Is that why she’s working to take ‘he’ words out of English?
Dear friends:
I understand your question and let me put your mind at ease. I like men; I like all of us, generally speaking. What bothers me is that English prefers men and doesn’t have any real or even nice words for those of us who aren’t men*. We’ve talked about that in prior blogs.
It’s English that needs a little tweaking because IT has thousands of words that celebrate men, but we might as well not exist. English ignores us. I know of no other language that so disregards us!
Besides, it’s so easy to fix that I want to launch a campaign to change a few words, especially ‘THE’. It’s our most common word, used far more than any other words in English and it’s always spelled with an ‘he’, which is really an incorrect spelling. All of us most commonly say ‘THA’. Wouldn't it be nice to take one ‘he’ word out of English and make it neutral?
*******FAVORITE ENGLISH WORDS
Now, I’d like to take a minute to share some of my favorite English words because words can also have uplifting power. We could all use more of that! Here's a short list:.
ALL (Even if it’s spelled with only one ‘L’) because it includes everyone/everything. For instance, ‘magical’. Isn’t that a wonderful word? If you put it through a ‘word split’ in our Word Collider, you get ‘Magic-al’ or Magi-call. I believe we all have a magical part inside–we just need to be willing to share it!
US: Whether it’s spelled as ‘-us’ or ‘-ous’ we again have lots of wonderful words: wondrous, marvelous, stupendous, hilarious, etc. These ‘us’ words draw us together which is where I’d love to focus English to make it more inclusive..
WE Very similar to ALL. WEL-COME; WE-AL-THY: WELL; and WELL-NESS.
If we take time to study words that we speak and choose more uplifting ones, I believe we can change our experience of life.
E-mail: vivian@vivianprobst.com
wenglishforwequality.com
*Those of us who aren’t men by birth or preference