Hacker News Reader

It's not like words cannot be overloaded. Lots of languages use the plural form to show respect or politeness, or regard somebody with esteem (like the royal "we") for instance.

View on HN

But in this case it would lead to loss of information (singular or plural). I’d prefer he/she too or even a completely new word.

Having more information isn't always better. Imagine if our language had pronouns that told you the race of the person, or whether they had a beard or not. A culture that primarily used pronouns like these would probably develop very strong arbitrary associations related to race or beards. If people were familiar with alternatives, plenty would be uncomfortable with one of these details always being packed in to references to them.

Well, always using those words would say something about the culture, not the language.

In my language journalists created a new word for it that was met with resistance first, but it doesn’t corrupt another word and it has been added to all dictionaries and is used heavily.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com