English may be a hot mess but at least we don't have to worry about this nonsense - eviltoast
  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    I’d be happy with ‘xe’ for gender neutral single-person pronoun. And for awhile I was using that from time to time - but because its rare and people aren’t use to it, using it is a distraction from what you actually are trying to talk about. I’ve stopped using it because I don’t really want to talk about it over and over. Sometimes people find it confusing. Sometime people are just curious. And some people find aggravating (because they don’t like the idea of degendering or changing genders).

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I don’t mind the concept of a degendeted pronoun, but I would vote against “xe”. Just find it unpleasant to use the “x” sound so much. Don’t know what I would like, just x makes it extra weird on top of the “weirdness” of trying to explicitly evolve language.

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Sure. And as with a lot of English, it isn’t totally clear has ‘xe’ is even meant to be pronounced. (I assume like ‘ze’).

        Perhaps a nicer sounding version would be ‘ce’. Or whatever. To be honest, it really doesn’t matter to me. I’d be happy to just call literally everyone “she” or “he” or whatever. I’d suggest that we just use “he” for all genders, because many people on the internet seem to be doing that anyway; but obviously that would be upsetting to people who have been fighting for gender recognition. Pushing for “she” might be a bit better, but not by a lot. … So we’re probably in this mess for a long time. But I reckon if we just shake it up just a little bit as individuals, using different words and such, we’ll eventually start to see something change more widely.

        • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          In my mind I’ve always pronounced “xe” with the X sounding like the latter half of the letter said aloud, followed by the letter E.

          Though I just looked it up and “zee” is the correct pronunciation.

    • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      If you get aggravated being degendering, or of others changing gender, it makes me think you are insecure about your gender. They should get over it. ‘xe’ would be good, but I don’t see it taking off with being popularizied some how. Some popular TV show or something.