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diff --git a/article/chinese-pronouns.html.bak b/article/chinese-pronouns.html.bak deleted file mode 100644 index 3a73148..0000000 --- a/article/chinese-pronouns.html.bak +++ /dev/null @@ -1,77 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> - <head> - <title>Reclaiming "他" as a gender-inclusive pronoun</title> - <link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css" /> - <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> - <meta charset="utf-8" /> - </head> - <body> - <h1>Reclaiming "他" as a gender-inclusive pronoun</h1> - <p>Article ID: 23</p> -<p>tl;dr: ``他'' uses the ``人'' (person) radical, and should cover all -people, because not all people are male.</p> -<p>In contemporary English, the traditional plaural pronoun ``they'' is -often used as a gender-inclusive singular pronoun, alongside the -feminine singular ``she'' and the masculine singular ``he''. However, there -is no equivalent in Chinese. ``他'' is considered a masculine pronouns in -contemporary Chinese, despite its ``人'' radical and its history of -traditionally being a gender-inclusive pronoun until the 1920s. This -article argues for the reclaiming of ``他'' as a gender-inclusive -pronoun.</p> -<p>Prior to the May Fourth Movement and the broader New Culture -Movement, ``他'' was a generic pronoun for all entities, including people -of any gender, and inanimate objects. In the movements’ efforts to -``modernize'' the Chinese language and culture, a seperate feminine -pronoun ``她'' was created by the poet and linguist 刘半农, becoming an -established linguistic norm after the Chinese Civil War. (A seperate -``它'' was created for inanimate objects; however this has little -relevance to the arguments in this article.)</p> -<p>A distinct feminine pronoun ``她'' along with ``他'' being a masculine -pronoun poses three problems: (1) the annoyances caused by the lack of a -inclusive placeholder pronoun, (2) the reinforcement of gender binary -normatives and the lack of a neutral pronoun, and (3) the -marginalization of the feminine from the concept of personhood.</p> -<p>When referring to a placeholder of unknown gender in contemporary -English, singular they pronouns are often used, such as in ``someone left -their laptop here''. Such colloquial conversations are generally -aproblematic as all normative third-person pronouns in Mandarin sound -the same: tā. However, in written contexts, many use ``他/她'' ressembling -``he/she''. Aside from how this reinforces gender binary and alienates -women (see the next two paragraphs), it is visually unappealing (as -half-width slashes look particularly distinct from full-width CJK -ideographs and break typographical uniformity) and adds unnecessary -syntactic sugar.</p> -<p>Individuals who are not comfortable with any gendered pronoun (such -as me until <a -href="https://git.andrewyu.org/andrew/www.git/commit/note/pronouns.html?id=ce4cd5fd7b3fd19d8effd3e18f5c71dadfc5874e">this -commit</a>) often prefer singular they pronouns. (I do not wish to turn -this article into a detailed discussion of non-binary gender, please -read Leah Rowe’s article ``<a -href="https://vimuser.org/pronouns.html">Better respect for non-binary -people, in defense of human rights</a>'' if this concept seems -unfamiliar.) The status quo of ``她'' being solely a femine pronoun and -``他'' being solely a masculine pronoun reinforces gender binary and -leaves no gender-neutral/inclusive pronoun for non-binary people who -would prefer such pronouns.</p> -<p>The more fundamental issue with ``他'' as a masculine pronoun lies in -its characater composition and etymology. ``他'' is a compound character -consisting of a ``人'' (person) radical and ``也'', while ``她'' consists of a -``女'' (female) radical and ``也''. Limiting ``他'' as a male pronoun assumes -the male gender as dominant in ``people'', and marginalizes other genders, -most prominently the female gender, as groups distinct from ``people''. -This aligns with the development of the ``她'' pronoun as a distinct -subset of what used to be covered by ``他''. I believe that a character’s -composition should not be deceptive to its meaning, and therefore, the -``他'' with the ``人'' radical should describe any person, not just any male -person.</p> -<p>Those who prefer a unique masculine pronoun may choose to use one -with a ``男'' (male) radical instead. While ``男也'' has not been given a -unicode code-point yet, I find this solution to be much more ideal than -stereotypical generalizationis with ``他''.</p> - <div id="footer"> - <hr /> - <p><a href="/">Runxi Yu's Website</a></p> - </div> - </body> -</html> |