BlogNomic: The First Dynasty of Desertfrog

.  I don’t quite feel strongly enough about this to VETO, but it’s pushing it.

Are there some pro-Spivak reasons I’ve forgotten, or are you just on the opposite side of strong personal preference, out of interest?

Lets just nuke the rule, but allow people to use what they want? You silly people can use your normal english, us refined people can use our pretty spivak. That was everyone is happy.

Spivak is so….politically correct. It makes me want to gag. What happened to the good old days when people could just use male pronouns to refer to either gender without cries of ‘sexism’?

Sorry, I got lost on a tangent there.

I think the problem is that there were never any “good old days” when people could use female pronouns to refer to either gender without cries of “sexism.”

But “they” to refer to single gender-neutral third persons has been in use for centuries, despite what your elementary school teachers told you.  It’s just adding a few letters onto Spivak anyway.

But I mean, I don’t care when someoe uses “she” to refer to both men and women. I don’t see why we can’t act like grown-ups here and stop worrying about what gender someone’s pronouns are. Allow them all.

Isn’t that exactly what this proposal is doing? By removing the legal imperative, any form of pronoun - so long as its meaning is clear, is valid in the rulestate.

Unless you’re talking about real life, in which case, uh, I’ll revolve if you do. *ties bandanna around head and prepares Kalashnikov*

No, it’s removing the glossary entry, and thus the option of using spivak, from the game.

So, as there is no glossary entry specifically permitting ‘&’ as an alternative to ‘and’, does that mean that ‘&’ is illegal too?

It doesn’t remove the option; the rules at no point illegalise Spivak. So long as the meaning remains clear, I don’t see how this proposal renders Spivak illegal. Cumbersome, yes, but Spivak was always that anyway.

I admit that this would make it difficult for players to casually use Spivak, as doing so would confuse new players (who would have no idea or explanation as to why the ruleset is saying “e” and “em”).

But I’m not claiming to be ushering in a utopia where Spivak can exist alongside other pronouns. I’m sure there’ll be some bits of Spivak creeping in from some players (which always seems to happen, in any Nomic), but this is basically a proposal to discourage Spivak usage, and to encourage whatever natural language people think is appropriate.

The meaning may not be clear once we remove the glossary entry.

Kind of an argument against Spivak right there, isn’t it?

*wishes he were active so he could for yes on this one.