the women can compete on a level playing field athletically.

Some science fiction books/movies come to mind when I thing of where Sweden is headed in the next 5-10 years (Demolition man in neuter/hen land).

I'll bet some band of 1000 Al Queda militants goes in there, obliterates the hen military and takes over the entire country within a 24 hour period. They won't even object because they are so PC and will be so distracted with "being astonished".

The men over there aren't even men anymore (at least not inside) and the women some hybrid of man and women.

That's progress I guess...

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#24

Post by olavk »

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.

It's in the Finno-Ugric lanugage group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Ugric_languages which also includes Estonian and Hungarian. But yes, since these are not Indoeuropean languages, they are not as closely related to English as Hindi is.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#25

Post by [deleted] »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #10

It's a great move. It might cause a slight confusion when translating to other languages, but that's not really important. Some languages (including my native language) had always used gender-neutral pronouns, and it has never caused me (or anyone else that I know of) any problems. So I think the fear that it might destroy the language or cause mass-confusion is pointless. [edit] Aside from Persian, it seems[1] that…

[deleted]

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#26

Post by christkv »

jcbrand wrote: post #17

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, eithe…

Being norwegian I can tell you the scandinavian model tends to encourage a certain special ignorance of the human condition. You come out with a naive utopian view of the world and how it should behave, then have to have reality hammered into you by the real world.

I think it's just a different kind of ignorance and it always reminds me of the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#27

Post by white_devil »

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…

Finn here.

As someone pointed out, we have the gender-neutral pronoun "hän" in our language. I often wish English had an equivalent. It's very convenient sometimes.

Hän is fine, but most of the time we use the Finnish word for "it" instead. The word is "se" in Finnish, and it normally behaves exactly like the English equivalent - it's basically meant to be used for animals and objects.

Se is used because saying hän is too much work, or it would sound too formal when you're just talking with your friends etc.

Basically, we only use hän when we want to take care to sound respectful in some specific situation or when writing something that's not supposed to be casual.

At any rate, worrying about a gender-neutral pronoun making people confused about their sexual identities is just silly.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#28

Post by white_devil »

jcbrand wrote: post #17

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, eithe…

> live in a different society where there is chauvinism, bullying, elbowing for hierarchy

Oh there's plenty of that in the Nordic Countries too. After all, we're not a different species over here.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#29

Post by chrsstrm »

jholman wrote: post #13
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?

Sexism and racism are not equal to sex and race. Ignoring blatant facts does not make discrimination go away. Identifying someone by their sex or race is not an issue - Mr. Freeman made his explanation a little too simple. The persistent stereotypes and baggage that comes along with the race or sex identification is the real issue.

Re: Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

#30

Post by thalur »

jcbrand wrote: post #17

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, eithe…

The last paragraph really bothered me, but I'm not entirely sure why; it felt authoritarian, thought police etc.

That aside, the idea of a gender neutral pronoun sounds good to me. I'd also like a specifically plural "you", for example when you're talking to a representative of a company and want to refer to the company rather than the representative.

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