The virtual school says its hands are tied due to Florida’s “don’t say gay” law. However, the teacher has lodged a complaint against it.
The virtual school says its hands are tied due to Florida’s “don’t say gay” law. However, the teacher has lodged a complaint against it.
I’m not saying it is, but it should be enough to start a discussion on whether there’s a better, more easily pronouncable term while we’re in a discussion about titles.
If I really think about it, what makes Mr. Or Ms. any easier to pronounce? They are actually a bit less intuitive because they are abbreviations.
As far as two letters go, I feel like Mx. is just one step removed from Mix, so it seems easy to me. Perhaps Mr. and Ms. are just easier to accept because we have lived with them our whole life. A lot of the English language seems weird when we step outside of it.
Mr. is derived from master and Ms. is derived from mistress. Their pronunciation is derived from their etymology.
I agree though that common usage plays a part.
This dang language keeps evolving, doesn’t it?
Master and Mr are different in usage, the former for young people (under 18).
Ms is pronounced with the /z/ sound, not the ‘s’ in mistress.
Ms. Mrs. And Miss are all from mistress apparently, and Ms. (MIZ) was used to address a woman regardless of marital status.
Today I learned.
I’m all for the “Ey”, “em”, “eir” pronouns, but I don’t have a stake in the game.
For example,
English needs gender neutral pronouns because they can be useful in a situation such as needing to refer to a person named Smith, but don’t know their gender. (“They, them, their” should be reserved for groups, imo).
“Mey.” Or “Mer.” could be the solution for a title in this situation.
Seems a hell of a lot easier to just use “they/them” as we already do. If it were too confusing, it would evolve into something else naturally anyway. German gets by just fine with “they” and the formal form of “you” being the same. I think we’ll be fine.
Singular they has existed for centuries, and been used that way for centuries. In normal usage, it should be obvious from context whether you’re using singular or plural.