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"?

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

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

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I hope more people get this reference. Kudos to you!

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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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That's quite interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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Originally Posted by Nyalia

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.

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I had four paragraphs written contesting your claim that the singular "they" is improper English. The entire post was lost when I clicked preview, and the page didn't load. I have no desire to rewrite the entire thing, so I will just leave you with this instead. The singular "they" has existed since at least the 14th century, and the "rule" prescribing against its use was created in the 19th century. Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, and even William Shakespeare used the singular "they" in their works.

Don't blindly follow a rule without first understanding why it exists and where it came from.

Using "he" as a generic "neutral" pronoun has gone out of fashion and been out of fashion, since the 80s.

Back then, most would just accept people using "he", but now....? Good luck with that.

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Originally Posted by Iryoku

I had four paragraphs written contesting your claim that the singular "they" is improper English.

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I'd actually be totally interested in reading this (or your sources) if you get bored at some point. Partially because I try to take some sort of middle ground in prescriptivism and descriptivism. That, and I'm always amused at having "authoritative" examples for grammar people don't like.

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Originally Posted by Iryoku

I had four paragraphs written contesting your claim that the singular "they" is improper English. The entire post was lost when I clicked preview, and the page didn't load. I have no desire to rewrite the entire thing, so I will just leave you with this instead. The singular "they" has existed since at least the 14th century, and the "rule" prescribing against its use was created in the 19th century. Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, and even William Shakespeare used the singular "they" in their works.

Don't blindly follow a rule without first understanding why it exists and where it came from.

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Huh, thanks, I did not know that. I just taught the rule because it was a rule that was enforced in US High School.

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Originally Posted by Iryoku

The singular "they" has existed since at least the 14th century, and the "rule" prescribing against its use was created in the 19th century. Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, and even William Shakespeare used the singular "they" in their works.

Don't blindly follow a rule without first understanding why it exists and where it came from.

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He is right "they" and "their" are gender neutral, as well as collectively neutral. English use to be similar to a lot of other European languages in regards to gender specific words, and familiar and formal ones too. But as the language evolved they fell out of fashion. For instance, the word "you" use to be formal, and the word we use to use for the familiar was "thou", which is rarely seen or heard of today but is considered formal by todays standards.