I love linguistics!

I prefer "he" pronouns, but I'm also fine with "she" or "they". This is my side blog, dedicated to linguistic discussions and linguistic rants. I'm particularly interested in verbs and pronouns. I also do some conlanging here.

[fandomsandfeminism]

I think you can tell a lot about how rigorous and committed someone's belief in a human right is by how quickly they are able to name people who they think could or should have that right taken away.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Like "X is a universal human right. (This doesn't include Y people though)"

Either you think X isn't actually a human right, or you think Y aren't people.

[fandomsandfeminism]

Some folks really did go straight to the replies to prove me right.

[hyperlexichypatia]

It's wild to me that people in the notes are all arguing about rapists and murderers and people deserving to get their human rights taken away for doing Bad Things, and...

Yeah, sure, serial killers deserve human rights too, but isn't there a more obvious demographic you're sliding right by? Isn't there a demographic of people so thoroughly erased by human rights discourse that their rights aren't even debated, it's just taken for granted that human rights don't apply to these people?

(It's minors. I'm talking about minors. Also disabled/neurodivergent adults under institutionalization/guardianship who have been reduced to the legal status of minors.)

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I literally do this as a first-day activity in my childhood studies courses.

I take a poll: "how many of you would agree that 'everyone deserves the right to privacy' is a pretty uncontroversial statement?"

when 95% of them have put their hands up, I say "now, what if I clarify that 'everyone' includes children?"

and as everyone lowers their hands slowly and gives me a confused look like a deer in headlights, I tell them "okay. this class is about what it means to not be part of 'everyone'."

[linguistics-and-such]

And don't even get me started on adults who think it's morally acceptable to take their minor children's property without consent and sell it. "I'm allowed to do it because it was a gift I bought", they say. Yeah, well, if you stole and sold a gift you'd bought an adult, you'd get charged with theft. So, why is it "okay" to do it to minors?

[watermelonbugs]

Mad about the concept of "correct" grammar again.

Like. The only correct grammar is the one that gets the message across. That's it. Please stop using spelling or grammar "errors" as a reason to insult someone or something. Oh and dialect-related phrases or spellings or grammar while we're at it.

And I mean I could go on about how the whole idea of "correct" grammar or a "correct" way of speaking and writing has roots in ableism and racism. And how from a linguistics standpoint it's literally untrue that one form of language is "better" than another. But you know.

[linguistics-and-such]

Absolutely agree. "Bad grammar" isn't a problem. Bad syntax is. So, a sentence like "They was talking to they families" is fine, even if prescriptivists would call it "bad grammar". But a sentence like "Talking families were they to their" is bad because it's incorrect syntax and thus word salad.

In a nutshell, "bad grammar" doesn't matter as long as you can understand what's being said. Bad syntax matters because you usually can't understand it.

[lunch-leviathan-deactivated2026]

Why e/em/eir is the best existing neopronoun set in English

PART 1: DISCLAIMER AND INTRODUCTION

Ok firstly because I have a feeling that posting this is gonna have a "I like pancakes" "oh so you hate waffles???" effect: THIS IS JUST MY (highly subjective) OPINION. You can use whatever pronouns you want, I'm not your mom. This is just about why I think personally that e/em/eir (aka the Spivak set) is better at meshing with the English language (as it exists in the modern day and within my dialect) than the other commonly-used neopronoun sets I've seen. That doesn't make other neopronoun sets bad or anything, just not MY personal choice. And it doesn't mean I think people should change what they wanna be called.

With the disclaimer out of the way, let's begin!

My reasonings for thinking e/em/eir is the best option for a gender-neutral third-person neopronoun (i.e., a pronoun that did not naturally arise in English (hence why they/them and it/its are not on this list)) are that it manages to excel at all of the following criteria:

It is functionally naturalistic: the pronoun uses letters that are already commonly used in the English language, and uses conjugation that references its place in the sentence structure similarly to how existing English pronouns do. It therefore minimizes looking visually out-of-place among other common words when replacing other existing pronouns.

It uses sounds that don't lend themselves to ambiguity when spoken aloud (i.e., they won't be easily confused with other common words).

When written, it is fairly intuitive to figure out what their pronunciation and part of the sentence should be when spoken aloud.

Each pronoun (aside from the reflexive of ___self, which for obvious reasons necessitates at least 2 syllables) consists of only one syllable, making them a maximally-effective verbal shorthand like how other existing pronouns in the English language are.

From my various lookings online, most other common/well-known neopronoun sets that I have seen generally fail to meet one or more of these criteria. I will explain this in the following section.

PART 2: COMPARING OTHER NEOPRONOUNS TO THE CRITERIA

[noun]/[noun]self Firstly, as a whole, I want to address "noun pronouns" as a category (because if I tried to find every single one that exists, this essay would take me until the end of time. Also my points for all of them are the same anyway.). Often these can be fairly common words, such as "pup," "doll," etc., and while this does help them meet criterion 3 it becomes absolutely abysmal for criterion 2, as they intrinsically depend on usage of a word as a pronoun that has an entirely separate, non-pronoun meaning. As such, they are eliminated categorically from the metaphorical running.

fae/faer Fae/faer I consider to be a special case of noun pronoun since, unline the others, the base form of the pronoun actually undergoes some degree of conjugation based on part of the sentence. This definitely helps with intelligibility as a pronoun rather than some other part of speech, but it unfortunately still largely falls into the same trap as other noun pronouns. Though "fae" itself is a largely uncommon word in day-to-day speech, it could still lend itself to ambiguity. Additionally, the object/possessive form, when spoken aloud (in my dialect of American English) is generally pronounced identically to "fair" and "fare," which are both rather common in usage and likely to cause more of an ambiguity issue when spoken aloud than the baseline word "fae," causing it to fail criterion 3. If, alternatively, it is pronounced as "fay-er," this removes the ambiguity but causes it to fail criterion 4, making it more clunky to say and less effective as a verbal shorthand for a referent.

per/pers Per/pers pronouns are also ones that I consider to be a special case of noun pronoun, since they come from a shortening of the word "person". Overall these ones are actually pretty good, but the lack of conjugation based on subject/object/possessive lends itself to, again, a feeling of clunkiness and potential for ambiguity compared to the extant pronouns he, she, and they that have separate conjugations for each part of speech.

ze/zir The first of the pronouns specifically created as pronouns, rather than adapted from a noun! Yippee! Ze/zir nails criteria 2-4, but unfortunately falls short on criterion 1. Z is simply not a common letter in the English language, and having it appear every time the pronoun is used makes it appear out-of-place and distinctly non-naturalistic. Overall, I consider it pretty solid though, just not as solid as e/em/eir.

ze/hir This set, admirably, attempts to address the flaw present in the ze/zir set of the large quantity of z's making it stick out like a sore thumb. While this pronoun definitely looks a lot more naturalistic in its conjugations than the previous one when written, it unfortunately introduces issues with criteria 2 and 3. The pronunciation of hir is rather confusing when reading it for the first time--is it just the same as "her"? or is it more like "here" or "hire"? In my opinion, a neopronoun should be easy for speakers to figure out the pronunciation of at a glance so if they encounter it for the first time and need to use it aloud they aren't caught off guard. Additionally, once learned, the intended pronunciation of hir, which is to sound like "here"/"hear," also raises potential for issues of ambiguity with those identical-sounding words.

xe/xem/xir (also sometimes xe/xem/xyr) This pronoun set is essentially ze/zir but if you made it even more unnatural-looking and added in a dash of potential for mispronunciation. X is, again, a fairly uncommon letter in the English language, and an even more uncommon starting letter for a word than Z is. Because X is so uncommon to start words with, this has the additional detriment of giving it the potential to confuse people saying it for the first time. If you weren't a person generally familiar with words like "xenomorph" using a Z-sound for X, odds are you might try to pronounce them like "ksee-ksem" or "exee-exem" since that is how X is normally pronounced within a word.

thon/thonself Thon is great, and I appreciate the historical roots of it, but unfortunately the lack of conjugation means that it doesn't really feel all that much like a pronoun (and given the fact that I've never seen anyone actually use it in their set of preferred pronouns, I am inclined to think that most agree). It is, both in original meaning and in vibes, more akin to saying "that." It also doesn't conjugate naturalistically like a pronoun, and thus fails criterion 1.

ae/aer/aers This has two flaws: that the "ae" vowel combination is somewhat uncommon in English (especially as a word beginning) and thus seems obviously non-naturalistic when written frequently as a pronoun, and that its various forms sound exactly the same as the common words "a" "air" and "airs" when spoken aloud.

ey/em/eir This addresses the first flaw of the ae/aer/aers set, namely that "ae" is an uncommon vowel combo while this set uses exclusively common letter arrangements, but fails to address the second. "Ey," "eir," and "eirs" are once again identical in sound to "a," "air," and "airs," so although the written aspect is remedied it still succumbs to the flaw of potential ambiguity when spoken aloud. Also, and this is probably just a me thing, but the fact that it is so clearly just the "they" set without the "th" makes it seem less obvious what one should do when conjugating verbs--for example, should one write "ey goes to the store" (modeled after the other third-person singular pronoun conjugation) or "ey go to the store" (modeled after the "they" conjugation)? The e/em/eir set removes this ambiguity by making the subject pronoun "e" more distinct from "they," both in written and spoken form (with the added benefit that there is no word that sounds like "e" in the same way that "ey" sounds like "a").

PART 3: WAIT, WHAT?

"Hold on a moment!" you must be thinking: "e/em/eir has the same issue of 'eir' sounding like 'air' that ae/aer and ey/em/eir have!" And this, I admit, is true. I still think it does better than those other two due to not also having any ambiguity with the word "a" and the subject pronoun, but I will admit that even e/em/eir is imperfect. This is why I would like to propose a new version of the Spivak set, that also addresses this issue!

PART 4: THE NEO-SPIVAK SET

To address this, I propose a simple change, borrowing from the successful qualities of ze/zer: simply replacing "eir" in the Spivak set with "er," pronounced (hopefully fairly intuitively) like "her" but without the h. This would result in the following pronouns when used in context:

E went to the store.

I walked with em.

We got er favorite food.

The groceries were ers.

Afterwards, e walked home by emself.

(written out fully in someone's card/bio, it'd look like e/em/er/ers/emself)

I do admit, even this is imperfect: I already can guess that some people might pronounce "er" and "ers" the same way as "err" and "errs," (with the /e/ vowel sound rather than the /ə/ sound) but given that "err" is a far less common word than "air" in modern english I think it will at least further minimize the possibility for confusion (though I would be happy to hear the thoughts of others for how to improve it in this regard!).

I also like that this alteration kind of addresses the issue of "e" as the subject pronoun in this set making it seem to lean slightly more masculine, as it is pronounced identically to "he" in dialects that drop the h-sound at the start of words. Introducing a variant that also sounds like "her" in a dialect with a dropped-h kind of maintains that sense of gender-neutrality in my view, since instead of only having ones that sound like altered versions of "they" and "he" pronoun sets you also have some of it sounding like an altered version of the "she" pronoun set. Or maybe it's not that deep and nobody actually thought that it leaned masculine aside from me lol, who knows.

PART 5: CONCLUSION

Thanks for coming to my TED talk, if you made it this far please let me know your thinking on this! And again, I want to disclaim that I don't have any actual beef towards any set of neopronouns that I mentioned above as not meeting my criteria, I just thought it would be fun to make a case for why I like the Spivak set the best since I do honestly feel like it gets slept on a lot when it is a wonderful neopronoun option.

Hope u all have a great day!

[linguistics-and-such]

This is a great post. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your essay. I'm adding your suggestion of the modified e / em paradigm to my work-in-progress master-post about neopronouns. Don't worry - I will credit you. :)

[hi-raethia]

underrated form of humor: just making shit up in past tense

[xenomorphique]

My personal favourite:

[caramelchaitea]

[official-linguistics-post]

official linguistics post

[linguistics-and-such]

Changing regular verbs into irregular verbs is actually an interestingly common practice in English. For example, the verb "to light" used to be regular until relatively recently: "light" > "lighted" became "light" > "lit".

More modern verbs, like "to text" and "to screenshot" (which were verbified from the related nouns) are often conjugated irregularly as well. That is, people tend to say "I text them yesterday" and "I already screenshot it" over "I texted them yesterday" and "I already screenshotted it".

It's a field of linguistics that fascinates me. I assume it has something to do with easing pronunciation and shortening sentences. If anyone else has any more examples of regular verbs becoming irregular verbs, please share! I live for this stuff.

[linguistics-and-such]

I found a fascinating video on YouTube about the history of English pronouns. Here it is. The video touches on, among other things, Old English pronouns, "she", the singular "they", neopronouns, and - my favorite part - how some dialects of English even have a dual system and a clusivity system! The video's maker theorised that we're in a point in history where pronouns are rapidly changing in English, and my pronoun-loving brain just finds that so interesting!

[lingthusiasm]

101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics

In honour of Lingthusiasm's 100th episodiversary, we've compiled this list of 101 public-facing places where linguists and linguistics nerds hang out and learn things! 

17 podcasts about linguistics

Lingthusiasm — A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics! 

The Vocal Fries — Language discrimination and how to fight it

The History of English — From Proto-Indo-European to Shakespeare in 180 episodes (and still running!)

A Language I Love Is — Guests (some linguists, some not) talk about languages they love and why

En Clair — Forensic linguistics and literary detection

Because Language — New guests every episode discuss their linguistic interests

The Allusionist — Stories about language and the people who use it 

Subtitle — A podcast about languages and the people who speak them

Field Notes — Five seasons on linguistic fieldwork 

Tomayto Tomahto — Language meets cog sci, politics, history, law, anthropology, and more

Word of Mouth — A long-running and wide-ranging linguistics program on BBC 4.

Words Unravelled - A new and very well edited etymology podcast with popular creators RobWords and Jess Zafarris

Something Rhymes with Purple — Learn the background behind another word or phrase each episode

Lexitecture — A classic etymology podcast with a huge back catalogue

A Way with Words — A "lively and upbeat" public radio call-in show about language and culture

Språket — A radio program in Swedish answering listener questions about language. We don't speak Swedish, but this was the most-mentioned non-English content in our listener survey!

Living Voices — A podcast in Spanish about endangered languages of the Amazon

12 nonfiction books about linguistics

Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch (Amazon; Bookshop) — A linguist shows how the internet is transforming the way we communicate

How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning and Languages Live or Die (Amazon; Bookshop) by David Crystal — A journey through the different subsystems of language 

That's Not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships by  Deborah Tannen (Amazon; Bookshop) — A pioneering researcher on conversations gives advice on how they can go wrong

Memory Speaks: On Losing and Reclaiming Language and Self by Julie Sedivy (Amazon; Bookshop) — Scientific and personal reflections on nostalgia, forgetting, and language loss

The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves to Sand Worms, the Words Behind World-Building by David J Peterson (Amazon; Bookshop) — an accessible guide to making your own conlang 

Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme—And Other Oddities of the English Language by Arika Okrent (Amazon; Bookshop) — The history behind English's many oddities

Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell (Amazon; Bookshop) — A well-researched pushback on sexist language ideology

Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper (Amazon; Bookshop) — A lifelong lexicographer discusses the job and the things she's learned along the way 

Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages by Gaston Dorren (Amazon; Bookshop) — A quick, funny tour of the quirks of 60 European languages

Bina: First Nations Languages, Old and New by Felicity Meakins, Gari Tudor-Smith, and Paul Williams (Amazon; Bookshop) — The story of Australian indigenous languages' resistance and survival

Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words by Anne Curzan (Amazon; Bookshop) — A writers' style and grammar guide focused on real usage, not made-up rules

The Language Lover's Puzzle Book: A World Tour of Languages and Alphabets in 100 Amazing Puzzles by Alex Bellos (Amazon; Bookshop) — Solve puzzles about writing, grammar, and meaning drawn from real and fictional languages

Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages (Amazon; Bookshop) — An anthology of poems in endangered languages, with commentary

6 linguistically-inspired novels

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang (Amazon; Bookshop) — Imagine a world where linguistics was as vital — and as ethically compromised — as engineering is in ours

True Biz by Sara Nović (Amazon; Bookshop) — Love, friendship, and struggle at a residential high school for the Deaf

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by by Mark Dunn (Amazon; Bookshop) — "A progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable" full of wordplay and weirdness

Semiosis by Sue Burke (Amazon; Bookshop) — Human space colonists communicate with sentient plants

Translation State by Ann Leckie (Amazon; Bookshop) — What does life look like for a perfectly genetically engineered alien–human translator? (Spoiler: weird, that's what.)

Stories of your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (Amazon; Bookshop) — Includes the long short story that became Arrival, plus other reflections on humanity and change

13 linguistics youtube channels

Crash Course Linguistics — A whole linguistics course in 16 videos

Tom Scott's Language Files — Pithy language facts explained quickly and clearly

NativLang — Language reconstruction and the history of writing

Geoff Lindsay — Facts (and some scholarly opinions) about regional English pronunciation

The Ling Space — An educational channel all about linguistics

langfocus — A language factoid channel that digs deeper than many

K Klein — Language quirks, spelling reform, and a little conlanging

biblaridion — Teaching about conlanging and worldbuilding, with lots of linguistics along the way

RobWords — "A channel for lovers and learners of English"

Otherwords — "the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted"

LingoLizard — Widely spoken languages and their quirks, comparisons, and history

linguriosa — Spanish linguistics (in Spanish), including learning tips and linguistic history

human1011 — Quick accessible facts about linguistics (and sometimes other things) 

Simon Roper — Language evolution and historical English pronunciation

10 shortform video channels about linguistics (tiktok/reels)

etymologynerd — Internet speak, etymologies and more! (reels)

linguisticdiscovery — Writing systems, language families, and more (reels)

jesszafaris — Fun facts about words, etymologies, and more (reels)

cmfvoices — An audiobook director talks about the linguistics of voice acting (eels)

mixedlinguist — A linguistics professor comments on the language of place, identity, politics, technology, and more (reels)

landontalks — Linguistic quirks of the US South (reels)

sunnmcheaux — Language and culture from Harvard's first and only professor of Gullah (reels)

dexter.mp4 — Talks about many branches of science, but loves linguistics enough to have a linguisticsy tattoo (reels)

danniesbrain — Linguistics and psychology from a researcher who studies both (reels)

wordsatwork — Quick facts on languages, families, and linguistic concepts (reels)

the_language — The Ojibwe language — plus food, dancing, and more

[lingthusiasm]

101 places to get enthusiastic about linguistics

In honour of Lingthusiasm's 100th episodiversary, we've compiled this list of 101 public-facing places where linguists and linguistics nerds hang out and learn things! 

8 linguistically-inspired videogames and board games 

Heaven’s Vault (video game) — Decode a mystery hieroglyphic language as a space archeologist traveling with her trusty robot sidekick

Chants of Sennaar (video game) — puzzle your way through uncoding the language and world of The Tower 

Tunic (video game) — You don’t need to decode the writing system to enjoy exploring this video game as an anthropomorphic fox, but some people have enjoyed the additional challenge of cracking the writing system

Cypher & Epigraph (video game) — Test and grow your cryptographic skills with these increasingly feendish puzzles 

Wavelength (board game) — A relaxed and silly party game featuring comparatives and scales. Very fun for a flexible-sized group. 

Xenolanguage (board game) — An ethereal storytelling game about communicating with aliens featuring a unique ouija-board inspired gameplay mechanic 

The Gostak (interactive fiction) — A classic text adventure you need to decipher a secret language to play

IPA Scrabble (board game) — Do-it-yourself instructions for making your own International Phonetic Alphabet Scrabble tiles

7 blogs, newsletters, and magazines about linguistics

Nancy Friedman's substack — A professional name developer (that's a thing!) weighs in on trends

Language Log — One of the longest running linguistics blogs: a few professors discuss their interests

Separated by a Common Language — "Observations on British and American English by an American linguist in the UK"

Sesquiotica — Riffs on etymology and meaning

Language Hat — Another longtime classic, featuring literature, translation, and lexical curiosities

@official-linguistics-post — Sharing posts and conversations of linguistic interest from around Tumblr

Babelzine — A print magazine of language and linguistics, great for school libraries to subscribe to

8 linguistically-inspired movies and tv shows 

Atlantis: The Lost Empire — A linguist protagonist meets a conlang plot device

Arrival — The most linguistic fieldwork you'll ever see in a sci-fi blockbuster 

Darmok — The Star Trek episode that launched a thousand linguistics memes 

CODA — The biggest names in ASL theatre in a multilingual movie

Avatar — The sci-fi epic that gave us Na'vi, one of the best loved conlangs

We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân — A documentary about the Wampanoag scholar who revived her nation's language

My Fair Lady — A classic musical about dialect, social class, and (of course) love

The King's Speech — Based on a true story: a speech-language pathologist helps King George VI overcome his stammer

Talking Black in America — A documentary series on African American English, Black ASL, and more

6 linguistics-related events and physical spaces 

Planet Word (Washington, DC, USA) — An immersive language museum 

Mundolingua (Paris, France) — A hands-on museum with exhibits on many branches of linguistics

The COSI language pod (Columbus, OH, USA) — Participate in linguistics experiments inside this science museum 

The SLIYS summer camp (Columbus, OH, USA) — The Summer Linguistic Institute for Youth Scholars introduces high school students to linguistics

Kletskoppen Festival (Nijmegen, Netherlands) — A festival about language and language development for children, and their adults 

International Linguistics Olympiad (2025 in Taipei, Taiwan) — An annual puzzle-solving competition for secondary school students, with many national editions in various countries 

9 places to get even more 

r/linguistics — A subreddit for discussing linguistics; check out their reading list (Note that we singled out this one for being a big, public, high-traffic community — but if you'd prefer a closed Discord server or a Facebook meme group or any other platform-specific thing, ask other linguistics nerds on that platform and you'll probably find one.) 

Bluesky linguistics starter pack — Some linguists who post actively about linguistics, several of which have also made starter packs for specific subfields 

conlang.org's community list — Pointers to the many places conlangs are discussed

Superlinguo's list of linguistics podcasts — Many more podcasts than we had room for 

A very long list of pop linguistics books on All Things Linguistics — Many more books, too…

Linguistic Discovery's list of books — …and even more!

High School Linguistics' books list for teens — Get started early…

Superlinguo's list for kids — …and even earlier!

Mutual Intelligibility's resource directory — Links on a wide range of subjects

linguistics humor tag on All Things Linguistic — Just the funny stuff

We've been doing lingcomm since 2011 and we're astounded by how many more pop linguistics resources have come into existences since we started and how many difficult decisions we had to make to get it down to just 101 places  

If you’re more on the lingcomm creator side, check out the lingcomm website — we'd love to hang out with you at the LingComm Conference (it's online!). 

Many thanks to the people who filled out the Lingthusiasm survey over the past 3 years for suggesting over 1000 places where you get enthusiastic about linguistics! Please feel free to highlight your favourites from this list or add further suggestions for the benefit of other people reading! 

[official-linguistics-post]

official lingcomm post

[linguistics-and-such]

Saved!

[fully-embracing-my-autopsy]

Realized after 21 years the Yiddish word for they/them is gender neutral. So I will be adding it (in its original form, not the translation) to my list of pronouns

The word is זיי

(Pronounced zay/zai/zey idk

Like the ay in ayayayay or ay caramba)

[linguistics-and-such]

I believe the Yiddish pronoun "זיי" is pronounced "zeɪ" (rhyming with "pay" and "lay"). Here is the Wiktionary article for it. I'd say, if it's used in English, "זיי" would be a form of neopronoun. Specifically, it'd be a neopronoun that was borrowed from an existing pronoun in another language. There are a few of these used in English already, like "ta" from the Chinese "ta" (他), "han" from Finnish "hän", and "hen" from Swedish "hen". :)

[official-linguistics-post]

One of the worst things studying linguistics did for me was make me aware and mad about all the misinformation, pop science, linguicism (and therefore classism/racism), and prescriptivism.

How do you deal with it, especially the latter two?

well you see, i started a blog about it,,

but honestly, it depends on the context and on how much energy i have. many things i ignore for the sake of my own peace of mind. when i run up against issues in the real world i just address them as best i can and try not to get sucked in by people arguing for argument's sake. there are so many better things to do with my life than launch fruitless crusades.

[linguistics-and-such]

I was unaware of the word "linguicism" to refer collectively to the racism, classism, and ableism that prescriptive linguists enact on people who don't use their definition of "perfect grammar". Actually a very useful word! Thanks!

[official-linguistics-post]

is there an order to describing words? feels weird to say "blue big" instead of "big blue" house

hello may i introduce you to adjective order

bonus: open access article on cross-linguistic trends in ordering

[linguistics-and-such]

There's a really good video on the subject as well. But apparently there's no "reason" why English does this. English is just weird.

[watermelonbugs]

So today in my English class I learned smth really interesting that I wanna look more into, but I guess he/him used to be the “default” pronouns if that makes sense. Like, instead of using they/them or the whole “his or her” and “s/he” thing, you would just use he/him? Things like “Everyone has his right to an abortion” because they were talking about singular people so they couldn’t use “their” at the time, they just defaulted to he/him. And then APPARENTLY in the 60s and 70s, feminists and queer people started fighting for gender-neutral singular pronouns (for use in situations like that and ofc enby people), and they created and pushed for the use of certain neopronouns!! The most popular of which being zie/hir iirc?? And like???? They just never caught on I guess.

ALSO!!!!! The use of “they” instead of “he or she” was only accepted for Edited American English in 2020!?!?!? Wild!!!

[linguistics-and-such]

If you're interested in this stuff, I highly recommend getting ahold of Dennis Baron's book, What's Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She. It goes into all the history of gender-neutral pronouns in English in-depth. It also has this great glossary at the end that lists all the attempts over the centuries to introduce neopronouns into English. :)

[yaboy-miz]

Im encountering a problem with learning Spanish (besides it just being hard of course)

So I’m demifluid and use he/they/void pronouns. Now my gender identity does change and there are days where I identify more feminine or as neither masculine or feminine in terms of gender identity, but I am usually comfortable with he/they pronouns and swapping them up constantly is a hassle so I just stick with those.

This is usually fine because I don’t refer to myself in the third person very often, but it can cause issues if I’m, say, trying to write about myself in the third person or making a self-insert.

The reason why Spanish is an issue is because the grammar relies on the gender of the subject regardless of what perspective you’re speaking in and is mostly split between masc and femme terminology.

Not only does this mean it took me way longer to get a grasp on very basic grammar, but it also makes it much harder to just talk about myself without causing dysphoria. So far I’m just sticking with using masculine terms but it just doesn’t always feel right yk? It’s so easy in English, you just swap out the pronouns and the only one that messes with the grammar is they/them which just follows plural rules.

Idk man I’m sure I’ll figure something out, for now tho I’m just gonna focus on being able to communicate at all.

[linguistics-and-such]

I don't know much about Spanish, but my understanding is that, because "they" is gendered in that language (unlike in English), the neopronoun "elle" / "le" is sometimes utalised for non-binary people.

I think the masculine "-o" and the feminine "-a" is sometimes also replaced with the neutral "-e" in certain nouns.

* Latino (masculine)

* Latina (feminine)

* Latine (gender-neutral)

This is especially helpful for the Spanish word for "non-binary". It has a masculine form ("no binario") and a feminine form ("no binaria"), which kind of defeats the purpose. So, "no binarie" is often preferred by non-binary people and allies.

Good luck with your Spanish-learning journey! I hope you'll be able to find language that makes you feel comfortable. :)

[cassolotl]

After over a decade of asking tens of thousands of people questions about their pronouns, I have put together this zine!

The thing is, I'm not sure how much to charge. So, I am interested to hear from anyone [who is very used to £GBP] who likes to be opinionated about these things. What do you think might be the going rate for a zine like this?

"What Are Your Pronouns?" A very specific guide to talking about trans people with confidence and respect

It's A5, 32 pages, printed on 100% recycled paper and card, and binding is hand-stitched.

My goal was to write a guide to using pronouns that I would have wanted:

“What do you mean by ‘pronouns’?”

Established pronouns (he, she, they)

Pronouns are a closed class (relevant grammar info about why learning new pronouns is harder than learning people's names)

Fun facts about pronouns and language (in some languages, there are no gendered personal pronouns!)

What do pronouns mean? (like, gender 'n' that)

Singular “they”

How to use singular “they” about a nonbinary person

How to mess up

Can I ask about pronouns? (TL;DR: probably)

Neopronouns (thon, xe, it)

When someone tells you they use neopronouns

It's kind of a beginner-to-advanced guide, aimed at people who are not at all familiar with trans issues but mean well and want to be respectful. More wordy than comicky.

So yeah, what would you expect to pay (in £GBP)? :) All opinions welcome!

[linguistics-and-such]

Oooh! I'm intrigued! I live for stuff like this! You wouldn't happen to have any more previews, would you?

[cassolotl]

I'm afraid I don't! They are for sale here, if that is helpful - not that expensive. :)

[linguistics-and-such]

That is a very reasonable price, indeed! Do you ship to Australia? :)

[linguistics-and-such]

Why can't you count corn and sand?

Nouns like "corn" and "sand" are known as "uncountable nouns", or "mass nouns". They usually indicate that the noun in question is made up of a large number of something. For example, corn is made up of many kernels, and sand is made up of many grains.

If you want to count a mass noun, you usually have to do it indirectly with a unit of measurement. For example, you can say "four cobs of corn" or "ten grains of sand", but you don't tend to say "four corns" or "ten sands".

Unlike countable nouns, mass nouns cannot be modified with an indefinite article ("a" or "an"). Something like "a corn" or "a sand" is considered ungrammatical.

Countable nouns typically take the adjective "many" and plural verbs. "How many cats are there?"

Meanwhile, mass nouns typically take the adjective "much" and singular verbs. "How much money is there?"

In older English, countable nouns used to take "fewer" and "fewest", while mass nouns used to take "less" and "least". "There are fewer cats here now" and "There is less money here now." However, in modern English, "fewer" and "fewest" are rarely used, and "less" and "least" are considered correct for countable nouns as well: "There are less cats here now."

Note that mass nouns are not the same thing as countable nouns that have identical declensions for their singular and plural forms. The words "deer", "fish", and "sheep" don't change when made plural, but they can still be counted directly - eg, "one deer", "five fish", "seven sheep", etc. They can also still take indefinite articles - eg, "a deer", "a fish", etc. Furthermore, they are modified by "many" when plural, not "much"- eg, "many deer", "many sheep", etc.

As a fun side-note, all nouns in Japanese are mass nouns. In fact, counting can be quite difficult in Japanese due to the sheer number of counting suffixes they have, as well as the irregular declensions of certain numbers before the suffix is added:

* hitotsu (１つ) = one general thing

* hitori (１人) = one person

* ippiki (１匹) = one small animal

* ittou (１頭) = one large animal

* ichiwa (１羽) = one bird / one rabbit

* ichinichi (１日) = one day

* isshuu (１週) = one week

* hitotsuki (１月) = one month

* ichinen (１年) = one year

* issai (１才) = one year old

* ippon (１月) = one long and thin object

* ichimai (１枚) = one thin and flat object

* ikko (１個) = one small object

* hitotabi / ichido (１度) = one occurrence

* ikkai (１回) = one occurrence

* ikkai (１階) = one storey

* hitobako (１箱) = one box

* ippai (１杯) = one glassful / one spoonful

* issatsu (１冊) = one book

[linguistics-and-such]

Historically, people have come up with "he'er", "she'er", and "it'er" as gender-neutral pronoun options. But, as far as I've been able to find, no one has yet suggested "they'er". Why not? I think "they'er" is great!

[official-linguistics-post]

hello! would you happen to be able to tell me about these similarities i found in some languages? first is the indonesian/malaysian "kah" or "ke," which i find to be similar to the japanese particle か "ka," in that both are appended to statements to turn them into questions. there's also the japanese あなた "anata," sometimes あんた "anta" in less formal situations, and the arabic أنت "ant(a)," which are both second-person pronouns. is there some link between these, or am i lookin' at false cognates here? thanks for taking the time to read this. love your blog!

i suspect both cases are coincidences. japanese is unrelated to both arabic and indonesian, so they don't have common ancestors that these forms would descend from. the question particle could be a borrowing depending on the historical contact situation (i don't know anything about this personally! it's pure speculation!), but pronouns are not a word class that typically gets borrowed between languages.

[linguistics-and-such]

The nerdy term for these things is a false cognate. These are words that have the same meaning or a very similar meaning and appear to be related in terms of etymology, but aren't.

A really fun example is "emoji" and "emoticon". These words have the same meaning and appear to have similar etymological roots, but their roots are actually completely different. "Emoticon" is a portmanteau of "emotion" and "icon". "Emoji" is a compound word of "e" (Japanese for "painting" or "picture), and "moji" (Japanese for "character" or "letter").

Here is a really great article on false cognates.

[linguistics-and-such]

Where did "they" come from?

"They" actually comes from Old Norse. In Old Norse, there was a masculine "they", a feminine "they", and a gender-neutral "they". The forms made use of the symbol "thorn" (þ), which is pronounced like the "th" in "thing" and "think".

* Subject: þeir (m), þær (f), þau (gn)

* Direct object: þá (m), þær (f), þau (gn)

* Indirect object: þeim (m, f, gn)

* Possessive: þeir(r)a (m, f, gn)

Note:

* Subject is "THEY go"

* Direct object is "I hugged THEM"

* Indirect object is "I gave THEM a cake"

* Possessive is "that's THEIR hat" / "that hat is THEIRS"

Old English actually used a much different set of pronouns for the 3rd-person plural before English adopted the pronouns from Old Norse:

* Subject: hīe

* Direct object: hīe

* Indirect object: heom

* Possessive: heora

Incidentally, Old Norse is also the origin of "hann" ("he") and "hon" ("she"), which have evolved to be used in many other languages. In Swedish, "han" is "he", and "hon" is "she". In Danish, "han" is "he", and "hun" is "she". Similarly, in Norwegian Bokmål, "han" is "he", and "hun" is "she". In Norwegian Nynorsk, "han" is "he", and "ho" is "she". "Hann" is also possibly the origin of "hän", which is the Finnish gender-neutral pronoun that can mean "he", "she", or "they" (singular).

Basically, we owe a lot of the pronouns we use today to Old Norse. Thanks, Old Norse!

[ihasafandom]

So I keep thinking, they/them notwithstanding as a perfectly fine solution on its own, that English already has an existing unused pronoun set that could easily fill the nonbinary pronoun gap that we keep trying to fill with e/em and ze/hir and bun/bunself, if we wanted to resurrect it.

Cause most neopronouns have at least one of the following issues:

unintuitive or non-obvious pronunciation

homophone with other words

unintuitive tenses

not obviously a pronoun

doesn't really fit in with the other pronoun sets

and of course, getting everyone to know about and agree to use a certain set is the biggest one

And while I can't solve the latter, and we get the new problem of making Thor sound like he's never talking to you directly instead of just being overly familiar/condescending in an old-fashioned way, I think there is some merit to bringing back thee/thine but as a third person singular pronoun this time.

Everyone already knows it's a pronoun and has a decent idea of how to pronounce and conjugate it, it doesn't overlap with any other words in writing or speech, it fits with the extant pronouns, since it was originally meant to be there.

he / him / his / his / himself she / her / her / hers / herself it / it / its / its / itself they / them / their / theirs / themself thou / thee / thy / thine / thyself

or

thee / thee / thy / thine / thineself if we wanted to parallel the others more and simplify a little.

[linguistics-and-such]

That's a really interesting idea, actually. As a side-note, another Tumblr user suggested resurrecting "gij" (the Dutch equivalent of "thou") to use as a gender-neutral singular 3rd-person pronoun. I don't know a lot of Dutch, but it seems like a cool idea. I do know a lot of English, though, so I feel more comfortable giving my two cents here.

Firstly, I think it would be better if we went with your second idea of using "thee", rather than "thou", as the subject. Not only does this fit in more nicely with "he" and "she", it's also easier to implement a neopronoun if its subject form and object form are the same. In addition to that, whenever "thou" appears in older texts, it would be less easy to confuse the ancient pronoun with the neopronoun.

* "Thou and I will go." <- ancient pronoun

* "Thee and I will go." <- neopronoun

I've seen "thee" and "thi" suggested as neopronoun options in the past. In the first case, the declensions were:

* thee, thim, ther, thers, thimself

In the second case, the declensions were:

* thi, thim, ther, thers, thimself

(Note that the first neopronoun set, "thee" / "thim", uses the voiced "th" (ð) that appears in words like "this" and "that", and the second neopronoun set, "thi" / "thim", uses the unvoiced "th" (θ) that appears in words like "thing" and "thick". Also, both neopronoun sets are designed to merge the various forms of "he" and "she" together.)

Going back to your idea, I also imagine that "thy" and "thine" would be more consistent in neopronoun-form than in ancient pronoun-form. To my understanding, in Old English, you used "thine" as the possessive adjective if it immediately preceded a word starting with a vowel (eg: "thine eyes", not "thy eyes"). We don't do that with "my" and "mine" today - we say "my eyes", not "mine eyes" - so it would make sense not to do it with "thy" and "thine" as well. Thus, "thine" as a neopronoun should only be used as a possessive pronoun, never as a possessive adjective.

It might also be worth considering changing the reflexive from "thineself" to "thyself", just so it's more consistent with "myself". Also, I think "thyself" is easier to say; "thineself" is a bit of tongue-twister. And, again, this would make it less likely to be confused with the ancient pronoun when it appears in old texts.

Overall, a really interesting idea for implementing a neopronoun. Thanks for sharing!

Edit: Oops! I went and did a thing. I have a weakness for tables. X_X