Correction: "zie" is not German

[catsittingstill]

In my last post I wrote:

Then someone (I think it may have been my mom, actually) pointed out that German already has such a pronoun--"zie."  Well, English being a language that thinks nothing of pickpocketing other languages for spare vocabulary, I felt free to try that.  That actually works okay for me.  I just can't seem to persuade anyone else to use it.

This was an error on my part.  Two errors, actually:

1) German does not have a pronoun "zie"--they have a pronoun "sie" that is pronounced that way, but apparently it means "she."

2) My mom knew German, therefore she wouldn't have made this mistake.  It must be mine.

Oops.  My bad.

Thanks to thymidinekinase, ndrosen and Alan Thiesen (via e-mail) for the correction.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled livejournal.

Comments

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Re: German - there is also "sie" as the formal address (sie/du = "you", "du" being the informal) and "sie" as the plural pronoun.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Um. So sie means "she" or "you[formal]" or "you[plural]"?

I guess which is which must be clear from context in actual speech.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

It means "she", "they" or "you(formal, singular or plural)".
"You(plural, informal)" would be "ihr".

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thank you for clearing that up for me.

[mrgoodwraith.livejournal.com]

As a career-long tech writer and tech editor, I feel more and more keenly as the years go by the lack of a simple, direct, impersonal-yet-active English verb that means "makes possible". I want to be able to use that verb in place of interminable numbers of constructions like these in manuals, catalogs, etc.:

x "makes it possible to" y

x "facilitates" y

y "can happen because of" x

"with" x "you can" y

x "permits" or "allows" y (nonsentient entities can't give permission)

x "gives you" or "provides" or "provides the means to" y (nonsentients can't do these things either, and these verbs have an undesired "transfer-of-possession" sense anyway)

x "opens the potential for" y (urrrghh)

I'll just have to hold my nose and make do, I guess. :-)

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

"enables"?

[mrgoodwraith.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me! I see that verb a lot too. But it has problems of its own. I'm not 100% comfortable with an inanimate object either having or conferring "ability." (For example, "The TJ-6000 enables you to drive worry-free!" probably doesn't mean that the TJ-6000 has taught you a new method of driving; more likely, the TJ-6000 is performing some function that the driver would otherwise have to think about.) Also, "enables" (to my way of thinking) has an implicit "time sense"; someone or something that's been "enabled" would seem to be capable of something it couldn't do before, which isn't appropriate in sentences like, "The core monitoring system enables the operator to receive continuous alerts."

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

How about "The core monitoring system can transmit continuous alerts to the operator."? Takes it out of the passive voice too.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

"Affords" is the word, only it comes off so formal that it's hardly used.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

I'm picturing the word "possibilitates".

Probably in a PowerPoint presentation by a marketing guy.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) I kind of like possibilitates, in a totally management-weasel-word kind of way.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Oh, I kinda like that. :)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that part of your problem is the limited range of things you can envision a nonsentient doing.

For me, since a computer program can prevent you from doing something (installing a new program without a code number for instance) it follows that it can permit you, or allow you, to do something, so I have no problem with that.

A computer program can also disable something (the modem, for example, though this is usually accidental), so I don't see why it can't enable something.

[bardling.livejournal.com]

Hm. My understanding of e.g. "allows" is that "makes possible" is an as valid translation as "permits/gives permission", depending on circumstances. With "makes possible" being appropriate for nonsentient things, e.g. "My keys allow me to unlock the door."
That said, "enables" would work even better for many such circumstances. "Facilitates" is another word that covers some of your cases, actually, methinks.
Similarly, a tool provides the means or ability to do something, does it not? No posession-transfer included.

Or am I just not being critical/exact enough?

That said, I still kinda like the proposed "possibilitates" :)

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

When I worked in a physiology lab, we used the term "potentiates" for any drug we tested that increased the rate of blood flow that we were measuring.

F'r instance, drug U4486 would potentiate increased blood flow, by being a potentiator of certain prostaglandins that would locally constrict the blood vessels.

This was ~ 20 years ago, so I think it got into the published scientific literature. Just a different field than the one you scan.

[moshez.livejournal.com]

Esperanto has a movement called Riismo (http://www3.ocn.ne.jp/~gthmhk/riismo2.html) which calls for a pronoun "ri" to be used in that way. You could steal "ri", I guess :)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I still like zie; I was just wrong when I said it came from German.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I don't remember any etymology being given a decade or so ago when I heard/read zie/zir/zir being used by some people discussing nonstandard gender, both in the gender/queer community and in the SF community, though I don't right now remember exactly who I was talking and writing with. It may well have come from the German, if not as straight-forwardly as you thought.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

MOOs and MUDs (which I have frequented for over a decade now) commonly offer Spivak as a gender (E, eir, eirs, eirself).

I don't know the etymology. I never looked up the etymology before, but I realized there's no reason anyone with internet access should ever write that sentence. :)

The pronoun set was popularized as neologisms by Michael Spivak, a mathematician-educator who used it in a number of books.

something completely different...

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

Your song "How Far Back Does Music Go"

Wondered if you'd see this article:
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/080429_music-genes