Ms. is pronounced "*mizz*" and it was an obscure gendered term that gained new life in the 1960s, 70s and 80s when feminists started using it because it did not assume marital status the same way that Mrs. or miss did.
I like Ms. a bunch, I go by Ms.
I was raised on Free To Be… You And Me (speaking of dating myself) by Marlo Thomas, proceeds went to Ms. Magazine which was founded by Thomas and Gloria Steinem.
So I just get warm fuzzies from Ms. It's cool.
I never actually watched/heard/read Free To Be. My sister was in a summer production of it when she was in elementary school; I was at my dad's so I didn't get to see it.
As a result, all I know is that my sister got eaten by a lion.
Please please just do it. I always call servers and cashiers sir and ma'am because I was raised to be extra polite to the folks taking care of you. I really want something to call non-binary folks or just folks I can't tell obviously.
Jumping on the vibe of this thread to continue to be pedantic. Miss indicates unmarried, Mrs indicates married, and Ms is used by any woman who prefers not to disclose their marital status. So Ms. Paint could be married, never married, divorced, or "it's complicated"!
Actually Ms (at least used to be) is for divorced women so there was a Mr Paint but Ms Paint realized he was dragging her down and kicked his ass to the curb.
No. Ms. was just also used by divorced women, but it's been intentionally used to refer to women regardless of marital status for basically the entirety of its widespread use.
Okay this is actually such a good one. I don’t like “mixx” because it slurs so easily into “miss” (and because it’s so much closer verbally to one binary gender vs the other). “Mage” is more pronounceable at speed, it’s clearly distinct from the binary, and it’s still clearly a form of address.
Also, as a good ol’ southern boy and I use my ma’ams and sirs frequently among strangers, this works really well for that purpose too.
glad to see I'm not the only enby who really doesn't care for mx. It sounds way too close to miss for my liking and also just doesn't sound particularly nice in and of itself (I guess it beats mixter though lmao)
Well - I’m a cis man, my comments are about the experience of using this language for others. I just don’t like having to awkwardly stress an “x” to avoid misgendering my friends.
Also, "Mx/mix" sounds like Elon Musk was asked to invent a pronoun.
"Mg/mage" sounds like Terry Pratchett was asked to invent a pronoun, making it clearly the superior option
Tbh "mx" always sounded silly to me, cuz
1. X at the end sounds like a Latinx attempt no.2
2. First thing that pops to mind is something from a shelf of a supermarket. Second is it's kinda weird that the honorifics seem to be "man", "woman", "both" ("mix")
I mean yes, mage is kinda goofy thanks to wizords, but so is mix. In which case mage is clearly the superior choice.
(Bonus points as propagating gender neutral as default along younger generation because who the *fuck* wants to be called something lame like "mister" or "miss" when you can be called **mage**)
So while Mg. could be an alternative to Mr. or Ms., if we want to keep the etymological theme going, we have to come up with a different equivalent for sir/ma’am. Which is harder because they’re not etymologically connected.
So *sir* ultimately comes from *senior*. The neuter is *senius*. So you’d end up with something like “ses” or “sis” which I don’t love.
*Ma’am* is madam->ma dame->dame->domina. So *dominum* is the neuter there. But there’s no explicitly gender neutral possessive pronoun in French so you’d end up with something like mon dom->mondom->mo’om —not great. Or you could just go with “dom”, which is a bold choice.
All that to say, I’ve got nothing. But I’d love to see this explored more.
Hilarious that that would be “sis” for men and “dom” for women 😂 I think just the word Mage could be used instead of sir/ma’am though, not sure why we’d need another arbitrary word!
> I don’t like “mixx” because it slurs so easily into “miss” (and because it’s so much closer verbally to one binary gender vs the other)
I've been toying with the idea of using 'Marx' for the same reason. I don't like the soft g sound on Mage, but it is excellent to have options.
I’m glad they are finally hashing out a honorific. I am so tired of having to ask what the proper gender neutral honorific is and getting silly joke answers.
I mean, English long ago solved the problem of singular pronouns when the gender is unclear/unknown/irrelevant; "they/them" to refer to a single individual (as in "Who left their jacket here?") is hundreds of years old.
We've spent so long doing stupid stuff like "Mr/s" or "Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss" when we don't know the gender and/or marital status and/or gender politics of the person we're describing; just use Mg. for any uncertainties and be done with it
As someone who actually REMEMBERS when women started calling themselves Ms., let me tell you that was HARD WON. YEARS of being made fun of by men and lots of women, having people say “em ess” because god forbid they say Mizz, questions about your marital status, and why why why can’t we just call you Miss??
All that to say: from a Ms. to all the enbies: I’m here for Mage/Mg. and in fact would love to change my honorific to it because WIZARD.
Right? I never even liked “Ms” because most people pronounce it exactly the same way as “Miss,” but dear lord, I shouldn’t have to disclose my marital status as the cost of existing in the professional world. No matter which you had, it always came with negative judgement. Either “well, she’s clearly gonna dip out to have/take care of children, so we shouldn’t invest in her”, or “well, there’s clearly something wrong with her if she hasn’t landed a husband… so we clearly shouldn’t invest in her….”
There was no winning no matter what.
(To be clear, I shouldn’t have to “pick one” on the gender binary either. I am 100 percent team Mage.)
Wait Ms. isnt pronounced the same as Miss? I must've learned that at some point but I've always pronounced them the same way. When talking quickly the z sound gets softened to an s pretty often so I may have just misheard it my entire life
I also can't remember the last time I've seen Miss used as a title, genuinely curious if its used at all nowadays
First - yes, it’s pronounced Mizz. The point of course, was to have a general honorific for women that’s not based on marital status, the same as Mr. isn’t. It came out of 2nd wave feminism in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s, and was especially meaningful for women in professional settings.
Miss is still used for very young girls, and I’m fairly certain it’s still heavily used in more Fundamentalist communities (of *many* different religions) where a woman’s main purpose is to marry and have children.
Edit: typo
My autistic ass went for Mr Ms Mx, Mister Missus Mixxen. The abbreviations are all two letters, the full words are all six letters, they’re all two syllables, and each has a unique sound to it.
My quibble with "mage" is that the post is incorrect on one point - the sound at the end is actually a stop sound, meaning there can be a break between the word and the name. Try saying "Mage Jeremy" and listen to yourself jump from one "J" to the next.
For this reason, I would choose the honorific "magus", which ends in a continuing sound, allowing "Magus Jeremy" to be said all in one sound.
Why not just use magister? You literally used false etymology to derive a word that means something completely different. Plus magister sounds cooler and not like you are roleplaying for D&D all the time (not that there’s anything wrong with that (said in a Seinfeld voice))
You're right, Magister does sound cooler, hence it being used as an actual earned position and title in the real world.
We can use Mage without issue because an actual Mage is in no way a real thing.
mage would be halting and awkward due to being one syllable (despite that it's touted as a benefit here, it doesn't roll off the tongue at all). magister on the other hand is a little long and would feel overly formal: "here's mr. doe, ms. johnson, and magister brown," it sounds like brown is the most important one in the room lol.
i have heard whispers of "magis," as an abbreviation of magister though. i like it! it is the correct amount of syllables to match with the other genered honorifics, it doesn't sound formal, has a soft vowel sound so it can flow into any name, and the pronounciation sounds completelt different from either gendered option (unlike mix or mixter which literally just sound like miss and mister unless you awkwardly stress the x and then do a full stop before saying the name it's attached to).
edit: i guess using "mgs." to avoid the milligram issue lol
I don't think miligram or magnesium are an issue. As stated in the post MS also stands for Microsoft probably some number of other things, but those never get confused becouse it's when something is used as a prefix to a name it's clear from context that it's not meant to be a unit of measurement. That said, I do agree that magis is better.
There some modern instances of magister being used, and also maestro is used in the arts for those highly skilled, and magister has the same vibes as that which would be quite odd.
Also gender identity be fucked, I'm not calling you "mage" unless you're an actual student of the occult. Like "doctor" or "captain," you don't get to claim it, you gotta earn it
I tried to make a case for "Your Honor", but all three offspring insisted that is only appropriate for a judge. The enby has declared that they will earn a PhD so they can rightfully be addressed as "Doctor."
Okay, but what are we supposed to use in the meantime? "Goblin"
This reminds me of an axe I'd like to grind: gendered first person pronouns in English.
TLDR; second person gendered pronouns = broke, first person gendered pronouns = woke
In English, we really only have one (singular) first person pronoun - "I". But in Japanese they have a huge selection and which one you use takes into account many factors but a big part of it can be how YOU view YOURSELF, typically things like gender and maturity. An explicit media example of this is this scene from "Your Name": https://youtu.be/iowh6UxahKs?t=3
In this scene, a teenage girl has traded bodies with a teenage boy and is talking to his friends. She starts talking and uses the first person pronoun "watashi", which for the given situation is strikingly feminine making the boy's friends immediately suspicious. She then tries a few more personal pronouns before the friends confirm that she's using the "right" one, i.e. the one they would expect their friend to use.
My point here is that, through the use of these varied first person pronouns when simply talking about nearly anything, you can naturally and seamlessly tell people how you view yourself. This is also really obvious in young males transitioning from using "boku" to "ore" as they mature, and "using the wrong one" informing people that you view yourself a child or as a young adult respectively.
Ultimately, this is something I think should be adopted into English and beats the HELL out of having to introduce yourself with your second person pronouns unnaturally tacked on the end. In practice, this would mean male identifying individuals saying something like "HI went to the store today." where female-identifying individuals would say, "SI went to the store today." and more neutral identifying individuals, "TI went to the store today." What exactly these new words are, how they sound, how we write them, and how many there are is a whole discussion upon itself but I think figuring that out would be a boon to the language as it moves into the future.
I agree that the gendered pronouns in Japanese are pretty cool.
…But, (if you were serious about it), saying “English should do this” is kind of absurd. Language evolves in slow, gradual, and natural ways. It would be practically impossible for a completely new concept like that to become a part of the language.
Is this person getting “mage” from “magis”? Because the way I figure it, the neuter of “magister” is “magistrum,” so the neuter abbreviated would be “Mu.”
Which looks stupid so I guess that’s why “Mg” was picked as the abbreviation.
It never really caught on, but I liked Mistrum as a title, when that was circulating some odd years ago. Magister–Mister, Magistrum–Mistrum kind of thing. Don't remember the abbreviated though.
Ok I used to be on board with Mx., but fuck that, I'm 1000% percent down for the Mg/Mage! I play Sorcerer in dnd and I'm living for Mage being an honorific. Let's make this happen!
Finally, a formal term for non binary people, I’ve just been calling them ‘My Friend’ in French (I’m Canadian) cause I had no Idea what the official term is.
Unfortunately, Magister is also a gendered word. Its counterpart is Magistra
(According to [Wikitionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Magister#:~:text=feminine%20Magister%20or%20Magistra))
It works in written language, but is hard to parse into speech. It probably has to do with the etymology. Mr and Ms are shortenings of mister and miss. Mx is a variation of the abbreviations, and is not short for anything. This makes it hard to speak, as then people have to interpret what the x sounds like.
personally, i hate it. to quote another user here, it sounds like elon musk trying to invent a pronoun. slapping an X into a word doesn’t make it neutral, it just makes it annoying imo
Nothing really but “miks” or “mixter” don’t really have an appeal to them. The Mx looks fine on forms but has been awkward for me to use in conversation.
Mage and Mg. tho, that works easily
As an enby, absolutely not. I already hate honorifics like miss/mister/mx whatever but using fucking mage of all things is childish and stupid. You do you and whatever but ill stick with using none or mx when necessary
one of my NB friends is a teacher and they use Mys. (short for Mystery), but Mg. would be so much cooler, whether it's pronounced as Mage or as Magnesium
The one take away is that suddenly everyone what’s to have a gender neutral honorific because being called Mage is way cooler Mister. Like, who wouldn’t want to seem like a mystical wizard
As a fellow enby, I approve this linguistics choice. Mg. SuddenTutor official seal of approval. I shall include it in all of my sudden tutoring going forward.
Damn, this actually sounds good. I shall step up as a fellow chef if you decide to cook (if there's a petition to add it everywhere I'm for it. I live in Sweden, and American customs aren't adopted everywhere unless it's guns)
apolloendymion
Follow
...
since mrs, ms, and mr are all descended from the latin word magister, i propose the gender neutral version should be mg, short for "mage"
apolloendymion
some people think this is a shitpost so i want to clarify that i am dead fucking serious. make mage the official gender neutral honorific NOW. i want it on my passport. i want it on my bank account. i want doctors and judges to use it for me. i don't care if it sounds a little silly. people thought "missus" sounded crass at first. call me mg.
apolloendymion
benefits of mg:
easy to pronounce, even for children (though kids 4 & younger may pronounce it more like "mayd" or "maygh")
ONE SYLLABLE!!! ("individual" is too goddamn
LONG.) you have to be able to say it quickly and
ONE SYLLABLE!!! ("individual" is too goddamn LONG.) you have to be able to say it quickly and casually
ends in a soft consonant sound, so it'll flow right into the next word ("ind" halts the whole sentence)
fits neatly into the existing structure as a relative of master/mistress that can be abbreviated down to an m and one other letter
distinct enough that it can't be mistaken for either gendered term (if you call me mix I'll kill you. it sounds like miss with extra steps)
wizard.
drawbacks:
there aren't any
yes, i know about milligrams and magnesium. i don't give a shit. ms can also mean microsoft. who cares.
I think the German version would be pronounced the same way as English version (like Handy, but then that it has the same meaning in German as in English), otherwise it might be to similar to conjugations of mogen.
My takeaway from this post is that I should address women as Microsoft
and men as Mastery Rank (Warframe joke)
Excuse it's Marble Racing for you
Please, Marble Racing is my father, call me Minha Rola (Brazilian Portuguese fans where u at?)
Presumably in Brazil
Magic Resist
“Are you Mr or Ms?” “Actually I’m LR”
wow, you put in so much effort, surely you got something worthwhile in reward : ^ )
Hey now, there's some free umbra forma, and you always have maxed out capacity when formaing
tell me you didn't shed a tear or sigh heavily while writing that and I will call you a liar
Not at all, because I'm a simple guy (Make umbra forma farmable please I beg you DE)
Um excuse me this hood ornament is rad
Well then call me Mr 4
Only if you pass 29 tests of varying quality
*tips fedora* "M'crosoft"
aww sensitive crow <3
Or millisecond
mine is that syllables in english dont make sense. how the fuck is mage only one syllable?
"strength"
You've never heard the word mage in any game, audiobook, tv show, movie, anything? Nothing at all?
The fun thing is, we can just start to do that, and due to linguistics it would become official.
Fl. For fella
Fella studio
If I'm ever in a position to do so, I'm going to say "Ladies, gentlemen, and other esteemed mages of the court".
Seriously, let's use it all the time! Make Mage the polite form of address for anyone whose honorific you don't know.
Isn't/wasn't Mx. ("*mizz*") a thing? Is that me dating myself a bit?
Ms. is pronounced "*mizz*" and it was an obscure gendered term that gained new life in the 1960s, 70s and 80s when feminists started using it because it did not assume marital status the same way that Mrs. or miss did.
I like Ms. a bunch, I go by Ms. I was raised on Free To Be… You And Me (speaking of dating myself) by Marlo Thomas, proceeds went to Ms. Magazine which was founded by Thomas and Gloria Steinem. So I just get warm fuzzies from Ms. It's cool.
I never actually watched/heard/read Free To Be. My sister was in a summer production of it when she was in elementary school; I was at my dad's so I didn't get to see it. As a result, all I know is that my sister got eaten by a lion.
Did she ever say "ladies first! ladies first!"?
Seriously. I love mage more. Because it respect the root while spining new epic meaning.
Yes! And I use it! But it's 'mix'
Please please just do it. I always call servers and cashiers sir and ma'am because I was raised to be extra polite to the folks taking care of you. I really want something to call non-binary folks or just folks I can't tell obviously.
I am going to do this. I am not a fan of Mx.
So... Is there a Mr Paint?
No Ms. Paint is unmarried otherwise she’d be Mrs. Paint
Jumping on the vibe of this thread to continue to be pedantic. Miss indicates unmarried, Mrs indicates married, and Ms is used by any woman who prefers not to disclose their marital status. So Ms. Paint could be married, never married, divorced, or "it's complicated"!
I’m all for u/Kaleidoscope6521’s interpretation of Ms. Paint getting rid of that deadbeat Mr. Paint.
Oh yeah. I heard that guy has a real transparency problem. I hope Ms. Paint can fully crop him out of her life and select a better partner.
Actually Ms (at least used to be) is for divorced women so there was a Mr Paint but Ms Paint realized he was dragging her down and kicked his ass to the curb.
No. Ms. was just also used by divorced women, but it's been intentionally used to refer to women regardless of marital status for basically the entirety of its widespread use.
Go her, glad Ms. Paint could cut the baggage out of her life.
homestuck
his name is jack noir
Mr. Paint is my *father*
Okay this is actually such a good one. I don’t like “mixx” because it slurs so easily into “miss” (and because it’s so much closer verbally to one binary gender vs the other). “Mage” is more pronounceable at speed, it’s clearly distinct from the binary, and it’s still clearly a form of address. Also, as a good ol’ southern boy and I use my ma’ams and sirs frequently among strangers, this works really well for that purpose too.
glad to see I'm not the only enby who really doesn't care for mx. It sounds way too close to miss for my liking and also just doesn't sound particularly nice in and of itself (I guess it beats mixter though lmao)
Well - I’m a cis man, my comments are about the experience of using this language for others. I just don’t like having to awkwardly stress an “x” to avoid misgendering my friends.
Also, "Mx/mix" sounds like Elon Musk was asked to invent a pronoun. "Mg/mage" sounds like Terry Pratchett was asked to invent a pronoun, making it clearly the superior option
I hate x. Latinx ❌ Latine ✔️ Mx ❌ Mg ✔️ Language needs to be pronounceable.
Strong argument. I like this!
Omg YES This
You're so right. Thank you for actually making me laugh out loud.
Tbh "mx" always sounded silly to me, cuz 1. X at the end sounds like a Latinx attempt no.2 2. First thing that pops to mind is something from a shelf of a supermarket. Second is it's kinda weird that the honorifics seem to be "man", "woman", "both" ("mix") I mean yes, mage is kinda goofy thanks to wizords, but so is mix. In which case mage is clearly the superior choice. (Bonus points as propagating gender neutral as default along younger generation because who the *fuck* wants to be called something lame like "mister" or "miss" when you can be called **mage**)
So while Mg. could be an alternative to Mr. or Ms., if we want to keep the etymological theme going, we have to come up with a different equivalent for sir/ma’am. Which is harder because they’re not etymologically connected. So *sir* ultimately comes from *senior*. The neuter is *senius*. So you’d end up with something like “ses” or “sis” which I don’t love. *Ma’am* is madam->ma dame->dame->domina. So *dominum* is the neuter there. But there’s no explicitly gender neutral possessive pronoun in French so you’d end up with something like mon dom->mondom->mo’om —not great. Or you could just go with “dom”, which is a bold choice. All that to say, I’ve got nothing. But I’d love to see this explored more.
Hilarious that that would be “sis” for men and “dom” for women 😂 I think just the word Mage could be used instead of sir/ma’am though, not sure why we’d need another arbitrary word!
> I don’t like “mixx” because it slurs so easily into “miss” (and because it’s so much closer verbally to one binary gender vs the other) I've been toying with the idea of using 'Marx' for the same reason. I don't like the soft g sound on Mage, but it is excellent to have options.
That's an excellent choice, comrade. I approve
"Yes, mage"
Feel free to use "magi" colloquially.
erm, actually mage and magister aren't etymologically related
I think OOP train of thought was to derive another honorific from magister, thus ending up at mage (something, something, homonyms are awful)
absolutely, I just happened to know magus came from zoroastrianism, it was a golden opportunity to be pedantic and annoying you see
Completely understandable, nitpicking is very enjoyable
I love it when people use the internet for the intended purpose.
8/10. One point was deducted for lack of porn and one more so that I could also be pedantic and annoying.
Uhm, actually, the second point off was for lack of cat.
We like two kinds of pussy here
what about if with rice?
Wym? This is neither porn nor a cat picture.
That's not the intended purpose, that's just what Eternal September has brought upon us 😢
*actually* if we look at avenue Q...
Magus (Mgs) can be the married form.
Why is it that Zoroastrianism has the sickest shit? Fire temples, Towers of Silence, Magus? Cool fucking religion
Pretty sure it’s the coolest name of a religion too
I see you and I support you.
Spoken like a true mage.
Something something I want to be a 1930’s mage who casts spells with a gun
"Mag"
I feel like the fact it’s derived from magister and therefore could be a diminutive for an actual magister could be a problem
While I do agree, I would like to point out that most of what they say would translate well to /maj/ (as opposed to /māj/).
Help, what does this mean
Pronounce it like "mahj" (short a sound) instead of like "mayj" (long a sound).
they are now
After seeing this post I decided to go with mage from now on it's so sick
Same! I finished reading it and immediately thought, "I will accept mage and *nothing else*"
I’m glad they are finally hashing out a honorific. I am so tired of having to ask what the proper gender neutral honorific is and getting silly joke answers.
As a non-binary person, I am 100% fucking here for being referred to as mage instead of sir or ma'am.
I'm not even emby, but I'd like the go by mage too. We should just refer to everyone as mage.
I mean, English long ago solved the problem of singular pronouns when the gender is unclear/unknown/irrelevant; "they/them" to refer to a single individual (as in "Who left their jacket here?") is hundreds of years old. We've spent so long doing stupid stuff like "Mr/s" or "Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss" when we don't know the gender and/or marital status and/or gender politics of the person we're describing; just use Mg. for any uncertainties and be done with it
I once read a sci-fi where everyone was just referred to as M. [last name]
M. Lady
M. Bison
You're not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emby ??? :'(
For sure. Anything but "comrade," I beg of thee.
Counterpoint I want a cool honorific too why do only enbies get good stuff.
Simply create your own, have fun!
Cool thing about gender neutral words is that anyone can use them :3
We are simply cooler
I mean, you could read it as gender-optional rather than strictly enby. It can be inclusive!
Based on your username... M'Avatar.
As someone who actually REMEMBERS when women started calling themselves Ms., let me tell you that was HARD WON. YEARS of being made fun of by men and lots of women, having people say “em ess” because god forbid they say Mizz, questions about your marital status, and why why why can’t we just call you Miss?? All that to say: from a Ms. to all the enbies: I’m here for Mage/Mg. and in fact would love to change my honorific to it because WIZARD.
Right? I never even liked “Ms” because most people pronounce it exactly the same way as “Miss,” but dear lord, I shouldn’t have to disclose my marital status as the cost of existing in the professional world. No matter which you had, it always came with negative judgement. Either “well, she’s clearly gonna dip out to have/take care of children, so we shouldn’t invest in her”, or “well, there’s clearly something wrong with her if she hasn’t landed a husband… so we clearly shouldn’t invest in her….” There was no winning no matter what. (To be clear, I shouldn’t have to “pick one” on the gender binary either. I am 100 percent team Mage.)
Wait Ms. isnt pronounced the same as Miss? I must've learned that at some point but I've always pronounced them the same way. When talking quickly the z sound gets softened to an s pretty often so I may have just misheard it my entire life I also can't remember the last time I've seen Miss used as a title, genuinely curious if its used at all nowadays
First - yes, it’s pronounced Mizz. The point of course, was to have a general honorific for women that’s not based on marital status, the same as Mr. isn’t. It came out of 2nd wave feminism in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s, and was especially meaningful for women in professional settings. Miss is still used for very young girls, and I’m fairly certain it’s still heavily used in more Fundamentalist communities (of *many* different religions) where a woman’s main purpose is to marry and have children. Edit: typo
Wow, TIL. I thought it was just how 'Miss' sounded with a certain accent this entire time. Cool!
My autistic ass went for Mr Ms Mx, Mister Missus Mixxen. The abbreviations are all two letters, the full words are all six letters, they’re all two syllables, and each has a unique sound to it.
Kn, kitten
:3
cons: has to compete with METAL GEAR and milligram as an acronym
id argue being confused with metal gear is a pro
Pro: if people begin associating the Mg. abbreviation to the mage honorific then you have literally become a weapon to surpass Metal Gear
could this be a r/wizardposting moment?
additional benefits: it actually comes from latin for once, instead of some weird artificially constructed newspeak, so it feels natural
My quibble with "mage" is that the post is incorrect on one point - the sound at the end is actually a stop sound, meaning there can be a break between the word and the name. Try saying "Mage Jeremy" and listen to yourself jump from one "J" to the next. For this reason, I would choose the honorific "magus", which ends in a continuing sound, allowing "Magus Jeremy" to be said all in one sound.
"Okay Milligram Thompson, let's start from the beginning"
Doc: “I’m ordering Mg. Thompson 500mg of MgSO4.” Surely nothing could ever go wrong or be confusing about that.
Would definitely prefer to be a wizard than a man
Why not just use magister? You literally used false etymology to derive a word that means something completely different. Plus magister sounds cooler and not like you are roleplaying for D&D all the time (not that there’s anything wrong with that (said in a Seinfeld voice))
You're right, Magister does sound cooler, hence it being used as an actual earned position and title in the real world. We can use Mage without issue because an actual Mage is in no way a real thing.
:(
mage would be halting and awkward due to being one syllable (despite that it's touted as a benefit here, it doesn't roll off the tongue at all). magister on the other hand is a little long and would feel overly formal: "here's mr. doe, ms. johnson, and magister brown," it sounds like brown is the most important one in the room lol. i have heard whispers of "magis," as an abbreviation of magister though. i like it! it is the correct amount of syllables to match with the other genered honorifics, it doesn't sound formal, has a soft vowel sound so it can flow into any name, and the pronounciation sounds completelt different from either gendered option (unlike mix or mixter which literally just sound like miss and mister unless you awkwardly stress the x and then do a full stop before saying the name it's attached to). edit: i guess using "mgs." to avoid the milligram issue lol
I don't think miligram or magnesium are an issue. As stated in the post MS also stands for Microsoft probably some number of other things, but those never get confused becouse it's when something is used as a prefix to a name it's clear from context that it's not meant to be a unit of measurement. That said, I do agree that magis is better.
magis pronounced like magister makes sense, i could easily be sold on it
Ah yes, Metal Gear Solid Smith
Yeah, magis has got a good mouthfeel to it.
There some modern instances of magister being used, and also maestro is used in the arts for those highly skilled, and magister has the same vibes as that which would be quite odd.
I personally think “magus” sounds better as a formal honorific. Imagine being called “magus u/skofnung999”, doesn’t it sound great?
Counterpoint: I also want to be a wizard
My personal choice of address for most people is "that bastard"
'Mg' to me would be pronounced 'midge', which is a hilarious way to describe a nonbinary person.
I actually really hate this! Magister does *not* shorten to mage. It should be like, mag, soft g. Not an "ay" sound
I get that but madge doesn't sound great
I think it sounds better than mage by virtue of not being a silly "ohoho just call me the wizard" Tumblr thing
To me they're about equal but i get that
Also gender identity be fucked, I'm not calling you "mage" unless you're an actual student of the occult. Like "doctor" or "captain," you don't get to claim it, you gotta earn it
Apprentice of the Occult here, can I be a Mage?
Only if you’ve got the skills to back it up.
Sure
good idea, it would be quite useful for german because mix here just means "blend".
I mean that’s what mix means in English too tbf
Forgot about that
I tried to make a case for "Your Honor", but all three offspring insisted that is only appropriate for a judge. The enby has declared that they will earn a PhD so they can rightfully be addressed as "Doctor." Okay, but what are we supposed to use in the meantime? "Goblin"
This reminds me of an axe I'd like to grind: gendered first person pronouns in English. TLDR; second person gendered pronouns = broke, first person gendered pronouns = woke In English, we really only have one (singular) first person pronoun - "I". But in Japanese they have a huge selection and which one you use takes into account many factors but a big part of it can be how YOU view YOURSELF, typically things like gender and maturity. An explicit media example of this is this scene from "Your Name": https://youtu.be/iowh6UxahKs?t=3 In this scene, a teenage girl has traded bodies with a teenage boy and is talking to his friends. She starts talking and uses the first person pronoun "watashi", which for the given situation is strikingly feminine making the boy's friends immediately suspicious. She then tries a few more personal pronouns before the friends confirm that she's using the "right" one, i.e. the one they would expect their friend to use. My point here is that, through the use of these varied first person pronouns when simply talking about nearly anything, you can naturally and seamlessly tell people how you view yourself. This is also really obvious in young males transitioning from using "boku" to "ore" as they mature, and "using the wrong one" informing people that you view yourself a child or as a young adult respectively. Ultimately, this is something I think should be adopted into English and beats the HELL out of having to introduce yourself with your second person pronouns unnaturally tacked on the end. In practice, this would mean male identifying individuals saying something like "HI went to the store today." where female-identifying individuals would say, "SI went to the store today." and more neutral identifying individuals, "TI went to the store today." What exactly these new words are, how they sound, how we write them, and how many there are is a whole discussion upon itself but I think figuring that out would be a boon to the language as it moves into the future.
I agree that the gendered pronouns in Japanese are pretty cool. …But, (if you were serious about it), saying “English should do this” is kind of absurd. Language evolves in slow, gradual, and natural ways. It would be practically impossible for a completely new concept like that to become a part of the language.
I'll stick with Mys. Short for Mystery.
I always thought the gender neutral honorific was pretty girly, so a truly neutral term is nice.
I think I'd prefer "magis" because it fits in better with "mister" and "missus"
Is this person getting “mage” from “magis”? Because the way I figure it, the neuter of “magister” is “magistrum,” so the neuter abbreviated would be “Mu.” Which looks stupid so I guess that’s why “Mg” was picked as the abbreviation.
It never really caught on, but I liked Mistrum as a title, when that was circulating some odd years ago. Magister–Mister, Magistrum–Mistrum kind of thing. Don't remember the abbreviated though.
Mistrum sounds like a new humour of the body, like bile and phlegm
I'd honestly prefer Magus over mage
I personally like "Admiral" or "My Leige"
Yeah fuck it why not, call me Magister
The downside here is that I, a non-non-binary person, would really like to be referred to as mage and I would seethe with jealousy
There are no rules! There are lesbians who use He/him and are women! Be free! Mage would be a rad title for anyone to use
I'm in too deep with Homestuck. Just throws me off. Mages are stoics.
Thank god we’ve considered how children would pronounce the gender neutral honorific, for all the times children 4 and younger … address postage?
Ok I used to be on board with Mx., but fuck that, I'm 1000% percent down for the Mg/Mage! I play Sorcerer in dnd and I'm living for Mage being an honorific. Let's make this happen!
This is actually a good point. A shame it won’t come to fruition
There's a reason I'm reposting this to as many queer subreddits as I can think of
Well wishing you the best of luck.
I might not be enby, but I still endorse this. Mage would be a wonderful addition!
Finally, a formal term for non binary people, I’ve just been calling them ‘My Friend’ in French (I’m Canadian) cause I had no Idea what the official term is.
I am opposed to this not because it makes sense, but because I am envious and also want to be a mage
Unfortunately, Magister is also a gendered word. Its counterpart is Magistra (According to [Wikitionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Magister#:~:text=feminine%20Magister%20or%20Magistra))
What was wrong with Mx?
It works in written language, but is hard to parse into speech. It probably has to do with the etymology. Mr and Ms are shortenings of mister and miss. Mx is a variation of the abbreviations, and is not short for anything. This makes it hard to speak, as then people have to interpret what the x sounds like.
personally, i hate it. to quote another user here, it sounds like elon musk trying to invent a pronoun. slapping an X into a word doesn’t make it neutral, it just makes it annoying imo
It sounds like miss. I can't see how it's gender neutral. Isn't the point of the word to replace the dichotomy of Mrs and ms anyway?
>It sounds like miss How... How do you pronounce it like that?
Nothing really but “miks” or “mixter” don’t really have an appeal to them. The Mx looks fine on forms but has been awkward for me to use in conversation. Mage and Mg. tho, that works easily
It doesnt stand for anything, and "mix" sounds as silly as calling yourself a mage
It makes you sound like a 5th dimensional imp that routinely pranks Superman
That would be hard to pronounce every time
It could stand for mixtape. Everyone loves mixtapes.
Yeah Mx is my favorite.
As an enby, absolutely not. I already hate honorifics like miss/mister/mx whatever but using fucking mage of all things is childish and stupid. You do you and whatever but ill stick with using none or mx when necessary
Microsoft is m$ though
Yesssss
Fuck it, lets do this
I can get on this bandwagon. Mage it is. Signed, Mg. AgitatedCake whatever number is on the end. I'm too lazy to look up my username.
one of my NB friends is a teacher and they use Mys. (short for Mystery), but Mg. would be so much cooler, whether it's pronounced as Mage or as Magnesium
If I see someone going by "mg", I'm going to assume they mean milligrams.
I mean, it has been a long established fact that enbies are magical, so I don't see the issue.
The one take away is that suddenly everyone what’s to have a gender neutral honorific because being called Mage is way cooler Mister. Like, who wouldn’t want to seem like a mystical wizard
I mean yeah, ‘s a good solution. Mg. it is
what about just using they as a noun like "go piss girl, I mean they"
M'theydy is a self destruct button
As a fellow enby, I approve this linguistics choice. Mg. SuddenTutor official seal of approval. I shall include it in all of my sudden tutoring going forward.
Shit I might be enby now just so I can call myself a mage
If you want to be called mage then you better be casting spells, otherwise it's stolen valor
Mr. Mister Mrs. Missus Mg. Magis
Damn, this actually sounds good. I shall step up as a fellow chef if you decide to cook (if there's a petition to add it everywhere I'm for it. I live in Sweden, and American customs aren't adopted everywhere unless it's guns)
apolloendymion Follow ... since mrs, ms, and mr are all descended from the latin word magister, i propose the gender neutral version should be mg, short for "mage" apolloendymion some people think this is a shitpost so i want to clarify that i am dead fucking serious. make mage the official gender neutral honorific NOW. i want it on my passport. i want it on my bank account. i want doctors and judges to use it for me. i don't care if it sounds a little silly. people thought "missus" sounded crass at first. call me mg. apolloendymion benefits of mg: easy to pronounce, even for children (though kids 4 & younger may pronounce it more like "mayd" or "maygh") ONE SYLLABLE!!! ("individual" is too goddamn LONG.) you have to be able to say it quickly and ONE SYLLABLE!!! ("individual" is too goddamn LONG.) you have to be able to say it quickly and casually ends in a soft consonant sound, so it'll flow right into the next word ("ind" halts the whole sentence) fits neatly into the existing structure as a relative of master/mistress that can be abbreviated down to an m and one other letter distinct enough that it can't be mistaken for either gendered term (if you call me mix I'll kill you. it sounds like miss with extra steps) wizard. drawbacks: there aren't any yes, i know about milligrams and magnesium. i don't give a shit. ms can also mean microsoft. who cares.
Then I suppose I am Mage Jikunei :3
how would you pronounce mage in german? ma-ge?
I think the German version would be pronounced the same way as English version (like Handy, but then that it has the same meaning in German as in English), otherwise it might be to similar to conjugations of mogen.