As far as I know it is Twain - he was quite a clever fellow. 
The words are there already, you just need to get creative. The use of metaphor, for example, will help a lot with what you are trying to do.
I find your lack of creativity disturbing.
Don’t mind me I will be exploring my g/f’s innermost sanctum in search of the origins of pure ecstacy.
Vocabulary is a useful tool, learn how to use it.
As long as we’re addressing pronoun issues like a gender neutral third person and a plural second person, I want an inclusive and exclusive first person plural.
Inclusive we - you and me and maybe some other people.
Exclusive we - me and some other people but not you.
A simplification of the future verb tense would also be good.
Present and past tense can be indicated by the verb alone: I walk, I walked. But future tense requires an auxiliary: I will walk. We should have a future tense equivalent of -ed, let’s say -en.
I walk today. I walked yesterday. I walken tomorrow.
Technically we already have them, it’s just that humans are funny about calling themselves “it.”
It might make more sense to revamp the attitude than the language; what exactly do we need two gender-neutral pronouns for?
Note to self: no matter how hard you try to make sarcasm plain on the Internet, there will always be some people who don’t get it.
Further note to self: Do not get sarcastic on the Internet when mildly drunk on a Friday evening.
The language prescriptivism was sarcastic; but the list of requirements has a tiny kernel of truth.
Thanks, but I already find that my vocabulary is quite extensive, and my creativity does not fall far behind in this regard. I’m aware that creative options exist, but they vary so much that to employ them is fraught with problems. I seek a universal language of dirty-talk. Call it a bit of idle, fairly tongue-in-cheek (ha!) day-dreaming, if you will.
I know it’s an old gripe, but we really could use some more words for the specific types of “love”. A verb that can refer to chocolate, spouse, child, sports team and nail polish isn’t a very useful word.
(I eagerly await smart-ass Dopers’ interjections with other verbs that can apply to all of those things, especially the lascivious ones.)
But. Then. Long. Pauses. Between. Words. Requiren. (That’s the Christopher Walken.)
You’d prefer us having to say thinks like “I will wheaton tomorrow”?
That depends. Do you wheat? Have you wheated? If not, then this point is not valid.
Meh… count yerselves lucky; in Spanish the possesive pronoun (“su”) is gender-neutral but the converse of that is that common nouns, articles (i.e. the equivalents to “the” and “a/an”) and many adjectives use grammatical gender declensions. This makes gender-inclusive text in Spanish IMO even more aggravating that English because it means sometimes we have to spell out the whole alternative phrase repeatedly through the paragraph.
And distinctly conjugated verb tenses are overrated. Over here we have, what, 14 of them? Help yourselves to some. May I suggest the future perfect subjunctive?
He was, but there appears to be no evidence for Twain’s authorship, beyond everybody’s feeling that it’s the kind of thing Twain would write. See here for more.
The phenomenon actually predates the internet, as Twain among others found.
The corollary, however, is that no matter how obviously satiric an item on the internet seems, there will always be somebody who means it.
Not quite the same thing, but FWIW, Greg Egan’s Distress posits “asex” (surgically asexualized people, the midpoint of a gender scale of seven recognized types–and this is maybe only third or fourth on the list of themes) for whom the terminology is ve (subjective), ver (objective), vis (possessive). Silly? It seemed a little so at first, but it became familiar–and the gender theme rather profound–by the end.
That said, I use “he” and “she” in a number of contexts which are not intended to mean that the subject is necessarily male or female (“he” in a generalized sense, like “man,” and sometimes “she” to mean a specific, hypothetical, gender-unknown person). You might be surprised how little actual confusion this causes; the objections, if any, are political objections to the words themselves, not functional concerns.
I’d be pretty happy with “partner” in casual conversation defaulting to “domestic partner.” I don’t think that’s where we are yet.
And yeah, it’s come up. I can’t remember specifics, but it’ll be things like at a party, and someone talking about some project he and his partner are working on, and it sounds vaguely entrepeneurial, but it’s not clear whether he and his husband are opening a restaurant, or he and the guy with business sense are doing so.
I like “they” for third-person ungendered singular and “y’all” for second-person plural.
I unbellyfeel this doubleplusungood idea.
Oh, for sure. That’s why I’m advocating.
Thanks!
You need another verb in there. Presumably “is”.
Undoubleplus Points For Doubleplusunslytherin.
Incidentally, “Y’all” is not Regional, we use it in Texas, which pretty much makes it the standard that the rest of the country should strive for.
If it matters, and it rarely does, I ask.