(no subject)

[arcanetrivia]

Whee, snapelyholidays has started posting! I'll be interested to see if I can pick out iamisaac's story before the reveal, since I had suggested some things to xir when xe was pulling xir hair out over it.

Comments

[wings-on-water.livejournal.com]

It's fascinating how language works... In my linguistics class it was briefly mentioned that function words like pronouns are very resistant to change, which is why people who have tried to institute gender-neutral pronouns have never been successful so far. Also, there is evidence to indicate that our brains store function words in a different way than we do content words, which helps explain why they're resistant to change. (Also, it makes sense.)

All this to say it took me four or five readings of the "xir when xe was pulling xir" section of that last sentence to figure out what it said. My brain didn't even recognize them as pronouns, despite their placement in the sentence.

Fascinating!

Er, sorry if linguistics doesn't interest you at all...

[arcanetrivia]

I'm just not sure what sex/gender iamisaac is. In this fandom it's a good bet to assume female, but there's always the few who trip you up, some of whom I have been surprised to find out were male. Didn't want to faux-pas surprise here. :)

I like the "x" neutral pronouns better than the "z" ones and especially better than the "h" ones. "X" to me has a connotation of "variable", which communicates the "male/female/other/not applicable/unknown" nature of the pronoun.