Mark Hovila | Re: [LFN] el
Yes, I suppose that as listeners it gives us more room for interpretation. But why remove those colors from the palette of the artist, the songwriter? Does a painter deliberately obscure the gender of his subject to make it have broader appeal? If I'm writing a song about my girlfriend, I want to use "her," not some neutral term. I am celebrating who she is as an individual, and a big part of her individuality is the fact that she is female. And a big part of my attraction to her is that she's a her, not a he.
But as I say, having a neutral pronoun in addition to the gender specific pronouns would take care of that. If I preferred not to specify the gender I am talking about, I wouldn't have to.
Mark
On Mar 20, 2013, at 3:55 AM, George Boeree wrote:
> Actually, a neutral pronoun would make the songs meaningful to either sex: "And I love mmm", "Mmm loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah!" :o)
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> On Mar 20, 2013, at 4:04 AM, Mark Hovila wrote:
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> > David,
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> > Maybe it doesn't matter that much. But I was just thinking of all the songs in English which use she, her, him and he. And I Love Her by the Beatles, just to name one. Would it be the same if Paul McCartney were to sing And I Love [neutral pronoun]? Or [neutral pronoun] Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah?
> >
> > Mark
>
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> George Boeree
> cgboeree@...
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