h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'Hir' sounds like a useful word, although I doubt I will ever use it myself. But what idiot picked "sie"? This is pronounced "sigh" by the rules of English. By German rules, it is "zee". Pronouncing it as "tsee" follows no rule that I know of. Why introduce a new word which has completely non-standard spelling? When not use "zee" itself?

I believe myself that the word "they" could be made to be a completely satisfactory solution with minor modifications, while the introduction of totally new words would be virtually impossible.

I disagree with what you say about Old English having little in the line of gender discrimination until the 12th century. OE had completely different pronouns and inflexions for the three genders. Just because you can't hear the difference doesn't mean it wasn't there. A sharp distinction between all aspects of masculine and feminine was a common feature of all Indo-European languages.

The title should have a hyphen:

Gender-Free Pronouns

Entry: Gender Free Pronouns - A753833
(just changing the title back so people can get to the entry easily)

> "But what idiot picked 'sie'?"

I dunno, you'd have to ask hir.

'ie' is fairly often pronounced with a long 'ee' sound: field, wierd, dixie, etc. Obviously it can be pronounced with a long 'i' sound (pie, tie, for example) but it looks to me like it varies, presumably depending on word origins, etc. Anyway, after the feedback I've got here, I'm trying to do some research on the subject to find out what *really* is the most common pronounciation, as opposed to the most common that I've come across. I'll let y'all know if I find anything useful.

Incidentally, I'm given to understand that 'tsee' is the German pronounciation of 'sie'. But that was some time ago, and my accent was always a little dodgy.

Some people do indeed use ze/hir/hirself, though it doesn't appear to be as common as sie/hir/hirself. Personally, sie/hir is where I'm happy to compromise between having a certain level of problems and having a certain level of common usage. Singular they, for me, has too many problems while other neologisms, for me, aren't widespread enough. But that's just my choice, and I've got absolutely no problems in chatting to someone who's made a different choice.

re: Old English.

I've seen it said a few times, so it seemed pretty uncontroversial. I'll do some research, and see what I can pull up.

A753833 (just giving the link again, since we're on a new page).

>> what idiot picked "sie"? ... Why introduce a new word which has completely non-standard spelling?

You'll have to ask hir.

'ie' can be pronounced like 'dixie', or it can be pronounced like 'pie'. But I clearly need to do some research to find what pronounciations *are* most common, so I'll be changing that section.

re: Old English

Thanks for the feedback - though it does conflict slightly with what I've read in a couple of other places. I'll do more research. I may need to expand my couple of sentences into a new section.

You're right that he was "he" and she was "heo", but I think that they were still separate words and easily recognisable as different. "he" would have been pronounced "hay", while "heo" is pronounced more like "hayo". The accusative cases were "hine" for him and "hi" for her. I think that to say that these showed no major difference between masc. and fem. is misleading. Here's the full table:

Nomnitaive: ic - þu - he -heo -hit
Accusative: me - þe - hine - hi - hit
Genitive: min - þin - his - hire - his
Dative: me - þe - him - hire - him

To me, the question is, "How do I refer to my friend who I know of as male but my other friend knows as female?"
The Gender-Free pronouns answer that problem quite neatly - we both call him/her hir.

oops... that'll teach me not to press the "thread fast forward" button...

But how do you pronounce 'hir'?

(and no fair answering 'Sam'... )

Mike or Zoe, actually

Actually, I say it sort of like "hear", but sharper.

Not that that makes any sense...

Is this a joke?

No this is not a joke.

'die', 'fie', 'lie', 'pie', 'tie'. Those are the only one-syllable English words with -ie as the vowel. They are all pronounced to rhyme with 'sigh'. In 'dixie', 'prairie', 'millie', 'sadie', and all the other ones that are coming to mind now, the unstressed terminal -ie is pronounced like the stressed vowel in 'fee'.

According to that pattern, 'sie' should be pronounced with the same vowel as 'she'.

Counter-examples are welcome, of course, and English prounounciation could always become *more* irregular without anyone really noticing.

All the examples you mention are disyllabic. The 'rule' is that one-syllable words ending in -ie are pronounced like the letter 'i', but polysyllabic words are like 'e'.

Evewn English can only tolerate a certain amount of irregularity, else we'd all go barmy.

I've taken this out of PR - there's stuff I need to do on it first. But do keep talking

> "The 'rule' is that one-syllable words ending in -ie are pronounced like the letter 'i', but polysyllabic words are like 'e'."

There are only four such words, though. And one of them is 'fie'!

-Martin (smells the blood of GTB)

Not if you include plurals and 3rd person singulars. Then there's flies, dries, pries, etc. Clutching at straws? Maybe.

... field, shield, wierd, ...

Die, fie, hie, lie, pie, tie and vie. That makes seven.

Anyway, enough to make it a rule or precedent. For some reason, 'weird' doesn't count.

Actually, I got that backwards, didn't I? Those words indicate that 'sie' should be pronounced 'sigh', not 'sea'. That's what you had said, right?