Changing Words

Congressperson, instead of congressman. There are a great many people who want to change the common vernacular to less-gender weighted terms. While an extremely admirable pursuit, that I personally agree with, a lot of the time I see well-intentioned people propose words that are easy to see will never be picked up. Case-and-point: congressperson.

To figure out why words like this will never work and never be commonly accepted, we need to examine English speakers. Primarily native English speakers. In phonology there are two terms called reduction and elision. These refer to how English speakers slur, shorten, and outright remove sounds from words and sentences. Given that this exists, one can conclude that English speakers don't like pronouncing words fully, and would much rather say something quickly than accurately. [1]

Now that we know that, it's fairly simple to figure out what replacement words will work and what ones will not. For example, congressman. We don't say congrassman, we say congressmn. That's three syllables, whereas congressperson is four syllables, and therefore longer of a word and takes longer to say. Since English speakers are lazy, it's obvious why a word that is harder to say wouldn't gain much momentum.

On the other hand, there have been words that have been successfully changed, like firefighter. The word used to be fireman (i.e. firemn.) The question now is, why would firefighter catch on over fireman, given that it's longer, and more syllables. I have no scientific data to back my claim up, but I believe it is because firefighter is an alliteration stuck together into one word, and alliterations are fun to say. Therefore, firefighter is more enjoyable to say than fireman, and was accepted into the common vernacular on sheer enjoyment factor.

Next time you see a word that you might think is better off changed to a gender-neutral word, think about what you could replace it with that is either shorter, easier to say, or more fun to say. Otherwise your attempt is doomed to fail before it begins.

DRM: My Stance

Some of you may or may not know that I'm homeschooled. I do my school online, and mostly self motivated. For anyone who cares, I'm with CAVA and K12.

Anyway, on one of the recent tests there was something new. It said that I had to have a program called ExamGuard to take the test. Now, I'm not against anti-cheating measures, but this was something different. It required me to install a program, ExamGuard, on my computer in order to take this test. This is what K12 says about ExamGuard. I was incredibly offended at this.

Here is the letter that I sent to my teacher.

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Mrs. ______,

While I realize that you probably have no control over this, I feel the need to express my extreme discontent at ExamGuard, both in general and on this test.

The use of the program ExamGuard obviously makes it clear that the school doesn't believe students to be trustworthy, and apparently they need even more 'so called' anti-cheating measures than are already in place. Now, I would be much more understanding if anti-cheating measures were embedded into the webpage, I wouldn't have much of a problem with that. But, requiring me to install a program on my computer that limits my access to my own computer is simply outrageous.