A new pronoun? Again?

[Wilson Gray]

How is this "hu" to  be pronounced? As "who" [hu] or as "hew" [hju] or
as "hew" / "Hugh" [ju]? (Both my mother, a native of Northeast Texas,
and my wife, a native of Northeast Pennsylavania, fail to distinguish
among "hew," "yew," and "Hugh," pronouncing all three as [ju].) Or is
it something to be used only in writing and not in speech?

-Wilson

On 11/28/06, Dennis Baron <debaron at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dennis Baron <debaron at UIUC.EDU>
> Subject:      A new pronoun? Again?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The Hartford Courant, The LA Times, and the Chronicle of Higher
> Education have all recently reported on the new gender-neutral
> pronoun hu.  But the real scoop on this new word is on the Web of
> Language.
>
>
>
>
> Dennis Baron
> Professor of English and Linguistics
> Department of English
> University of Illinois
> 608 S. Wright St.
> Urbana, IL 61801
>
> office: 217-244-0568
> fax: 217-333-4321
>
> www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron
>
> read the Web of Language:
> www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


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