Linguist Reacts: Are NONBINARY Neopronouns Really Older Than We Think?

#neopronouns #nonbinary #reaction

sources:

intro: 00:00 – 01:20
nonbinary pronouns: 01:20 – 05:00
thon: 05:00 – 07:05
Teddy Roosevelt & 'fonetik': 07:05 – 09:17

[larrykuenning]

As a 75-year-old native speaker of American English, I am used to an informal use of "they" and "it" as pronouns of indefinite gender, as in: "The doorbell rang. Go see who it is and what they want." -- where the as-yet-unknown person is first "it" (neuter singular) and then "they" (plural). But of course the follow-up sentence would be "It's John, and he wants..." or "It's Mary, and she wants..." or "It's John and Mary, and they want..." -- where "it" appears until the person is named, and then we get the correct gender and number to agree with who "it" is.

On a separate note, there was a science fiction or fantasy novel by one David Lindsay, _A Voyage to Arcturus_, which for a certain episode needed a pronoun for a third sex in a fictional species. If I remember rightly, the nominative for this pronoun was "ae, " the objective was "aem, " and the possessive was "aer." I don't think the story needed a plural because as it happened there was only one such character.

[johnmacklin]

In California, we would say "bra" as a generalized version of bro for groups of mix company when we were surfing but that might have just been Is that regional slang😅

[AbhiN_]

When your language's fundemental grammatical gender system is masculine vs Non-masculine... In Telugu, we do have exclusively female pronouns, but verb conjugations are the same for neutre. Dravidian langauages as a whole are not a Masculine vs Feminine vs Neutre. It is a masculine vs non masculine. Even in Telugu, sometimes informally the word for "she" is the same as "that".

[veronica-mew]

Theodore Roosevelt would have loved the way I text. I shorten everything to its phonetic roots lol

[juhonieminen]

In finnish we have only "hän" pronoun for he /she. But in swedish we have grammatical genders for definition: "a /an /the" versus en/ett, den/det.

I say we, because swedish is our second language in Finland. (Here languages are written with small first letters.)

[LoraineLeBlanc-yp]

I’ve been trying to speak without pronouns at all. Which has been interesting experiment, but the sentences tend to get very long or very choppy.

[SomeJerkOnTheInternet]

When I was younger we just dressed in all Black to feel special

[JackHaveman]

She's not going to call the title of the pronoun article deceptive but she proved that it was. LOL. Good one.

[mitchmccarron]

Hey Lana, new sub - intelligent, attractive and confident is a winning combination ;) Cheers, Mitch from Australia.

[cyberpunkdarren]

Another good example is yall or y'all from American south slang for "you all"

[anonymussicarius]

Must be because I´m a non-native, but I would have just said "If a professor teaches a class they blablabla." In the old times in german the generic masculinum would have been used, or use a noune that allows for the third person plural "sie".
Looking forward to the next Tolien vid! :D

[davidbrown]

The biggest problem with phonetic spelling is that pronunciations change, so the spelling would have to be revised from time to time, to suit. That is very confusing and would result in more pain for kids learning to spell. In addition, many words have different standard pronunciations in different groups, so which one should the lexicons adopt?
It makes more sense to pronounce words according to their spelling. This would mean that the silent ‘K’ in “knife” would be sounded with its cutting sound and the pronunciation would attach to its meaning.
Americans are self-deceived in their phonetic spelling. They work out a lot of it with their ears closed.
You list the word “centre’ – an English word that comes from French. I have never heard an American say “centER”, so their spelling is not phonetic at all. The word is pronounced either ‘centr’ or ‘centa’.
The same argument applies to the word “theater”. No American has ever gone to the ‘theatER’. They go to either the 'theatr' or the 'theata'.
But why do Americans tinker with the rear end of words and not ‘correct’ the front?
The letter ‘C’ should be dropped altogether and changed to either ‘S’ or ‘K’ depending on how it is sounded. In this case the word would become ‘senta’ or ‘sentr’. In some countries this will be familiar in the Central Business District of a town or city identified as the “Sentrum”.
Where the ‘C’ is sounded as ‘K’ we would get: Konsentrik Sirkles.

[edwardpaddock]

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

[IvanIvanov-ugdc]

3:00 - I like "heesh".
But my favourite are "we including you" and "we, where you are not included".

[chrisf]

The concept of non-binary is completely illogical. "Man" & "woman" are not social constructs distinct from male/female where you can choose man/woman/neither (aka non-binary). The social constructs are the INDIVIDUAL stereotypes. Things like clothing, hairstyles, personality etc. Every person chooses their own unique set of stereotypes, not man/woman/neither. A person is either a man or woman, no matter which set of stereotypes that they choose.

[angielovesjb]

What an interesting video. Never would have known about the previous attempts at creating a new pronoun to mean either the man or woman previously mentioned. Good to know.

[BubblyBanjax]

In relation to the bit at the end about phonetic spelling, you may find it interesting to know, if you didn't know it already, that there is an old Irish form of writing called Ogham which was apparently used super phonetically. I cannot remember where or when I found that out but it's stuck with me. I believe it was partially due to the fact that Ogham was typically carved into stone, particularly around corners, and thus space to write on was typically somewhat limited. Also carving into stone is a time-consuming pain in the butt

[MrCrispyduck]

Can't wait for national adjectives day. I like adjectives.

[gerarddearie-zdgb]

The differences between British and American spelling are a lot older than 1906 and are because of Daniel Webster, who wrote the first dictionary of American English-the examples you selected (honour vs honor etc) are because of him and nothing to do with anything which happened in 1906

[APOLLOPATRIOT]

Great video ya woman of culture have a God blessed day 🤙🤘🗿🗿🗿