speaking of pronouns

[alexseanchai]

How confused do you think you'd be by a story where, instead of gendered third-person singular pronouns (for this purpose, 'ze', 'ey', singular 'they', et al are gendered), the third singular pronouns are something like na/nan, sa/san, ta/tan, translating roughly to this-one, that-one, that-one-over-there? All gender-neutral, and which one refers to whom changes depending on the speaker.

Comments

[recessional]

In English? Utterly, at least without an extensive author's note, and it would be an impediment to my reading, as it would be more or less me having to translate from a foreign language into English as I read.

If it were acknolwedged to be a non-English construction that is somehow necessary to the setting (I've got a set of pronouns in signifier that are created because dragons are hermaphroditic) for a secondary-world or SFnal setting, I might bother to stick with it long enough for that eye-tripping "this is not English wth does it mean" period to wear off. I might not. It'd depend.

[alexseanchai]

Suppose the pronouns are 'this-one' and 'that-one' instead of me making shit up. Would that make it easier, or would it still be difficult?

[myaibou]

I'd think of "this-one" and "that-one" as speaker style, kind of like Yoda's backward-talking which probably wouldn't be an impediment to reading. Might even offer some characterization. (I think there was an alien race in one of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels that used those pronouns, in fact. Can't remember which race or story, even, but I remember the style of speaking.)

That would work much better than words I've never seen before and would have to learn the meaning of as I go. Like others said, the work involved might make me give up more easily than familiar words used in a different way, like this-one and that-one.

[alexseanchai]

Okay, thank you!