Friday, May 2, 2014

A New Word - 5/2/2014

So I'm going to try something in my other blog (http://beatbybeatserials.blogspot.com/) for the Singers story. English lacks a non-gendered general pronoun equivalent to he or she. So I am going to try using “ke” to represent that pronoun as a way of Singers to refer to each other without implying gender.

I do this because they are asexual. Their reproduction is performed the way they do everything else, by Singing. There is neither male nor female involved. The progeny is not carried by either, and does not even appear at the location of the parent. I haven't explored their nature fully, but this is a set aspect of it.

I choose ke as something that sounds similar to he or she, but is clearly different and separate. Non-gendered does not, in this case, mean a mix of the two, but other. It is intended to rhyme with he and she to maintain a linguistic pattern with which readers are familiar, but to be sufficiently different so as to be clear.

I will use kes (keez) for the possessive, equivalent to his or hers. For the plural, I will simply use “they” in its traditional English sense. Ke will also stand, obviously for him or her. It will be an interesting experiment, and I think it may be quite successful.

Most of the proposed variations on the non-gendered English pronoun seek to combine the two into something like “hir” or “hirm”, neither of which works well to the English-speaking tongue. By retaining a similarity but separating from the soft-sounding “h” and “sh” with the hard “k” will, I think, provide the needed differentiation without being too artificial.

In any case, let me know what you think when it starts to appear.


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