Spivak pronoun

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The Spivak pronouns are a proposed set of gender-neutral pronouns in English. They are used as gender-neutral language by some people who dislike the more common alternatives "he/she" or singular they.

The (new) Spivak pronouns are formed from the pronoun "they" by dropping the "th".

There are two variants of the Spivak pronouns in use, as shown in the declension table below.

[edit] Origin

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

The original pronoun set was not created by me. I think I read about it in a newspaper clipping, perhaps from the Boston Globe, during the time I taught at Brandeis, and I believe it was credited to an anthropologist; later on, when I wanted to use it, I was unable to locate the source. In "The Joy of TeX", I wrote "Numerous approaches to this problem have been suggested, but one strikes me as particularly simple and sensible." I assumed people would figure that I was using a construction I couldn't properly credit, and not consider me so immodest as to praise my own invention (though I guess that was a rather immodest assumption). Michael Spivak, May 21 2006.

[edit] Comparison with other gender-neutral pronouns or constructions

The two most common systems have specific disadvantages:

• "he/she", "him/her", "his/her", "his/hers", "himself/herself": These constructs are often perceived as awkward and hindering pronunciation.
• singular they: This is more pronouncable, but can be ambiguous. It is also awkward to use plural verb forms for a singular person.

Compared with other gender-neutral pronouns, Spivak (new) is easier to learn since the system stems directly from the well-known forms of "they". Supporters also feel that this derivation makes them more natural than the sie/ze/zie/xe forms.

[edit] Where they are used

Spivak is one of the allowable genders on many MUDs and MOOs. Others might include some selection of: male, female, neuter, either, both, splat, plural, egotistical, royal, and 2nd. The selected gender determines how the game engine refers to a player.

On at least one MOO, LambdaMOO, they became standard practice for help texts ("The user may choose any description e likes"), referring to people of unknown gender ("Who was that guest yesterday, eir typing was terrible"), referring to people whose gender was known but without disclosing it ("Yes I've met Squiggle. E was nice."), or of course characters declaring themselves to be of gender Spivak. In recent years (2000 onwards), this usage is declining. ^{[citation needed]}

Spivak is also the favoured choice of some people who have written about the subject, such as in Footnotes: Pronouns and in the Gender-Neutral Pronoun FAQ.

Nomic games, especially on the Internet, often follow the game's inventor Peter Suber in using Spivak pronouns in their rulesets to easily refer to indefinite players.

[edit] Criticism

The major criticism of Spivak pronouns in academic circles is that in informal speech gender neutrality has not been a problem for centuries: speakers simply use singular they. The real problem is the arbitrary acceptance of completely untenable prescriptive grammar.

[edit] Publications employing Spivak pronouns

• Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism (Steven Shaviro)
• The Joy of TeX (Michael Spivak)
• Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry (Michael Spivak)
• Calculus on Manifolds (Michael Spivak)
• The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change (Peter Suber)

[edit] Trivia

If E enters standard English, it will be the fourth word of one letter, the others being I, A, and O.

[edit] References

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