hirself ---> herself, or? :)

According to the Civil Rights Commission of Colorado, you are sexually harassing me...

I mean... You're harassing hir...

"can't be victim "
suggest it be changed to "can't be a victim"
+1 "hirself" --> herself ?

"hirself" is not a mistake, I believe. I mean, sacredceltic has used it intentionally. :-)
http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hirself

Oxford English dictionary does not list "hirself" but says "do you mean 'herself'?"

http://www.oxforddictionaries.c...ish/?q=hirself

Because OED can't cope with the speed of the introducing of new laws in 50 US states...
"hirself" is not only used (including in literature) but it's official terminology in a dozen US states and Universities, and, as I wrote above, the Colorado Civil Rights commission stated that refusing to address a person with neutral/transgender (curiously the same "ze/hir should be used in both cases...) pronouns when they wish to be addressed that way, and using "gender" pronouns equates to sexual harassment of that person.

I can't wait for the first legal case of a transgender Person claiming that using "neutral" is a denial of hir sexuality...

Okay, and in German I want to be referred to by "Sir" from now on. :)
(Sie + Er => Sir)

German would be yet a different case since neutral "Es" already exists. Then "Sir" would subsequently only apply to transgender persons.
So [eng]ze and [deu]sir would be faux-amis...

The CRR info is interesting but using "ze/hir", "hirself" etc in English sentences on Tatoeba seems, in my humble opinion, very strange. I may be wrong but I think I'll stick to he, she, herself, himself etc.


@Alexander: Sir, I have just pressed the imaginary "Like" button on your comment.

I think it won't be long before it will be enacted in Australia as well...
The LGBT lobby is very powerful and it won't tolerate geographical exceptions.
You'd better get ready for the next linguistic revolution !

I’ve googled and it seems the Colorado Civil Rights commision’s statement seems to be about people calling transsexual women men and vice versa, not about the proposed gender-neutral pronouns.

It looks like someone is just spreading FUD because of hir transphobia.

<This sentence needs an Espranto translation with ri. ^^">

> You can see all the pages Google finds
> with both the words "Colorado" and "hir"
> using this search.

Sacredceltic seems to have come to this conclusion based on two facts: a) Colorado Civil Right comissions considers that continuosly addressing people with a pronoun different from his own gender pronoun is a sexual harrasment,
b) there is a proposition to introduce gender-neutral pronouns ze and hir.

So, looks like he believes that a too broad application of the Colorado Civil Right comission’s ideas may create a situation when someone asks everyone to address them in a gender-neutral way with ze/hir and not doing so might be considered harassment.

I highly doubt such a situation is possible.

@impersonator

as usual, you're vomiting.

Shouting "transphobia" when I merely report information I read from the correspondant of Le Monde in Washington, on hir Blog http://clesnes.blog.lemonde.fr/...o-hir-bedroom/
is just nauseating.

"Dans le Colorado, la commission des droits civiques a pris en compte l’existence du troisième pronom. Elle a établi que le refus pour un professeur ou un employeur d’utiliser le « ze » pouvait être considéré comme une forme de harcèlement sexuel."

What it says is that the Colorado CRC not only considers the fact as sexual harassment but also stated the existence of the third pronoun "ze" and that the refusal by a teacher or an employer to use it as a « preferred gender pronoun » constitutes the harassment itself.

Now if you're not happy with what journalists report, go complain to them.

> as usual, you're vomiting.

Please speak in a civilised manner. Thanks in advance.

> Shouting "transphobia" when I merely report information

When reporting information, a person has a choice of what information to report. Ze can report disinformation like 'Belarusians cannot access foreign websites', or ze can check hir facts.

If someone reports transphobic FUD, it is hir responsibility for doing so.

That Belarus controls and filters access to foreign websites is a fact, well reported by various NGOs and states (including Angela Merkel who complained about it). The fact that you are not filtered and try to hide that fact just discredit yourself as a member of either the Belarussian Nomenklatura or the Belarussian police state.

And I trust more Le Monde to report on Colorado law than you.
The article I reported is absolutely not transphobic. Only in your dreams. Le Monde is a famously leftist / pro LGTB rights column in France.

I usually report and/or coin sentences every time I read something new on languages (which I do extensively as it is my main topic of interest and I have set multiple web alerts accordingly) and I make no difference of treatment according to gender, race, specie, religion, size, colour or anything else, unlike the Belarussian government.

I'm proud to document new linguistic phenomenons (and this is a tremendous one with massive consequences !) and to be the first to coin sentences that illustrate these phenomenons on Tatoeba.

Why would you trust any politician on anything they say? They're always apt to twist things in their favour.

On an unrelated note, these novelties should be voluntary, could be favoured, but when they are forced it's all wrong.

@sacredceltic
What a nice picture!
A member of Belarusian Nomenclatura and Belarusian Police State are teaching you being tolerant to transgender people.

> That Belarus controls and filters access
> to foreign websites is a fact,

This is different from what you were claiming in the past. In the past you’ve claimed that Belarusians don’t have access to foreign websites, now you claim that Belarus controls and filters access to them.

Indeed, Belarus has quite a history of filtering oppositional websites during some political events. However, these are not always foreign websites, as the examples with nn.by’s blockings show.


The statement in its current form is correct.

But the idea that Belarusians cannot access foreign websites — something you were advocating earlier — is incorrect.



I don’t know about the facts presented by Le Monde, but the idea that this information is available only in a French site (which, notably, has ‘blogs’ in the URL) and nowhere on English sites suggests it is likely to be incorrect.

By the way, I wonder whether the fact that an information is available only in a US site and nowhere on French-speaking sites would suggest it is likely to be incorrect too.

Depends on the kind of information, of course.

>"teaching you being tolerant to transgender people"

Well, this is not possible because I have not the slightest problem with transgender people. I met a few and never had a problem with them. To me, gender and sex is like religion : everybody have hir own, this is a private, individual matter and I actually find categorizing it a ridiculous attempt at nailing down something that moves all the time. I don't know 2 people who have the same sexuality.
So the very idea that I could be "transphobic" because I coined this sentence is ridiculous and irrelevant.

Because of that impossibility to categorize, languages attemps at categorizing genders is a fascinating and often polarising topic, that creates much unease in people.
I remember I very much upset an English friend who was arguing in favour of the superiority of the English language over Romance and other Germanic languages when it comes to the complexity of handling genders for things. When I told him and showed him that even English did that, he was very upset and uneasy (in my experience, many English natives are either in ignorance or in denial of this) http://tatoeba.org/fre/tags/sho...ers_in_English (I subsequently created that tag)
It seems it's a big problem to English native speakers, for some reason, because it affects their relation to their identity and to things around them.

My interest dates back to my childhood and watching Walt Disney cartoons where things got personalities. And I was shocked that a teapot could be a female or a house a male (because « pot » is male in French when « maison » is female)...Ever since I wondered if, although most things don't have a gender in English, there was no archaic subconscious gender in things in the English psyche. Now I know there is one, because I studied English and discovered that in its origins, like in all Germanic languages, things had a gender. Walt Disney was one of its last reminders.
Children tales tell a lot on languages.

So I found this new debate in US universities and state laws most fascinating.
An illustration that it's a very touchy issue in English, is that they had to resort to "ze" rather than use "it".
That is because most English-natives find "it" demeaning for a person, since it applies to things.
Thinking so, they ignore that :
1) "it" also applies to animals you may love as much as persons.
2) Reversely, things may have a gender, as illustrated by the sentences under my tag above.

So the debate is completely distorted and based on false premisses, which leads and will continue to lead to ever more convoluted expression. I find it both hilarious and interesting.
Imagine if girls were neutral-gender in English as is "mädchen" in German ! Many debaters would probably end up committing suicide...

>the idea that this information is available only in a French site (which, notably, has ‘blogs’ in the URL) and nowhere on English sites suggests it is likely to be incorrect

Apart from being xenophobic, suggesting that only what English speakers write is true, this remark is, again, absolutely ridiculous, since Le Monde's correspondant in Washington (that's her blog) obviously speaks a perfect English. Maybe she is not a very good expert at US Law, but neither are you.

By the way, I'm thrilled at seeing this sentence being translated. I wonder if some languages already provided for people's gender neutrality and don't need to coin new words or use style-less convoluted expressions.
Toki-Pona, somebody ?

> So the very idea that I could be
> "transphobic" because I coined this sentence

I’ve never claimed this.

I’ve said that conclusion 'the idea that using incorrect pronouns for people is a harrassment means not using ze/hir is a harrassment' is likely to be fear, uncertancy and doubt spread by transphobic people.

> suggesting that only what English speakers write is true

I’ve never claimed this either.

I just mean that it’s VERY likely that if an USA-based commission, members of which apparently write in English, made such a statement, it would be available in English.

> I wonder if some languages already provided
> for people's gender neutrality and don't
> need to coin new words or use style-less
> convoluted expressions.

I’ve translated it with the masculine and feminine pronouns because that’s what will obviously be used when translating texts with ze into Belarusian.

> Toki-Pona, somebody ?

By the way, there are lots of languages that have gender-neutral pronouns. Tatar ул, Cantonese 佢 koei5 are the first things that come into mind.

The question is not whether languages have gender-neutral pronouns but whether they can apply to people, like in German "es". And will Tatoeba German translators choose "es" for that new situation...I can't wait, really.
Surely there must be languages where the gender is simply indicated by some affix and replacing the affix by nothing could do the trick...or not...

English had "it" but promoters of "ze", along with the current legislators in the USA, rejected its use, for (wrong) reasons I explained above, decreeing it would be derogatory.
Maybe the next phase will see "ze" itself become derogatory because transphobic people will make it sound so and it will ultimately have to be replaced by yet another word or by "it", which will then have acquired a new pride.

The same phenomenon, forcing language to adapt to changing prejudices or changing ways to express felt prejudices, also takes place with race.
"nigger" (which is the English adaptation of the Spanish/Portuguese "negro", which means "black") used to describe a black-skinned person. Since "nigger" was used under a regime of slavery in the US and elsewhere, it was later considered derogatory and replaced by "black" (which still means "negro" in Spanish anyway...) and "coloured".
In French, we currently are in complete uncertainty as to what we should say since nègres/noirs/gens de couleurs themselves disagree on the matter (« nègre » has never been considered derogatory by everybody in France, especially in art), so you can't say it right anymore, and will offend someone whatever you say.
My bet is we will go back to "nigger/nègre" which will acquire a renewed pride. I heard coloured/black people calling each other that way in both English and French...so we're going round in circles.

It seems to be a never-ending story.
Each generation of reformers find new prejudices who they seem to actually believe that they lie in the language itself, and that reforming the language will end the prejudice.
I doubt that changing the name of colours or of pronouns to apply according to sexual orientation changes anything, as much as I doubt that the neutrality of German "Mädchen" ever de-sexualized/"de-genderized"(?!) them in the least...

"1) "it" also applies to animals you may love as much as persons.
2) Reversely, things may have a gender, as illustrated by the sentences under my tag above."

It seems people not often refer "it" to their own pets, only to abstract animals. "It" is a genderless and personless pronoun. I've even often seen articles about a single animal from zoo, referring from "he/she", not "it". Also if you write about a single famous animal, like Khatiko, etc, you'd most likely say "he" or "she" according to a gender of the animal, than "it". Of cause, we never say "it" about cartoon heroes or fairy tale characters.

I read in grammar books, it is possible to refer "it" to an abstract baby, but I've never seen such examples in real texts.

It's not a secret, that some words in English may have a gender, like "ship" (also blimp or air-ship). It can take place in artistic texts, or if we want to "personificate" a ship. Also, we can say "she" about countries in the similar situations. Also we can meet "he" or "she" in proverbs about animals. In this case "he/she" is not related to a single animal's gender, but to a general perception (a bear is maschuline, cause it's big and strong, etc).

@sacredceltic, language just doesn’t work the way you want it to work. A word is not derogatory because of some inherent qualities. It is derogatory just because the speakers of the language perceive it as derogatory, that’s it.

Niger may have been a neutral word for 'black person' in the past, but it has come to acquire derogatory connotations in English. Just because it did. Just like 'silly' used to meant 'happy' in Old English, but it no longer does. There is no logics, some words just change meaning.

By the way, there *is* a difference between people using derogatory words among themselves and other people using derogatory words for them. You may say 'I am silly!', but it is certainly a bad idea to use it about another person.

I don't see why it should be acceptable that what someone else thinks about a word should govern how I am to treat and use it, as if my take on the means to express myself that is speech is irrelevant and one must conform to the convention as part of some social obligation (what for?).
It is perhaps not any less significant what "they" think than what "I" think, but perhaps not any more either.

>@sacredceltic, language just doesn’t work the way you want it to work. A word is not derogatory because of some inherent qualities. It is derogatory just because the speakers of the language perceive it as derogatory, that’s it.

Well...that's precisely my point, actually...so you chronically misread me, it seems..probably because of the situation in Ukraine where people confuse freedom fighters for fascists and NKVD/FSB agents for liberators...

@onekeycall

I am but the messenger...

>By the way, I'm thrilled at seeing this sentence being translated. I wonder if some languages already provided for people's gender neutrality and don't need to coin new words or use style-less convoluted expressions.

Finnish translation added. And no, I didn't have to coin a new word, since we only have one word for s/he: hän.

Guess I should be grateful you didn't call me monkeycall. Thanks.

I'd beseech you not to touch the polly-ticks. It's been all regurgitated by people of greater understanding and expertise than you and me.
I'm only noting that freedom fighter, from a linguistic standpoint, is a rather devalued label since any terrorist is also a fighter for freedom - a personal freedom to do as s/he pleases, including killing if they so desire. That's the kind of freedom turning evil upon being taken to extremities.

@Silja

Congratulations ! So Finnish is gender-agnostic ? The language of the 21st century, maybe ?
I'm very happy that this debate revealed that.

@Silja
Does Finnish have the same word for "he" and "she"?

If you want an example of such language which doesn't have "he" and "she" I can say: Kazakh and some other Turce languages. So, they don't need to invent new gender neutral words.

@ooneykcall

Don't you worry, here in Western Europe, we know precisely who starved 10 million Ukrainians to death in the early 1930s...
Neither forgiven nor forgotten...forever !

> Well...that's precisely my point,
> actually...

Sorry, then I’ve indeed misunderstood you.

@sacredceltic
Well, ofcourse we have some not-so-gender-neutral words, like the ones descriping occupations and ending with "mies" (that is, "man"). Examples of these are "esimies" ("fore" + "man" = "boss", there is not a decent substituting word, except from colloqial "pomo", but could be something like "tiiminvetäjä" or "lähijohtaja") "lakimies" ("law" + "man" = "lawyer", can be replaced with genderneutral "juristi" or something) and "tiedemies" ("science" + "man" = "scientist", can be replaced with genderneutral "tieteilijä"). And then there are some words that are used more often to describe one gender than the other and have some negative or dismissive nuance in them, for example adjectives ending with -kka/kkä: "kipakka", "pirtsakka", "napakka", "topakka", "räväkkä" and "ärhäkkä". These are basically used only to describe women and they have a dismissive feeling in them (this can be somewhat a personal feeling, though).

But on the other hand, we do have only one word for "he" and "she" and we don't have any articles for the words, so the words themselves don't have any gender.

@Selena777
Yup, "hän" refers to both genders.