Gender [was: Re: Cancel a repeat with a button]

[Lynn Fredricks]

> > I thought of you. :) I still have to figure out Shao Sean. The only 
> > thing I remember is that his/her name is backward to Western 
> > conventions. English needs a non-gender human pronoun.
> 
> Often you can just use "they", when the person referred to is 
> unspecified, as in "If the user gets confused they can 
> contact tech support." (This usage is cropping up more and 
> more in English, and reportedly there are even examples of it 
> in Shakespeare.) But there is no good solution when you're 
> referring to a specific, named person.  
> Maybe we need to borrow from German "man" or Polish "pan":
> 
> "Ask Robin. Man knows what man's doing." (Hmmmm. Doesn't 
> exactly solve the gender-neutral thing, does it.)
> 
> I'll go ask my friend Dana. Pan's a linguist.

We also don't have the thing (its been a long, long time since I took
linguistics!) where once a person is identified, you can drop the name or
pronoun, like in some languages - that's a "high context" language
situation, right?

Of course, there's always the special "married to this person too long"
reference which seems to be in every culture, the grunt + head gesture to
refer to once's spouse :-)

Best regards,

Lynn Fredricks
President
Proactive International, LLC

- Because it is about who you know.(tm)
http://www.proactive-intl.com