PRONOUNS

This is a suggestion by Jeremy Gibson for a non-gendered pronoun which overcomes some of the difficulties associated with previous attempts to devise a pronoun which can be substituted in normal English converstaion in place of "He" or "She". Previous suggestions have suffered from a variety of defects which have prevented their general adoption:

Polysyllabic, which interrupts the flow of a normal sentence; Unpronouncable; Do not have suitable adjectival forms; Easily confused with 'he' or 'she' or some other existing word

A list of other non-gendered pronouns is available at: the NonBinary website,

NON-GENDERED PRONOUNS

GA

Having studied several examples of suggestions for this problem I find them all too unnesessarily complicated!

My solution is very simple: use 'ga' (which stands for "genderless attribution") and 'gar'. 'Ga' involves the hard 'g' sound (which when combined with the 'gar' form makes the pronunciation obvious) and 'ga' has the advantage of being very distinct from 'he/she', 'him/her' etc while being similarly monosyllabic and easy to say.

Examples:

Nominative:

"Wherever there is a crowd of young people, ga seems quite at ease."

Accusative:

"I told ga to to tidy up the room before supper."
Note: this use of an identical form for the 'nominative/subjective' and accusative/objective' cases follows the present usage for the 3rd. person neuter).Possessive (adjective):

Possessive:

"I told ga to tidy up gar room as soon as possible."
The written form shows a clear distinction between a 'personal pronoun' and a 'possessive adjective" but doesn't require the speaker to distinguish this vocally -- so adding to the ease of spoken usage. The 'gar' sound also fits easily with following words beginning with a vowel: e.g. 'I confiscated gar apple' 'I dropped gar umbrella'.

Possessive pronoun:

"If I need to borrow a 'phone, my friend lends me gars."

Reflexive pronoun:

"The champion gave garself a huge pat on the back."

JEREMY GIBSON

February 2015

PRONOUNS

GA

LINKS