Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'
by stordoff on Thursday May 02, 2019 @06:55PM
(#19813740)
> It sounds odder when it is deliberately used to avoid (mis)gendering a specific individual: "Pat does not discuss their* gender."
I suspect it depends on dialect. "their" just sounds more informal to me, "his"/"her" sounds slightly more formal.
Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'
by mattkrause on Thursday May 02, 2019 @08:48PM
(#19814473)
Hmmm, interesting idea.
I looked at some older examples of singular-they and they almost exclusively refer to an unknown or unspecified person ("Everyone loves their mother"). Using it for a specified person seems to be fairly new: Time Magazine had a piece describing how their (in this sense) was the 2015 word of the year.
Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'
by caseyohara on Thursday May 02, 2019 @05:45PM
(#19813290)
I've heard of 'ze' as a gender-neutral pronoun, but I've never really seen it used. How would you substitute 'ze' in that sentence: "Pat does not discuss their gender"?
Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'
by dragonwriter on Thursday May 02, 2019 @05:59PM
(#19813396)
“Ze” (like “they”) is a subject pronoun, it has been suggested with various object pronouns (like “them”), possessive determiners (like “their”) and possessive pronouns (like “theirs”), including at least these patterns: ze/hir/hir/hirs, ze/mer/zer/zers, ze/zir/zir/zirs; ze/zem/zes/zes.
So, the “their” could change to any of “hir”, “mer”, “zir”, or “zes”, depending on which “ze” pattern was used.
The catch is that it sounds best when there's no specific antecedent: "Every user of the workshop must be responsible for their own safety."
It sounds odder when it is deliberately used to avoid (mis)gendering a specific individual: "Pat does not discuss their* gender." I think this is the niche that 'ze' is supposed to fill.