Retainer Fantasia

Upon using a Retainer Fantasia I found this little error:
"You can now re-edit your retainer's appearance and personality. Remove all her gear and speak with a retainer vocate"

Both of my retainers are/have always been male.

To clarify, this is not an error per se, but an unavoidable consequence of gender-specific pronouns being used as gender-neutral in EN. However, while male pronouns are more commonly used in these circumstances to imply a gender-neutral meaning, we make an effort to use both “he” and “she” in this fashion throughout the game. Hope that clears things up!

Maybe "Remove all retainer's gear and speak with a vocate"?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Corvinoobus

To clarify, this is not an error per se, but an unavoidable consequence of gender-specific pronouns being used as gender-neutral in EN. However, while male pronouns are more commonly used in these circumstances to imply a gender-neutral meaning, we make an effort to use both “he” and “she” in this fashion throughout the game. Hope that clears things up!

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Technically, the appropriate thing to do when referencing a character of unknown gender is use "his/her" or "his or her," the latter leading to a bit of wordiness, but more correct in English.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Corvinoobus

To clarify, this is not an error per se, but an unavoidable consequence of gender-specific pronouns being used as gender-neutral in EN. However, while male pronouns are more commonly used in these circumstances to imply a gender-neutral meaning, we make an effort to use both “he” and “she” in this fashion throughout the game. Hope that clears things up!

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Why not just use the singular they?

Man. People complain about the smallest thing.

I actually like the occasional use of female pronouns as gender-neutral. Although English really needs some proper ones; Old English didn't have this problem.

English technically has no third person gender-neutral pronoun. "They" is not "proper" English, though it is common usage these days. You'd still get points off on the GED test (I was a GED tutor for a while) for using "they," and a high school English teacher would still get out that red pen if you used it on a paper. "His or her" and "his/her" are also improper English, though overly-PC sources use it to try to avoid offending people and official documentation uses it to avoid any confusion.

In English, the grammatically correct way to handle gender-neutral pronouns is to pick one, either male or female, and then be consistent with it. So, if they used "her" in one line to refer to your singular retainer and used "he" on another line of the same dialog, that would be improper English due to the inconsistency.

Even though the vast majority of English-speaking people use "he" as the gender-neutral pronoun, "she" is just as valid, and the overuse of "he" in video games and technical fields is a lingering sign of sexism in English-speaking cultures. Of course, referring to servants generically using female pronouns isn't exactly a step forward. :P

From now on we shall refer to them as shklee or shkler!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Corvinoobus

To clarify, this is not an error per se, but an unavoidable consequence of gender-specific pronouns being used as gender-neutral in EN. However, while male pronouns are more commonly used in these circumstances to imply a gender-neutral meaning, we make an effort to use both “he” and “she” in this fashion throughout the game. Hope that clears things up!

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wouldn't "You can now re-edit your retainer's appearance and personality. Remove all their gear and speak with a retainer vocate" be more fitting as "neutral? This isn't something that bothers me per se, since all my retainers are female, I had assumed it just read their gender and assigned the text accordingly, but if it's going for a "gender neutral" setting, "her" doesn't really fit that.