Apparently a Stack Exchange moderator was removed for asking about
SE's new policy to use preferred pronouns, and not gender-neutral
ones. Now there are some discussions around, and that's yet another
surprising event.
Unrelated to that story (except for the topic of pronouns), I rather
like those gender-neutral pronouns: it makes sense to use them when
gender is unknown or unspecified, and even when it is known, it isn't
very useful to specify each time in pronouns. I also like it about
English language that nouns don't have genders associated with them,
verbs and adjectives don't reflect genders, making the language rather
simple and sensible. My native language has all that, and it doesn't
make much sense to me.
Another awkward thing is T-V distinction ("thou" vs "you", "tu" vs
"vos", "ты" vs "вы", etc), which is also practically absent in modern
English. But present in other languages, and use of an improper
pronoun is generally considered rude. Not just "thou"/"tu" when
"you"/"vos" is expected, but the other way around can be seen as
inappropriate too, as if you're keeping a distance, or just strange.
For that reason sometimes I'm avoiding second person pronouns entirely
(at least in one case for a couple of years now), which is quite
awkward by itself. I wish there was just a neutral second person
pronoun, like "you" in modern English.
And then there are various kinds of greetings, and handshakes, and
rules around those. In some contexts greetings (and other
non-essential but polite phrases) themselves make sense (e.g., to get
attention, or in phone/radio communication), in others (e.g., in
email, possibly even with addressing the only recipient by name along
with it) they don't, but don't add much of an awkwardness either. Yet
the different kinds of those to choose from, with connotations and
vague rules attached to them, do make it unnecessarily awkward.
