Re: Pronouns (please bear with me)

[Alexandre François Garreau]

Le jeudi 5 mars 2020, 19:29:27 CET Per Bothner a écrit :
> On 3/5/20 9:54 AM, John Darrington wrote:
> > Singular they has been denounced by many in the English speaking world
> > for various reasons. Here is just one example:
> > 
> > https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/they_is_destroying_th
> > e_english_language.html
> Do you really think people who write these rants would not disparage use
> of "per" even more?

It is unclear, as the author would call “courageous” the usage of “gender-
neutral ridiculous-sounding pronouns such as ‘jee’, ‘ney’ and ‘thon’”.  
Actually I’ve never heard these last.  The only proposed alternate gender-
neutral pronoun I’ve heard about for english is “zhe”.  If he doesn’t 
speak about it, maybe it is because he doesn’t find it ridiculous enough, 
yet still courageous?  At least the point of it being ungrammatical would 
not hold anymore.

>  (It is clear the author is a right-wing crank,
> whose concerns are not ours.)

We can’t be sure.  I know several people within GNU who are left-wing (and 
some among these where it is less clear with time), but GNU is open to 
anyone and in several places free-software is pretty esteemed by right-
wing people (who are pretty many in several regions of the world).  GNU 
ought to accept anyone, so if we don’t talk to much about right/left-wing 
politics, or succeed to let clear that this stay personal, we can still 
work together.

To me it is even better as it is pretty common among both right and left-
wing to believe being fighting for freedom.  And if imho freedom is left-
wing and vice-versa, and free software provides freedom (something we all 
believe in, in free-software movement), then I can stay perfectly 
convinced right-wing people helping free software are fighting against 
their cause, and they can believe the same thing about me and left-wing 
people, and in the end who’s effectively right eventually wins.  So 
everything’s fine.

> In any case, I don't think helps GNU to insist on
> more GNU-specific terminology.

This is a fair point as I’ve yet seen “perse/per/pers” only used by rms 
and GNU people… but it sounded pretty new to me so maybe we should give it 
a try?

But your point that “per” already exist still holds.