War Stories

I realized today that I have Papa Stories to tell my father's stories, an effort to ensure they are not lost in the mists of time.  I have been very negligent, however in relating my tales, as they may be.  I'm not sure why; I mean this blog is called Illini6 because of my deployment, and it was previously named "Major Thomas and the KBR Fairies."

I checked and I have less than 10 posts on the military and/or deployment; and half of those were from when I was supporting the 108th Sustainment Bde's deployment to Iraq as a member of the Family Readiness Group (FRG).

Did I ever tell you about the largest
Green Bean coffee shop in "The Stan?"

I looked back through those posts and I see that my very first poll resulted in several readers wanting to see more "war stories"  but I have only ever related one here.

I think it might be time to change that.  I still want this blog to be about my writing, but it is also time to share some of my stories.  It's been over ten years since I returned from "The 'Stan" and I've been telling my stories since then, but not writing them down.

I lost my journal early in country and never picked it back up, so my memory is almost all I have, and that's been growing, let's call it embellished over the years.  Please forgive me if any facts are corrupted, changed or forgotten.  I assure you it is all in the name of improving, "The Story."  Feel free to chime in if you were there and remember it differently.  I may not amend my story, but I will acknowledge you and have a scoop of ice cream in your honor.

I'm not going to add a tag for, "War Stories" because I don't want to pigeonhole myself; some of these stories may technically be training stories or humanitarian deployment stories.  I am going to change my background image however.

You know the difference between a fairy tale and a war story?  Fairy tales begin, "Once upon a time" and war stories begin, "I shit you not."

Singular Gender Neutral Pronoun for English

Wow, that's a long post title, but I wanted to be specific.  This is a fairly hot topic lately and somewhat charged with emotion.

I know there are many people who are struggling with societal gender and sexual roles; descriptions; and labels.  I had been thinking about this for a while and I had originally gone to the Wikipedia page for it.  I recently found an old blog called The Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog.  From there I found there are several facebook pages (here, here and here for instance).  This issue is very hotly debated, deeply personal and potentially a raw nerve glaringly exposed by the ubiquitousness of social media and the internet.

Why

I had originally come up with three reasons I wanted to decide on what singular gender neutral pronoun I wanted to use:

1. Spiritual discussions and my search for a definition for; as well as a convincing argument for the existence of a GOD.
2. For use in my Science Fiction and Horror writing
3. To use on the internet when I'm unsure of a person's gender or they have identified themselves as non-binary in their own gender.

I've decided, based on visiting the facebook sites above, that I will leave off #3 entirely.  A particular post caught my attention and I realized that a person should be able to choose their own pronoun.  When I am out and about on the net I should stick to what I've always done, use their web ID as a proper name and make no other assumptions.

My search for a word for GOD that neither diminishes what I hope is the Ultimate Consciousness was what originally made me think of this.  The decision process was fairly long and specific for this particular application so I won't go into it here (maybe a future blog post).  Suffice to say I decided on "GOD" as the spelling of the name and "G" as the pronoun.

Neither of these is appropriate for self-aware artificial intelligence, aliens that don't fall into our gender structure, or genetically modified humans that would populate my stories and need pronouns.  I went back to the drawing board.

Am I overthinking this?  Of course I don't think so, but additionally, seeing all the talk on-line regarding this subject I thought I could make available a detailed explanation of my decision that others could use when making their own decision.  Or not, it's completely up to them.

Possible Letters

In building this pronoun I want to use letters that evoke the other pronouns, are unambiguous when sight-read, and are more rare (because I want to balance out the letter use).

Candidates consonants based on letter frequency are:  Z (0.074%), Q (0.095%), X (0.150%), J (0.153%), K (0.772%), and V (0.978%).

Z has an advantage in my mind because "she" and "they" both begin with a digraph, which Z can be pronounced as well. 

The two least used vowels are U and I.  Unfortunately I is ambiguous to the extreme, being pronounced like |ee| or |i| or |I|.

U is too guttural, making it sound masculine to me.  It's also too big sounding for what I want to be a short word.  O has this problem too.

I'm leaning toward E over A only because it is more recognizable as part of a pronoun (he, she, they, we).

Suggestions

I'm going to rule out the use of "they." I already feel that English is at a disadvantage because we use, "you" for both the singular and plural second person pronoun.  I don't want to see, "they" end up this way also.  I believe in maximizing the information communicated efficiently.  I think we are missing out on an opportunity if we use, "they" this way.

If I may digress slightly; I'm certainly not a grammar nazi, but I am a communication nazi.  I don't mind when words are added or changed; or when definitions are stretched.  I do mind if they become more confusing, more redundant and/or convey less information because of the change.

I know language changes, especially English; but I want that change to be for the better, to grow the communication or clarify it.  Not all change is good.

That's also why I'm ruling out, "Xe" pronounced as |zee|.

Using a table based off the one in Wikipedia and The Gender Neutral Pronoun Blog:

He	He called him on his phone, which is his.  He likes himself
She	She called her on her phone, which is hers.  She likes herself
It	It called it on its phone, which is its.  It likes itself.
They	They called them on their phone, which is theirs.  They like themselves.
Suggested Gender Neutral Singular Pronouns
Hu (Sasha Newborn 1982)	Hu called hum on hus phone, which is hus. Hu likes humself
Ne	Ne called nem on nir phone, which is nirs.  Ne likes nemself.
Ey (Spivak)	Ey called em on eir phone, which is eirs.  Ey likes emself.
Ve	Ve called ver on vis phone, which is vis.  Ve likes verself.
Ze (German based)	Ze called zem on zir phone, which is zirs.  Ze likes zemself
Zhe (Foldvary, Fred (2000))	Zhe called zhim on zher phone, which is zhers.  Zhe likes zhimself
My Suggestions
Zehe (replace he with ze)	Ze called zim on zis phone, which is zis.  Ze likes zimself
Zeshe (replace she with ze)	Ze called zer on zer phone, which is zers.  Ze likes zerself
Zenoun (like a noun)	Ze called ze on ze's phone, which is ze's.  Ze likes zeself.
Iz (or Iq or Ix)	Iz called iz on iz's phone, which is Iz's.  Iz likes izself [it breaks down with the possessive for any of them]

Evaluation

Gender-Neutral Pronoun Blog had a good rating system based on three criteria graded on a five point scale: 

• Ease of pronunciation
• Distinction from other pronouns
•  Gender neutrality

Based on this rating system the blog rated Ne/nem/nir/nirs/nemself as the best.

I'd like to do the same, however my criteria are a bit different (I will rank each candidate against each other, except Short):

• Ease of pronunciation (actually pronouncing the word)
• Distinction from other pronouns
• Gender neutrality
•  Ease of sight-reading (guessing the correct pronunciation and ease of identifying as a pronoun)
•  Letter usage (use of rarely used letters and or phonemes)
•  Easy rules to remember
• Short (graded by total number of letters used in all forms)

  

  Green are the top, or "best" grades and red are the bottom or "worst" grades. 

As you can see, my own invention had the lowest score, and lowest was graded as best.  I was probably biased, of course.  I don't see that as a problem, since there is no convention and it is a personal choice.

The numbers and my rationale are there so anyone can use it and make their own decision.

Based on this, I'll be using "Ze" as a singular gender neutral pronoun in my fiction writing.