I guess the yearning is for something like Persian which mostly disregards gender. Its third person singular pronoun "oo" ( pronounced like too without t) covers he, she and it. It even uses borrowed Arabic words, which are gender specific in the original, for all genders.
MKK On Thu, 9 Jun 2022 18:26:06 -0400, Bob Bridges <[email protected]> wrote: >That's mostly true. But that's the neuter gender, which in English we apply >mostly to inanimate objects. > >Not exclusively, though. Pet owners usually say "he" or "she" of their >mammals, but we usually say "it" of an animal whose sex we don't know or >don't care about ("it bit me!"). Some inanimate objects take "he" or "she". >And until recently human children were properly "it", grammatically >speaking, though nowadays that's become unpopular. > >--- >Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 > >/* The cities are for money but the high-up hills are purely for the soul. >-from _Galloway_ by Louis L'Amour */ > >-----Original Message----- >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of >Seymour J Metz >Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 16:50 > >Neuter singular pronouns for living beings. "They" and "them" are nominally >plural in contemporary English, while "it" only applies to inanimate >objects. > >________________________________________ >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of >Bob Bridges [[email protected]] >Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 3:54 PM > >Wait a moment, Shmuel: English still has the neuter. In fact ~most~ of our >nouns are neuter, barring only a few exceptions, unlike the Romance >languages which have only masculine and feminine. In English, almost every >non-human noun and a handful of human ones are "it". What did you mean to >say? > >-----Original Message----- >From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of >Seymour J Metz >Sent: Thursday, June 9, 2022 11:44 > >Now, I could make a case that we would be better off had we retained the >neuter gender. > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
