New Grammatical Genders

The attic idea was not surreally related to the "it" idea. This is.

In many European languages there are two or three grammatical genders. English has the vestiges of this system in having what's referred to as "natural gender" - there are feminine and masculine animate beings and most other things are neuter. However, English doesn't really have grammatical gender at all because the forms of adjectives don't change according to the "gender" of the noun. All we really have are personal pronouns which vary, and that's not a proper grammatical gender system.

Outside Europe there are, however, languages which do divide the world up in a manner quite similar to gender. Bantu languages and their noun classes come to mind, although they don't change pronouns. These include things like animate beings, tools, inanimate beings/plants/groups, things which can cover expanses (e.g. custard, sand and water), kinship terms and so forth. A slightly similar situation obtains in the Far East where Mandarin and Indonesian, for example, count items using different words, grouping them together as drops, pairs, loaves and individual quadrupeds, similar to our own tendency to refer to "head of cattle", "pairs of trousers" and so on.

The closest we really get to gender in English is in our tendency to refer to trousers, scissors, spectacles and other often-paired items in the plural when it can be argued that they are in fact single items. So we then proceed to refer to "these glasses" when there is in fact only one object being mentioned".

It's been noted that referring to objects by different pronouns is very useful because too many "it"s are confusing, so gendered pronouns are in fact quite useful.

This, then, is what I propose:

Invent more genders, possibly hundreds, or maybe just twenty or so, but get rid of "she", "it" and "he". Instead, have categories for things which are small and round, long and thin, masses, occur in pairs, can be placed over one's head, are short-term actions, are jagged and natural, are tools, suggestions or ideas, can be poured over things, are meant to be used to swap for goods and services, and many many more. Give each of these appropriate pronouns, adjectival declensions, distinctive plurals and all the other accoutrements of proper gender. But, do not use gender to refer to gender or sex at all.

This would reduce ambiguity. We would also be able to reuse words which have the same form but give them different genders, as with the Danish word which refers to an ear or a coin and the various other examples in that language. Hence vocabulary could be made smaller without compromising subtlety or meaning.

Imagine a group of people characterisable as tall, short, recumbent or doing the lotus position. Each one of these people could be referred to using a different gender and no confusion would result. It would also be possible for someone to change gender by standing up or crossing their legs, gaining or losing weight or taking off their shoes.

This is what I want, and it would be good.