Serious question… What is a gender neutral term for sir or ma’am? Like if I am writing a formal letter or email and I want to start with “hello sir/ma’am” or something. What should I write?
I’ve seen some discussion around magister with the short form mage and the abbreviation mg. Allegedly both ms and mr come from the Latin root that magister comes from, so lexically it makes sense.
I suppose just avoiding gender and professionalism altogether is better though. Instead of “Hello sir,” a polite “Good afternoon” could suffice. Instead of “Excuse me miss” just “Excuse me.”
Or call everyone comrade.
Edit: oh yeah, twin. There’s been a lot of people calling others twin.
I’ve seen some discussion around magister with the short form mage and the abbreviation mg. Allegedly both ms and mr come from the Latin root that magister comes from, so lexically it makes sense.
No one is going to start a professional email “Dear mage” and be taken seriously, no matter how linked the etymology.
I suppose just avoiding gender and professionalism altogether is better though. Instead of “Hello sir,” a polite “Good afternoon” could suffice.
I totally follow what you mean, but part of me wants to reiterate bastardize.
The English language has certainly taken words from other languages and just… bent them totally beyond their original meaning/usage, to the point of breaking.
But another part of me simultaneously cringes at just, doing that intentionally.
While this is obviously biased in one way, the old norm used to be to just default to ‘Sir’ when you’re not sure.
You can see echoes of this in the way that many, many old writings use ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ to refer to just all people, all humans.
Certainly many of the people that spoke that way were themselves patriarchal, but very often the contrextual use of man/mankind is actually gender neutral.
You can also see echoes of the ‘default to Sir’ thing in the US Military: Everyone is a ‘Sir’, when you’re showing respect to a higher rank, regardless of their sex or gender.
But uh yeah at least personally myself, I’ve been writing ‘Dear Sir/Ma’am’ or something like that, when I don’t know the gender of … the person my letter or email is going to end up at.
There have been various proposals for a gender neutral honorific title, but afaik, none of them have stuck and gotten widely adopted.
Serious question… What is a gender neutral term for sir or ma’am? Like if I am writing a formal letter or email and I want to start with “hello sir/ma’am” or something. What should I write?
I’ve seen some discussion around magister with the short form mage and the abbreviation mg. Allegedly both ms and mr come from the Latin root that magister comes from, so lexically it makes sense.
I suppose just avoiding gender and professionalism altogether is better though. Instead of “Hello sir,” a polite “Good afternoon” could suffice. Instead of “Excuse me miss” just “Excuse me.”
Or call everyone comrade.
Edit: oh yeah, twin. There’s been a lot of people calling others twin.
No one is going to start a professional email “Dear mage” and be taken seriously, no matter how linked the etymology.
“To whom it may concern…”
Well, unless you’re writing to an actual mage. As in a magician, wizard, sorcerer, witch, warlock or mystic.
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Only thing I can think of is ‘Honorable’ as what judges get as a formal title… its gender neutral, but waaaaaay too formal.
‘Esteemed’ is… yeah, similar, but also imo is so formal and rarely used seriously that it essentially comes across as camp, sarcastic.
I would genuinely just suggest English borrow a gender neutral term from another language.
That would be… on brand for English.
Possibly we could bastardize a Japanese honorific / suffix?
-san
-sama
-tono
-ue
???
Just fuck it up and put it in front of a name?
… There are probably too many weaboos this would significantly anger…
-tono in particular I find very funny, as it essentially literally is “m’they’dy” from another comment, in Japanese.
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I totally follow what you mean, but part of me wants to reiterate bastardize.
The English language has certainly taken words from other languages and just… bent them totally beyond their original meaning/usage, to the point of breaking.
But another part of me simultaneously cringes at just, doing that intentionally.
sigh
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That’s hilarious lol.
“to whom it may concern”
‘hey, dumbass:’
Here in Sweden we just don’t use Sir/Madam at all. Everyone refers to each other by their first name, even in professional settings.
That’s awesome! But what if you don’t know the name of the person you are sending an email to?
You say the relationship they have to you.
Dear/appreciated/esteemed customer/supplier/team/hiring manager/director/boss/title
In some cases a title or relation to you could work, like doctor, professor, whatever department they are in, dear reader/patient/customer.
Or you could omit gendered references altogether and use a general greetings (hello/greetings, good morning/afternoon/evening).
English doesn’t have an officially agreed-upon term for that yet. “Esteemed being” just doesn’t flow that well.
While this is obviously biased in one way, the old norm used to be to just default to ‘Sir’ when you’re not sure.
You can see echoes of this in the way that many, many old writings use ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ to refer to just all people, all humans.
Certainly many of the people that spoke that way were themselves patriarchal, but very often the contrextual use of man/mankind is actually gender neutral.
You can also see echoes of the ‘default to Sir’ thing in the US Military: Everyone is a ‘Sir’, when you’re showing respect to a higher rank, regardless of their sex or gender.
But uh yeah at least personally myself, I’ve been writing ‘Dear Sir/Ma’am’ or something like that, when I don’t know the gender of … the person my letter or email is going to end up at.
There have been various proposals for a gender neutral honorific title, but afaik, none of them have stuck and gotten widely adopted.
I use M. It’s a gender neutral title. I got the idea from The Culture.
M works well as an alternative to Mr/Ms/Mrs, but I don’t think it works well as an alternative to Sir/Ma’am.