Comments on: Gender-Neutrality

By: John Avelis Jr.

John Avelis Jr. — Sat, 14 Feb 2004 12:20:05 +0000

Take, for instance, the quote by the immortal Jack Nicholson: “People who talk in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.” ….perfect gender neutrality.

By: Anne C.

Anne C. — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 21:22:57 +0000

I like to use “she” and “her” in a universal sense. Male pronouns got used for so long, so now we can switch. And it’s more pleasing than “he or she” or “they.”

By: Keith Gaughan

Keith Gaughan — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:21:20 +0000

Personally, I prefer the use of ‘one’ and infinitives, as follows: “Greater love hath none than this: to lay down ones life for ones friends.” But even then, I’ve never myself had a problem with somebody using ‘they’ as an epiciene pronoun.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 16:12:09 +0000

I think James Thurber nailed the problem with “one” as a neuter personal pronoun: ‘The chief objection to a consistent, or “cross-country” use of “one” is that it tends to make a sentence sound like a trombone solo – such as: “One knows one’s friends will help one if one is in trouble, or at least one trusts one’s friends will help one.” Even though this is correct, to the point of being impeccable, there is no excuse for it. The “one” enthusiast should actually take up the trombone and let it go at that.’ Read, as they say, the whole thing.

By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 15:13:24 +0000

English does have a neuter personal pronoun pronoun – it’s “one”. Although “Greater love hath no-one than this: that one lay down one’s life for one’s friends” lacks a certain amount of poetry, it’s still correct and gender-non-specific.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 04:52:20 +0000

Dipnut, I know the sentence I came up with is pretty non-standard, but so is the original. It’s not like “Greater love hath no one than this: that they lay down their life for their friend,” or a gender-specific version thereof, is exactly standard English.

By: dipnut

dipnut — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 22:58:58 +0000

Never mind the clanging usage of “their”; your translation is nearly unintelligible apart from that. “No person has greater hunger than to eat breakfast.” “No one knows freedom better than to fly an airplane.” See what I’m getting at? The infinitive form of any verb does not know freedom, or have hunger or love. Your usage is defensible*, barely, but it’s still lazy and mean. * “[The infinitive form] functions as a substantive while retaining certain verbal characteristics…”

By: nnyhav

nnyhav — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 22:51:41 +0000

I, for one, welcome singular Roman numeric pronouns.

By: todd.

todd. — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:52:35 +0000

I’m still not sold on ‘they.’ It was built into me in high school, and it simply sounds offensive at this point. My ear twitches.

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:37:31 +0000

Of course I should have used no one rather than no person. That sounds much better.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:27:06 +0000

There’s also a slight cheat in using the archaic “hath” in a familiar quote to slide over the nonstandard nature of the grammatical construction. Brian’s version should not be compared with the original but with “No man has greater love than this …” I would use “No-one” rather than “No person”, and stick with “they” in the second clause.

By: Vance Maverick

Vance Maverick — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:22:38 +0000

Mark plays a somewhat unfair game here. The prose of the King James Bible isn’t just good—for English prose, it’s part of the definition of good, part of the frame of reference against which we read any prose at all. So any translation from Jacobean to another idiom will sound like a loss. That said, we can point to some specific features of the original which could be duplicated in your version. For example, the focusing of attention on “this”, which is perhaps redundant but undeniably part of the magic of the original.

By: rams

rams — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:15:46 +0000

As long as you’re permitting “they”, my ear would prefer: Greater love hath no one than that they lay down their life for a friend.(The original was singular and to my ear that does sound stronger than plural.)