In other threads, we've been talking about gender neutral pronouns. I just learned that in Finnish they have no gendered pronouns. They use hän for any human. It is truly gender neutral, I am told. Perhaps we should use it.

If you don't mind typing alt 0214 each time you want to use it, fine! ÖK with me.

Why import a term to replace the perfectly good, and venerable, "they"?

(Also it bears too much of a resemblance to the decidedly not genderless "hen".)

What is the term for those two dots? Alt 0214? I had the worst time getting them. I had to start a Word document, insert a symbol and then cut and paste it. Quite a bit of work!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...rs_%C3%84_and_%C3%96

"å, ä and ö are regarded distinct letters and collated after z"

Umlaut

My child who references themselves as nonbinary uses pronouns they or them. For me its been a transition but we manage. Not sure about the word hän.

quote:

Originally posted by angry and bitter:
My child who references themselves as nonbinary uses pronouns they or them. For me its been a transition but we manage. Not sure about the word hän.

The problem with hän as with all the other made up non binary pronouns is that first you need to persuade enough people to use them whereas “they” has been used this way for centuries and is already familiar to everyone.

For me when I think of they or them being used I think of it being plural like im talking about more than one person. Am I wrong?

quote:

Originally posted by angry and bitter:
For me when I think of they or them being used I think of it being plural like im talking about more than one person. Am I wrong?

That's how I've always used them, but I seem to be a dinosaur.

quote:

Originally posted by angry and bitter:
For me when I think of they or them being used I think of it being plural like im talking about more than one person. Am I wrong?

Not wrong but it has also been used as a non-gender specific reference for literally hundreds of years. None of the proposed replacements work well. For example some have suggested writing s/he but it’s unpronounceable. Hir in speech is not distinguishable from her. And they all run into that issue of getting anyone to use them anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
What is the term for those two dots? Alt 0214? I had the worst time getting them. I had to start a Word document, insert a symbol and then cut and paste it. Quite a bit of work!

Depends on the context. If you're discussing German, then Umlaut seems appropriate. If something else and you want an "English" term then dieresis or diæresis.

As for typing characters with this diacritic, it depends on your OS. I have an international keyboard installed and so I get a bunch of "foreign" (to US English) characters by typing Right-Alt-char. For example to get the ash above (i.e., 'æ') I typed Right-Alt-z.

without such a keyboard one can download this: https://usefulshortcuts.com/downloads/ALT-Codes.pdf

Dieresis is interesting to me because it reminds me of the medical term diuresis. They both are from Latin and Greek, though I couldn't find anything about their being related linguistically. Does anyone know?

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:


it depends on your OS.

Your bone?

Operating system, but you know.

Os also means oral. I use it in Words with Friends, and I always thought it was the oral meaning. Maybe not though.