| 1. The changes you've outlined are all simplifications except the ones for non-binary, which as the Stallman essay linked above outlines, is a mess. Simultaneously more confusing, less accurate, less precise, sounds more clumsy, and takes more effort. Not a winning strategy (though calling people bigots got quite far for a while). 2. We know what a country is, we've created several. 3. We're not with the Pope and haven't been for nigh on 500 years now and won't be back. 4. Non-binary is a luxury belief[1]. It came directly out of universities and has been supported via people of a similar background in media and education sectors, so if we're wondering how the wealthy and powerful want us to speak, we need look no further than this. As the link states: > Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. 5. There are no true human hermaphrodites as even those born with something akin to the other sex's genitalia have only been able to produce from one type, usually female. As with singular they, it is a misnomer and the medical profession prefers more accurate designation of disorder of sex development. Calling them it would seem dehumanising. > Plenty of languages have a gender-neutral form of address: one that can be used for anyone. It serves a purpose, it fits a pattern, people are using it, and it doesn't even require extra logic in my natural language parser: I see no reason to call this sense ungrammatical, especially not when the others are accepted. Putting the verb at the end of the sentence is grammatical in Japanese, that is not a reason for why it should be grammatical in English, any more than giving my television a female gender would be (French), or using capitals for every noun (German). I'm all for helpful innovations but as stated in point 1, this ain't that, or should that be they ain't they. [1] https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-... |
Exactly the same criticism applies to singular you, down the the example sentences. I would take Richard Stallman's criticism more seriously if he was a thou proponent. (Use whatever words you like for the generic person / unknown gender cases, but don't start othering people by using non-standard pronouns exclusively for them.)
> country […] Pope
That paragraph was about historical developments; sorry it wasn't clear. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debatable_lands
> Non-binary is a luxury belief.
It's a basic fact of life in many pre- / non-British Empire cultures – and even in modern-day cultures formerly of the Empire. If you mean the modern, 'western' ideas of non-binary gender, that's derived from the experiences of transgender people, and existed for decades before the academics picked up on it.
Virtue-signalling existing about something doesn't mean the thing is made up (see: carbon credits, corporate inclusivity). Your linked essay somewhat misses the point: belief in virtue-signalling is also a status symbol, as is name-dropping social psychology and evolutionary psychology in an argument, and I could easily rebut that essay in exactly the same way it rebuts the 'defund the police' movement (except, that wouldn't be intellectually honest: for all its central thesis is flawed, and its examples are misrepresented, it does describe a real phenomenon).
> that is not a reason for why it should be grammatical in English
If I may be pedantic for a moment: it's the same grammatical construction as things that are grammatical, so it is grammatical. That's not up for debate! Even "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is, per Noam Chomsky, a grammatically-correct sentence. What's in question is whether it's acceptable, to which I say the notion of acceptability is not how language works, and especially not how English works. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription for further discussion.
> or should that be they ain't they
They ain't them. ;-)