Subject: So in either of those...
Author:
Posted on: 2015-05-20 09:43:00 UTC
... how would you talk about someone whose gender you have no possible way of knowing?
'I sent an email to the head of the company; we'll see if they reply'.
hS
That's right! Earlier this month, I got inspired (mostly by hS, but also by OrangeYoshi99) to write a short interlude, which was then betaed by two wonderful people (namely, Admiral Sakai and Hieronymus Graubart). And now...it's ready to be shared.
And so, without further ado...A Meeting At Rudi's is ready to meet you. In it, Agent T'Zar talks about various aspects of her latest mission and Agent Dawn is confused.
Hope you enjoy!
~DF
There's nothing like good old-fashioned PPC absurdity to start the day off right.
Just a typo fix, though: "Agent Rabbit was at hir best"
Should that read "his"?
Some people use 'hir' instead of 'they' when referred to a person of indeterminate gender.
I thought the convention was "they".
How are we supposed to pronounce "hir" anyways? "Here"? "Her"? IMO, it's a little awkward compared to "they".
...ze, which I use for Agen_t, or else xe, which...I actually did consider using for Agen_t but then didn't. I didn't feel either of them worked here, though I couldn't tell you exactly why. And I didn't actually think of just saying their, which... hm. I'll keep it in mind.
Hir does seem to be a thing, though--I checked to make sure. No clue about pronunciation, unfortunately, though I've been mentally reading it as something similar to 'her' but with an even shorter middle sound.
As to convention... well, I'm not even remotely qualified to speak about this, but as far as I understand it, you're right: the general polite thing to do is to say 'they' if you don't want to misgender someone. However, people have other preferred pronouns sometimes, which include things like ze, xe, and hir (I've also heard of zie and xie). I think 'hir' just somehow suggested Agent Rabbit to me more than the others did, so that's what I went with.
On another note, PPC absurdity is the best :) Thank you.
~DF
...I think in French. There's a rigid masculine/feminine division in how you structure your sentences so my brain went : un lapin --> masculine noun --> pronoun in text is "hir" --> correct to "his".
Come to think of it, there's no framework in place in the French language if someone wants to adopt nonstandard pronouns: you always check if the person identifies as male or female. Interesting.
One word: "Feurself." This was from a set of custom nounself pronouns intented to be used in French. No further comment necessary.
Comment est-ce qu'on peut penser à mettre un nom au hasard et un "-self" et en faire un pronom personnel?
Pourquoi? Ça sert à quoi autre que de se trouver plus spécial et unique que tout le monde d'autre?
((SeaTurtle is mad now and rants in French, like any self-respecting Québecois would do.))
Hebrew is built that way, too - no neutral gender; everything is either female or male. In my case, however, I already knew about the 'hir' thing, so it didn't surprise me.
... how would you talk about someone whose gender you have no possible way of knowing?
'I sent an email to the head of the company; we'll see if they reply'.
hS
...that I somehow didn't ask anyone who the boss was, I could say:
"J'ai envoyé un courriel au chef de la compagnie. J'espère qu'il ou elle me répondra."
Literally: "I sent an email to the head of the company. I hope that he or she replies".
If the reply does come through, I'll simply check the signature and determine if the boss is a man or a woman. Alternatively, I can check to see if the head has written anything anywhere else: your conjugation changes slightly if you're a man or a woman. That's the thing I love about French: there's little clues everywhere and you gotta pay attention to all of them.
(You didn't ask anyone because the company makes breakfast cereal and it is 1984 so there's no internet and also your phone book is lost. Or something. Or you can substitute 'when the first person comes through that door, you should give them a cake'.)
I didn't know (or possibly didn't remember) that your conjugation would change based on your gender - cool!
hS
(PS: Do you mind if I ask which French-speaking country you're in? I'm rubbish at keeping track of this stuff. Don't answer if you don't want to, obviously.)
Born in Québec, moved all over the place. Québec is the only full French-speaking province in Canada-- all of the other provinces use English as their official language with the exception of New Brunswick, which is fully bilingual (due to the high concentration of Acadian people who somehow managed to survive decades of British oppression and deportation).
'oppression and deportation' - wouldn't it be quicker just to say 'decades of the British'? I'm pretty sure we all understand what that means.
hS, likes the island, not especially the politics
In Hebrew, unknown gender defaults to male pronouns. I'd save you the moon-runes and say that that sentence would look, roughly and translated back into English (because just translating the words will sound weird), like 'I sent an email to the boss; I'll see if he'd reply'.
Ow, my ribs. This takes the PPC's bizarreness to the next level. I am also totally mentioning Agent Rabbit in a mission; the concept is too good to pass up.