You know, the things we have next to our usernames. This is an unedited stream of consciousness. I have been stewing on this for hours ever since I noticed that sometimes people post grammatically incorrect pronoun sets.
Case study: 3-word sets
Let us compare the three most commonly-seen pronoun sets: they/them/their, he/him/his, and she/her/… uhhhh it all falls apart around this point.
They are playing a game.
I am meeting them at the park.
We went to their house for dinner.
He is playing a game.
I am meeting him at the park.
We went to his house for dinner.
So far so good. But then we get to she, which is extremely often represented as she/her/hers:
She is playing a game.
I am meeting her at the park.
We went to hers house for dinner.
And that last one clearly isn’t right. So it should be she/her/her to be in line with the other two sets.
Yes, his functions in both roles, but I think it makes more sense to have the their type of word in the set of three, since it’s more common.
If you wanted to get extremely verbose to properly demonstrate what I’m talking about, we could make them into sets of four, with the fourth one being the hers type (sorry I don’t remember what the fancy names are for grammar terms):
they/them/their/theirs
he/him/his/his
she/her/her/hers
Case study: 2-word sets
Two-word pronoun sets are much more popular, and in the case of our previous examples all simply drop the last word from the three-word set:
they/them
he/him
she/her
No problems here. But I often see people say “it/its” (or worse, “it/it’s”), when if you follow the same pattern of all the other sets, it should clearly be it/it!!!
It is playing a game.
I am meeting it at the park.
We went to its house for dinner.
Anyway, [🔥 English]; thank you for reading.
anyone who doesn’t give all five conjugations for their pronouns (especially nonstandard ones) frustrates me greatly.
most annoying to me is when they only give four forms of a neopronoun, and i’m left to guess which one is pulling double duty, because they clearly are most likely following the pattern of either masculine singular or feminine singular personal pronouns, but masculine uses “his” for both possessives, while feminine uses “her” for object and dependent possessives only.
anywho, here’s some names for the five forms of english personal pronouns
subject/object/dependent possessive/independent possessive/reflexive
they/them/their/theirs/themself
anyone who doesn’t give all five conjugations for their pronouns (especially nonstandard ones) frustrates me greatly.
I don’t provide all five forms of my neopronouns because whatever people guess, so long as it is a sincere guess, is correct
9·4 hours agoI’ll add all five conjugations to my display name, just cuz it makes it longer.
It’s just listing the set of unique pronoun for the various grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive). The real edge case is if you have a neopronoun that doesn’t conjugate.
This is why we need antinouns
i rep two sets
The problem is really that 3 isn’t enough. It should be they/them/their/theirs, he/him/his/his and she/her/her/hers to capture the main forms of the primary 3rd person pronoun sets.
They went to the store. I went to the store with them. Their sibling came along. The world is theirs now.
He went to the store. I went to the store with him. His sibling came along. The world is his now.
She went to the store. I went to the store with her. Her sibling came along. The world is hers now.
This is my only issue with most people who use neopronouns. 2 forms is insufficient, give me 4 minimum.
4 is still half-assing it. gimme that reflexive form.
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I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Pup is playing a game. I am meeting pup at the park. We went to pups house for dinner. Good pup! 🐶
arf!
See, this one I feel like there should be an apostrophe in the possessive one
English just said “fuck you” and made the possessive form of it not follow the rule that every other possessive word follows
none of the other possessive pronouns use an apostrophe either: his, her, hers, their, theirs, my, mine, your, yours, our, ours. it’d be very weird if for some reason “its” had an apostrophe.
lol right you are! Maybe I’ll catch that one next decade :p
You know what’s bizarre is that they comes from the vikings, the rest all comes from the standard Germanic origins but English liked they/their enough they took it from the Viking invaders
yeah there’s a bunch of neopronouns where people list the two-set and i guess we’re supposed to magically know the other conjugations if we need to refer to someone when we can’t directly ask.
smh make name fields longer every service ever. This is locally solvable if somebody wants to make and maintain a hexbear.net/pronouns that has style guide like your examples for all the pronouns we have in our profile thingy.
i can write some beginner 90s-ass html but i’d need help with some of the conjugations.
Mine’s super easy. Just guess, you really can’t be wrong (except, don’t use it/its in a demeaning manner. If you can use it respectfully, fine). If you need to be told, use your own for me.
today is a good day to remember i can bookmark things and not just leave a tab open for years
This is why all pronouns should be eradicated
He
She
It
I
You
Y’all
me think get rid of pronoun. only talk like caveman. bunga
me
pronouns are useful, it’s having two main defaults for third-person that gets us in trouble.
imagine if we had gendered I/me/my or you/your/yours :visible-disgust:
imagine if we had gendered I/me/my or you/your/yours
My conlang does both of these
imagine if we had gendered I/me/my
Oh yeah while we’re at it
僕
Only comrade
Unironically like this as part of radical gender abolition in a communist state as a means to end gender inequalities. If gender shouldn’t matter to anyone except the individual themselves, then call everyone “comrade” and eliminate gendered terms!
(In the world as it is, people understand and accept “call me by your own pronouns” more than “use “comrade” and plurals, please”, “mirror pronouns” is just the best way to ask for something I don’t mind much, but among communists, sure, let’s call everyone “comrade”!)
I’m sorry if I’m asking a silly question but how are you supposed to use the noun comrade as a pronoun?
I understand how “Comrade Markov wore zer/their/her/his hat”. But how do you use comrade as a pronoun? Is it “Comrade Markov wore comrade’s hat”?
Sometimes that is indeed done, in an attempt to be funny, but usually it is actually done more as “neutral pronoun/plural pronouns(which are the same set in English, which sucks) and use “comrade” instead of gendered terms when the grammar does fit”. Essentially how you’d refer to someone who’s selected the “comrade/them” pronoun set on this site.
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Wait, I can just use
since this is all their faultA lot of the Western world’s problems are entirely their fault. Motion to sink England, all in favour?
I still can’t figure out how to get rid of the duplicate pronoun set on my profile, either
I think if you set the Additional Pronouns field to “none/use name” while keeping the Pronouns field as comrade/them, it should display as just comrade/them
Thanks!
It worked!
