Really Weird Question

[queerbychoice]

If you were inventing your own language with its own pronoun system that didn't have to be gender-segregated, but for some reason (umm . . . an evil language tyrant ordered you!) you had to divide people into some kind of categories and assign different pronouns to each category . . . what categories would be the most important in your mind for you to distinguish between? They could be categories based on mental rather than physical attributes, or chosen rather than inborn characteristics . . . they could be categories based on anything you want.

I was contemplating writing a language parody, and trying to think of a pronoun-distinction that I could really believe in. In reality I don't really want any pronoun-distinctions, but the point would have been to show how silly all pronoun distinctions are by substituting one that theoretically should seem more meaningful than gender, yet in reality would just seem sillier because we're all so used to the gender one. But anyway, the question got me interested in how differently different people value different methods of categorizing people, and I suddenly wanted to survey all of you.

Comments

[fyreharper.livejournal.com]

but the language I'm inventing doesn't have segregated pronouns! All too complicated, if you ask me - easier to just make one word mean one thing.

If I had to... I dunno, one for evil-tyrant-people-who-insist-on-dividing-people-into-arbitrary-groups and one for everypody else?

[fyreharper.livejournal.com]

oops... everybody, not everypody... unless the language is for pod people...

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

haha.

wait, isn't it for pod people?

*goes off to change his answer*

[fyreharper.livejournal.com]

I know! divide up the pronouns into pod people and non-pod people!

[embryomystic.livejournal.com]

GENIUS!

Give this being a prize.