(no subject)

[the_rck]

I’ve reached a point in one of my fics where I absolutely have to settle on a set of gender neutral pronouns. I’m writing about members of a shapeshifting species who are genderfluid by nature (I’m sure some have set gender identity because people vary. It’s just not the default). Their language really needs gender neutral pronouns, and canon does not provide.

(Canon doesn’t offer options because it assumes that both shapeshifting and fixed form species speak the same language (with the fixed form people an offshoot of the shapeshifters that has forgotten shapeshifting is possible) and that shapeshifters would all be immutably either male or female.)

I’ve worked around it so far, but I really can’t any longer because I’ve introduced a baby. The various adults I’ve had have all been either fixed form folks from conservative cultural backgrounds who don’t think about gender as indefinite or shapeshifters who’ve spent enough time dealing with fixed form folks to get that they prefer to think they know someone’s gender and to accommodate that. Up to a point. And a baby or child is an absolute sticking point.

Neither 'it' nor 'they' are options that I find acceptable both because they would make no sense in context and because, in English, 'it' is insulting and 'they' is what I use to indicate that I don’t actually know what the person prefers. (Yes, I know some people prefer they, and I would use that if I knew, but I still use it mostly as a default for when I don’t know or don’t remember.)

I found a wiki with a bunch of options here, but I don’t quite like any of them as they are. I also, though, don’t want to try to make up my own. These three are the ones I’m leaning toward most strongly:

ve, ver, vis, vis, verself
vey, ve, vy, vyn, vyself
ir, iro, irs, irs, irself

I don’t really want to confuse myself with repeated words which means that none of them work completely. For me, 'vey' and 've' would be pronounced the same, so all three sets have that repetition in spoken form even if not in written form. I’m almost certain I’d have trouble keeping 'vey' and 've' distinct from each other as I write.

My impulse is to go vey, ver, vis, vyn, vyself, but… I’m not genderfluid. I’m writing fanfic and maybe shouldn’t muck around with real pronouns for that. It would be different if I was picking something I wanted people to use for me, you know?

I can usually make up words, but when I look at this, I go quite thoroughly blank and just stick there. Part of it may be that making up short words is harder because I can’t wander through syllables the way I would for something longer.

Maybe if I just pick a base consonant and start tacking things on to see what they sound like? I feel like I'm sure to come up with something that either sounds silly or is full of bad words in some non-English language.

I am not looking for someone to give me permission to mix and match (though, if someone tells me that my instinct that it’s a bad idea is on the money, I will definitely listen). I’m curious, though. How would you all approach this problem?

Comments

[kyrielle]

I would mix and match or tweak. For tweak, I mean adjust spelling to try to force pronunciation.

So like vey, ver, vy, vyn, vyself or vey, veh, vy, vyn, vyself. (Because I at least hear 'vay' for the first one in that second list so that would keep the second from being read the same...not sure if you hear it the same way in your head.)

It's an interesting problem, though, and I'm not a linguistic expert.

[the_rck]

I would pronounce vey and ve both as vay, yes, so veh would be different/better.

[syderia]

How much previous knowledge about genderfluidity do you expect your reader to have?

Because as a reader (maybe the English as a second language part is a factor), I find myself having more trouble parsing new pronouns that do not work like the other English pronouns).

So starting from your preferred list, I'd probably go towards something like vey, vem, veir, veirs, vemself (mapped on "them"), or ve, ver, ver, vers, verself (mapped on he/she).

[edenfalling]

A gender-neutral pronoun set I find relatively unobtrusive is the... I think they're called Spivak pronouns? Where basically you lop the 'th' off they/them/their/theirs/themsel(f/ves) and use singular verb conjugations. So, ey/em/eir/eirs/emself. Because they're based on an existing set of English words, the usage is pretty intuitive, and they also generally sound different enough from existing pronoun sets that they aren't aurally confusing. (The sticking point there is 'em' since 'them' often gets chopped that way in everyday speech already.)

You could probably stick any consonant other than 'th' or 'h' in front of those bases and have something reasonable for going on with.

And I think that, given the context of a culture and language that has ALWAYS been based on gender fluidity, it should be fairly obvious that you're not using whatever pronouns you eventually choose as a Pronouncement of how genderfluid people should do pronouns in real life, but as a way to approximate that hypothetical fictional language in English. You could certainly write an author's note to that effect at the start of the story or chapter where the issue comes up.

[hamsterwoman]

Not that I have any sort of informed opinion on this, but I think that since you're writing about a fictional culture/fictional characters, you can pretty much do whatever (except "it"; man it's so hard to use "it" for the Vorkosiverse hermaphrodites, even though it's the "correct" term in-universe. Anyway!). Although mix-and-matching could bother people familiar with either set of pronouns you're remixing more than sticking to one established set or making up your own.

Of the three you have above, I like the "ir/iro/etc." best personally for the sound. The sequence that goes "vey/ve/vy/vyn" is the most confusing to me because the pronouns sound the least like equivalent third-person pronouns in English; this would be easier in context, of course, but that one feels the least intuitive. Also, the vy/vyn distinction seems really superfluous. I mean, that could be a neat worldbuilding touch, but I think if you're looking for clarity/transparency (and I think if you've avoided gender neutral pronouns so far, you probably are), you don't need two separate possessives. The ve/ver/vis/verself set I think feels the most intuitive, at least to me (although also the most like a mix of he and she derivatives, if you know what I mean; I think those two are probably inevitably linked for an English-speaking audience). So in a fic, I'd probably go with "ve/ver/vis", of those three. (Also, "vey" is one of those words that I, personally, cannot decouple from "Oy vey", which makes it hard for me to take seriously / makes it non-transparent.)