Personal Preference (P)for PHB Pronouns?

[shadow]

I have an idea! Why are we printing these books in English in the first place? English is such a sexist language! We could avoid all these problems if the books were printed in Farsi (the language of Iran), Bengali, or Esperanto. All of those languages are much more enlightened than English because they include gender neutral 3rd person singular pronouns. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Turkic languages also include gender neutral pronouns. We won't have to have this debate if 4e debuts in one of the aforementioned languages.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I'm for restoring the "Note on Pronouns" to 4D&D.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Since "it" wasn't available in the poll, I went with "one". If we must break with grammar, for a fantasy game set in a faux medieval period, let us go with the more archaic sound.

Even better, revert to the Old English of Beowulf, or at least the "middle" English of Chaucer. Woohoo! Rules writen before the great vowel shift. Give someone enough to worry about, and they/he/she/it/one will not care about pronouns.

 

[RFisher]

I've become a big proponent of "singular they". It has a long history, & the alternatives all feel artificial to me.

(Except "genderless he", but I think that's only because my school teachers beat that one into me. I certainly recall using "they" before they taught me that "he" was "correct".)

 

[RFisher]

Esperanto.

Actually, you find much the same sort of debates among Esperantists. Witness Riism.

As if championing a constructed auxiliary language wasn't challenge enough. (^_^)

 

[Korgoth]

I have an idea! Why are we printing these books in English in the first place? English is such a sexist language! We could avoid all these problems if the books were printed in Farsi (the language of Iran), Bengali, or Esperanto. All of those languages are much more enlightened than English because they include gender neutral 3rd person singular pronouns. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Turkic languages also include gender neutral pronouns. We won't have to have this debate if 4e debuts in one of the aforementioned languages.

Dude. All those languages were invented by men. Read some herstory books, OK?

 

[TwinBahamut]

Actually, you find much the same sort of debates among Esperantists. Witness Riism.

As if championing a constructed auxiliary language wasn't challenge enough. (^_^)

especially problematic concerning, as a language goes, Klingon works better as a language to teach children than Esperanto. Children can learn Klingon, but they can't learn Esperanto. No matter what you do, the child you are teaching Esperanto will instead learn a version of Esperanto that has irregular verbs, defeating the entire point of Esperanto in the first place.

 

[Meems]

Voted for he/she alternating. I liked 3e's method of using the gender assigned to that class/race's iconic.

 

[delericho]

If I were writing the books, I would follow the 3e example of having the pronouns follow the iconics. Where no iconic was referenced, alternate the pronouns.

As a reader, I don't much care.

 

[Frostmarrow]

He or she based on author's gender. He/she by he-shes.