hello Cecil … have you ever thought of using " (s)he " ??
And how do you pronounce “(s)he”?
(The column is Is there a gender-neutral substitute for “his or her”?)
Incidentally, the general issue was discussed fairly recently in Revisited: Is there a gender-neutral substitute for “his or her”?
I pronouce it sh hee.
The real bitch is (him)her!
On the academic boards I visit the convention seems to be hu. The usage is like this: “When hu goes to class hu needs to bring their syllabus”.
It is probably (but I don’t know for certain) derived from human.
“Penis.”
I’m probably wrong, though, as I’ve gotten some strange looks from time to time.
And all this time I thought it was pronounced throatwar…
nevermind
You have to speak Hungarian.
Pronouncing the s, the h, and the e are no trouble, but I always strain my larynx when I try to pronounce the ( and the ).
That’s because you aren’t Vulcan.
Why use the plural possessive if hu is supposed to be a gender neutral singular pronoun? You might as well create the possessive form while you’re at it- hur?
My error in sentence construction- thinking on the fly. Fine- a better example- “Sleeping with a student is something that hu should do.”
Better?
hir or hem
and hu? please human is already sexist enough. It should be hupersun (it cannot be huperson because son is male).
Oh, those fun times in a New England Catholic Church in the heydays of PC.
Yeah and a friend mine and I would say “fallopial” instead of “seminal” (as in criticallly important) in research talks we’d give.
Wild, hedonistic times, they were.
Huperoffspring?
A student going to class needs to bring the syllabus.
Almost every sentence can be rewritten to exclude the false generic.
Then why even the question? It seems that there are times when there is a need to write s/he, inclusive, even if I can’t generate the example. I don’t use the hu, myself. Rather, I use the improper form “their” when I mean his or hers or I use s/he, or I rewrite the sentence.
However, the hu form shows up often on the Chronicle of Higher Ed by people who don’t want to contort a sentence into a form where it’s not needed.
I’m not making the news… just reporting it!
Heck, we already have a gender-neutral alternative to his and her: its.
Why people (I too) choke at using it is beyond me.
Well duh. Becase in English it’s not gender neutral, it’s used for inanimate objects.
Witness the scene in Silence of the Lambs. Where he uses it dehumanise his victem. That’s just the way the English language is.
Damned if I know why even the question. When the argument about his/her comes up, people seem to forget that “a” and “the” even exist!