What is a third person honerific for nonbinary individuals?
What is a third person honerific for nonbinary individuals?
What word would be the equivalent for sir or ma’am for a person not in the gender norm. I like greeting strangers with it while working retail & have always wondered what would be the right why to respond to someone who did not want to be called either sir or ma’am.
I really wish there was one that's already built consensus. I've asked about this on reddit, in meat space, here on lemmy, and other places with not even a front runner for a widely accepted option.
The closest I've seen is in socialist spaces, where comrade replaces all other honorifics.
There's great value in the formality of honorifics, and having a gender neutral option would go a long way to cracking one of the language barriers. It may seem like small potatoes, but not having a formal honorific is as big an issue as the struggle for the singular they/them. It really would help tip thinking towards non binary and gender neutral people as being respectable (by people that find it easy to dismiss them).
It's fine if individuals don't want honorifics at all for themselves, but there's a need for it for general use.
Thank you comrade for the info maybe this could be my go too should I need it. It should work unless I come across a capitalist gender neutral person.
In Japanese stores or restaurants, they will call people "customer/guest." In regular conversation, they have the -san or -sama suffix, which is appropriate for any gender, or they'll leave out pronouns entirely (directing topics at someone is sometimes seen as rude).
Unfortunately, English doesn't really have gender neutral words or ways to talk about people in that way. We can use "they/them," but I'm not aware of any neutral words that are specifically used for "polite" conversations.
You could perhaps use the word "friend," but it might be overly familiar and probably wouldn't be appropriate for talking to a customer or client. You could say "honored guest" for customers or guests, but it's kind of an unusual way of speaking.
I just try to leave off the honorifics and be as kind as I can. If I need someone's attention, a nice "pardon me" can work nicely.
I wonder if it would make sense to steal the prefix sam/sama for English use. Or some other word from a different language if it has some other meaning I’m not aware of
Mx (pronounced "mix") is the one I hear most common.
I'm also partial to Mage (or Mg.). It's a shortening of the Latin word "magister," which means "chief, head, director, teacher." Magister is the root word from which we get "mister" and "mistress"
Mx sounds awful to me and is the result of people trying to use "x" as gender neutral. Like "Latinx" was controversial, both on its appropriateness of use and its pronunciation.
Mage is cool and I like that it has etymological justification.
my liege
While I don't think there is an obvious drop-in replacement yet, I'm sure some consensus will eventually happen (as has been forming for the use of "Mx./Mixes" for the Mr/Ms dichotomy).
Honestly though? I think honorifics are not a strictly necessary part of language. Like day-to-day I usually do...
- For getting the attention of a person you don't know the name of, consider "excuse me" or "pardon" in formal/service contexts and "hey!" or "hello!" in more informal ones
- For speaking to someone authoritatively (i.e. "Ma'am, you are now charged with..." or "Sir, you will have to leave the Wendy's") you can just omit the honorific entirely and replace it with some other polite particle (like "Sorry," or "I'm afraid that...")
- For speaking to someone who has authority over you ("Sir, with all due respect...") you could address them by the title that confers that authority, or simply omit any honorifics and address them in a more peer-to-peer fashion.
Ultimately honorifics fill a more antiquated role of recognizing and placing yourself in a hierarchy, either below or above the other person, and maybe that's not a good thing. For example, using them often is a lot of the (perhaps unnecessary) emotional labour of service jobs. So if we're altering our language then perhaps just shifting away from them is the correct way forward. That's just my opinion though :)
I have seen Mix thrown around online but it doesn’t seem any more common then a lot of the other honorific suggestions I’ve seen.
I disagree with the removal honorifics in language. I get we don’t have lords & ladies anymore but I’ve found making anyone I help feel like one has led to me getting more orders filled. I understand why some people don’t want them personally but I think it would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater cuz the norms don’t yet include everyone.
Yeah I'm not really starkly in favour of a removal or anything, just pitching that as my opinion :)
That said, I think it's super possible to provide good service to people without honorifics! Making people feel respected is more than just saying a specific word a bunch of times, like maybe you're getting a positive result out of customers just because saying those honorifics put you into the frame of mind of being nice to them and taking them seriously.
IMO it's entirely possible to talk super fancy with a dozen "sir"s or whatever and be intensely rude (look up British MPs insulting each other as a potential example). Conversely I think it's possible to be extremely hospitable with rustic, informal language. Singular particles are not really the end of language, it's the greater action and meaning that matter way more.
I don't have any good answers, but I hope you enjoy these bad ones:
- citizen
- guvna'
- me ol' gaffer
- squire
- your eminence
- chief
- customer (cuz?)