What is a gender neutral honorific for non-binary folk?
I was raised to address strangers and those I wish to show social deference to as "Sir" or "Ma'am". It's a difficult habit to break, as it is deeply engrained.
What is an equivalent gender neutral honorific that is relatively common in English? If I can't break the habit I'd rather have a substitute word to use instead of an awkward pause in the middle of addressing someone
I'd just use Google to ask but I'd rather ask the people directly rather than an AI generated answer based off of Reddit threads
ETA: I suppose if Yessir and Yes'm work, Yesn't could too? Mostly joking… but maybe… 🤔
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Comrade
"OI CUNT" 🇦🇺
Scotland approves 🏴
FWIW, Sir is gender neutral in the military — this came up in Star Trek Voyager, anyway. Basically if your senior officer isn’t male, they’re sir until they tell you otherwise.
FWIW, Sir is not gender neutral in Gamestop.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
GameStop has Wendy’s now?
Yeah, Wendy's nuts are loose but your manager "borrowed" the socket set and now your clearance display is on the ground.
Wen deez nuts are loose
It means I'm getting old..
Sir is gender neutral in fictional militaries. Every woman holding a commission I ever encountered was ma'am. Didn't matter the country.
Yes, Star Trek is fictional.
But the way you've formatted your first comment is "this thing is a military thing, as can be seen from this fictional military" which doesn't necessarily imply said thing is fictional even though the military you've used as an example is.
Sir hasn’t been gender neutral in my military for like 30 years at least
Not sure what military you served in, but the one I served in definitely didn’t call women sir until instructed otherwise. However, “mister” may be correct for all warrant officers.
I served in the US Air Force. Everyone was "Sir" or "Ma'am" and it was very gender-specific. Even for the few years we allowed transgender folks to serve (before Trump banned them), you referred to them by their preferred transition title.
We don't have warrant officers in the Air Force, so I can't speak to their title of address.
Same, USAF but decades ago. It was actually the USAF protocol office I called to verify the “mister” address for WO. Not because we had them, but because they still have protocol for how to address them, generally army chopper pilots if I recall.
eta: I should also clarify that I don’t know that to be true. It could easily be one of those ID-10t situations where somebody tricked us into calling protocol and they went along with it. Could be complete bullshit.
When I served (2002-2022), we were always told that warrant officers are technically officers, so treat them the same as any officer. So we would've addressed them as Sir or Ma'am if we came across them. As well as saluting them if we met them outside.
I don't recall ever addressing anyone as "Mister" in the service. Heck, I retired a few years ago and now I feel weird when people call me Mr. [Last Name]. I got so used to being called by my rank and last name for 2 decades. Mister just sounds wrong.
Um, Starfleet... as mentioned (Star Trek Voyager... Star Trek's Starfleet is inspired by the Navy).
I never served... Mostly due to health reasons
Oh I misunderstood you. I thought you were using the Star Trek reference as just a supporting claim that militaries follow this practice. But I see now you meant only in that context.
Yeah, I meant that Star Trek did it, and Star Trek is (supposed to be) based on the Navy, so as one who's never served, I really only have Star Trek Voyager (which had a female captain) to go by.
With female bosses, I've always asked them if they want to be called sir or ma'am. It sounds like a good way to catch hands, but if you ask out of respect and good faith, chances are you'll be answered in kind.
Not really...
Like, yeah, probably in Star Trek, but that would have been a projected evolution of modern society, not a reflection of current reality.
Everyone would assume "sir" and if it's over an email no one is getting worked up about it.
But call a female officer "sir" to her face and I don't think it will go well
No, I got yelled at when I didn't see.
Are you sure you're not Spez?
Mage
I've seen enough posts related to etymology or historical use of words where they, either misrepresent the facts to fit a narrative or just make shit up, that I try to look it up my self. I also find etymology fascinating so that helps.
In this case they are absolutely right.
Both Mr and. Mrs,ms are derived from master and mistress (teachers) and both of those words stem from the Latin word Magister.
Edit: fun fact the English verb stick is the same word as the noun stick and comes from the same origin the Germanic word stik which also meant a piece of wood and to pierce/adhere or sharp. But wait it's older than that the Latin word stigare also means pierce. And share the same ancestry, namely indo-european. Turns out we humans have been talking about sticks for a long time.
...why not just "magister" and avoid a word that already has very strong, current connotations with fantasy?
I mean, mages are pretty cool. 🧙♂️
Let's hit "magister" and then work our way down. I swear to god I'd change the shit out of my pronouns to fit mage.
The issue, I guess, is that Mr./Ms. have had centuries to be normalized into common use, whereas "magister" still holds a bit of prestige or honor to it. I'm just spitballin'. I'm definitely going to read more into this when I have some time.
Although it was also my first choice, magister is masculine. Latin is a gendered language (with more than just m/f) and AFAIK magister isn't neutral.
It doesn't have to carry that genderedness into English.
Magister does not change with gender tho, and generally it should not be a problem since we can just not consider the word gendered, the problem with gendered words is mostly given by social constructs, the word does not have any since it's long dead
...crap, I'm cis male and I wanna be addressed as "mage"...
You can just do that ya know. Just be a wizard. Tell people to address you as such. Don't even have to be trans you can change your name and everything
I work with magical lights that spring forrh from runes written in gold powered by ancient ichor and magic rocks.
I am legit going to use Magister as a replacement option for Mr/Mrs. It's formal, archaic, and gender neutral. That's the trifecta right there
Having worked in the retail sector for some time, I quickly learned that appearances are often deceiving after a few embarrassing blunders on my part. I taught myself to call everyone 'my friend'. I had no more problems after that.
Also if you have to hand someone off to another colleague, I find you can just use "we", and it still feels polite. At least compared to calling them "the customer" (clumsy) or "they" (weird, when they're right next to you). 😃
"So, we're looking for [product], and we need it to be [thing]. Oh, and we have a budget of £25."
Yes, I've done this, as well. It definitely works.
Comrade
I was raised in southern hospitality, so I know exactly what you’re going through.
I just stopped using pronouns altogether.
“Excuse me” “Thank you” “I appreciate you” “Do you know the way to San Jose”
Turns out 99% of interactions don’t depend on what genitals a person’s rocking. I guess if you’re asked to identify a suspect in a crime it might help? Point being, stop focusing on their crotch and what they’re doing with it 😁 you’ve been trained to be weird about it.
ALL of these have pronouns. At least one of them has multiple pronouns! Haha
What are talking about? Said it perfectly fine, are being intentionally dense. Sorry but people like annoy the shit out of.
("it" is also a pronoun")
Oh fuck...
Sorry, meant gender pronouns.
Everyone with a brain knew what you meant, don't worry.
Didn't be a pedant, and don't laugh after being a pedant. It's condescending and rude.
*pedant
Damned auto correct
Lol i feel ya
'San' is gendered /s
You is a pronoun btw, just it's only used in specific contexts
I can't not address a person, that's incredibly rude.
You can address someone without gendered pronouns... they even gave examples.
I can and do address people without gendered pronouns. OP was suggesting not addressing them with an honorific at all.
That might be the words they said while completely ignoring the examples, but those examples made it abundantly clear that they meant gendered pronouns.
Their examples:
The individual they are speaking to is not formally addressed. I'm not going to address a stranger informally.
Some of my friends use "yes them" jokingly to replace yes sir/yes ma'am. Certainly not correct in any grammatical way, but it does flow well enough and is kindof funny as long as the person being addressed doesnt mind.
Personally, I like "Sir" as in the Star Trek/Orville usage. It did happy things to my brain when the crew on the Orville referred to Commander Kelly Grayson (a cis woman) as "Sir", respectfully referring to her by her proper title as a commanding officer. That was cool. I like the gender neutral "Sir" a lot.
But for casual usage, "Friend" or "Neighbor" is nice. "Hey, neighbor, you dropped this." "Excuse me, friend, lemme reach around you here."
I also like this interpretation. It's the same gender neutral connotation as the Cali surfer "dude" or "bro" used equally with everyone.
I am a believer in the gender-neutral California 'dude'. But only if it's used by someone from the West Coast.
Similar to "boi"
Yeah I think "sir" trumps madam because it's professional
I just call everyone "comrade".
This one bugs me a bit. I’m sure it’s said with good intentions, but I have a client who calls everyone on my team “friend” whether or not she knows us, and it always rubs me the wrong way. We’re not friends, she’s the client in a professional setting, and she has never shown any interest in getting to know me enough to actually call me “friend” and have it mean something, so it always comes across as superficial and unnaturally folksy.
As someone who doesn’t have a ton of deep friendships, the ones I do have matter a lot to me, which means I don’t like to throw around the word “friend” lightly.
Could just be my own emotional hangups though.
Friend-o. And carry a coin.
Ok so reading the comments, from Appalachia, and I didn't see it about anyone specific.
So the reason why nothing seems correct is because nothing new will have the same level of cultural history. If you're trying to show social deference to people things like "friend" or "pal" won't work, and "chief" sounds too informal.
You can still use "sir" and "ma'am" under most circumstances, so the question is more about your circumstances.
Are you trying to find something that replaces those honorifics all together, or do you want a backup third option in case someone says they are non binary?
Are you still in the same culture, or have you moved to a culture that doesn't emphasize honorifics like you were raised with?
You're amazing and so are your questions.
I'm looking for a third option for sir/ma'am, and a substitute for Chief that's a bit more formal.
The culture I'm in now is not as formal, this isn't so much finding something to work within the culture of this area as it is to marry my culture to the one I find myself in. I have very little to connect me to my people here and so the traditions I choose to keep are more important as a result. I like saying sir/ma'am. It's the verbal equivalent of holding the door open for someone. But for some people being addressed that way is invalidating, and I want to meet people where they are, not force them to come to me.
I like Magister as a third option for Mr/Mrs., and Professor as a more formal Chief. But sir/ma'am has me stumped
Well if you want to keep a similar motif, Cap'n is vaguely formal, vaguely military esque, and it's gender neutral. Could be seafaring or land based.
You probably won't find anything with the same level of formality as sir/ma'am, so you're going to have to compromise a little bit on that front, but I think people will like the attempt regardless!
Not OP but I think that's a darn good suggestion.
Reminds me of Dana calling Dr Robby «Cap» on The Pitt.
I truly admire your intent in this quest of yours. Admirable.
♥️
I would recommend asking the person what they prefer, for people you know ahead of time are non-binary. For people you don't know ahead of time, choose whichever you think is most likely, apologize if you get it wrong, and ask them afterwards what they prefer.
Unless it is adopted widely by society, any third option will likely be met with confusion, and will still likely offend some people.
For a suggestion of a third option, however, might I offer "boss"? Slightly more formal than chief (in my experience), gender neutral, and allows you to make it as playful or respectful as the situation needs.
Just be aware that there are some slavery/prison connotations to boss in the US and some might be offended.
Was not aware of that! I'm assuming it is a South/West thing? Never encountered that in the North East
Mostly southern but definitely prisons as well. Predominant in chain gang type situations. An example more people might be familiar with would be Morgan Freeman's line "bathroom break, boss?" in Shawshank Redemption when he's been paroled and working at the grocery store. Yes, it's from a movie but it's also a reverence more likely to resonate. Shawshank takes place in the Northeast, hence prison...uh, "culture".
Yeah, I've heard "boss" used in prison movies and such, but I've also heard it in places of employment (even when the person isn't the supervisor or boss), between customer and service worker (both directions), with strangers ("Watch your step there, boss, there's a sudden drop"). Never saw anyone offended by it in my own experience, so it's news to me (and good to know) that there could be groups out there that are offended by it.
I only mentiomed it as a precautionary thing. I use boss all the time and can hardly recall receiving negative reactions, but it might be received poorly in other places. One of many downsides to living in a redneck state is that some intolerable shit is normalized.
Try using "Captain". It has a high level of prestige and dignity without feeling too informal like "Chief".
As a foreigner whose native tongue has gendered nouns and adjectives: we default to sir to sir-presenting people, ma'am to ma'am presenting, and "sir? ma'am? " when unsure and clarification is needed.
I do not understand why you'd want to preemptively force gender someone by choosing a neutral/or newspeak/ form of address - to me it seems much much much worse than defaulting to asking for preference ("sir? ma'am?" option is the best - it declares you've noticed the interlocutor is a nb and passes the ball to them).
If you're looking for 1 word that would always work, I recommend embracing your inner old British Lady and calling everyone pet (petal), dear or love. :-)
Clearly we need to start adopting Japanese honorifics that way we can just call people -san.
There's like, 20 or more honorifics in Japanese. I think that -sama is more culturally equivalent for the Appalachian sir/ma'am, but those honorifics, iirc, usually have to go with a name or a job or something, while the Appalachian sir/ma'am can be used with strangers.
Chief is the only correct answer.
I often call people chief. One time I started to say Yessir, realized midway the person I was taking to might not appreciate the label, tried to change lanes and say Yeah, Chief, and wound up saying Yes Chef.
We had a really good conversation about The Bear TV series afterwards
I mean chef literally means chief
Ran into that problem with my enby friend. Specifically in the jokey context, like when a friend asks you to do something and you say “Yes Sir!” Or “Yes Ma’am!” in a kind of over the top way. They hadn’t really thought about it either and they were flummoxed too. We wound up with “Yes Colonel!”
Yes chef!
I've asked people to call me 'it'. Hasn't happened yet.
Yesn't, I can do that
I thought 'it' was a third person pronoun.
M'theydy
Hat tipping intensifies
Fucker!
Sup, bozo?
Gentleperson?
Now that's just too nice. I like to start with a slight insult just to make sure people know where they stand.
Cant go wrong with "Partner"
"Scuse me Partner, is this seat taken?" Still slaps if you say it confidently enough
Got any of that good sarsaparilla?
You here lookin for the Sundance Kid too?
just don't use any honorifics.
problem solved.
I work in 911 dispatch, understandably once in a while I get a caller who is just absolutely losing their mind over whatever is going on that they're calling about
And sometimes pretty much the only thing I can do to grab my callers attention and bring them back around to listening to me is to just kind of repeat sir/ma'am until I get their attention they come back around to realizing I'm trying to talk to them.
If I can get their name, I use that instead and it's more effective, but that's not always a given.
Just sitting there in silence until they get their shit together on their own doesn't work, and more likely they're going to just hang up on me.
And repeating whatever question I need answered really just kind of goes in one ear and out the other while they continue going off.
Their name or sir/ma'am is punchier, it has a way of cutting through their panic and grabbing their attention saying "you are being addressed right now and the person addressing you needs your attention"
And I really wish we had a good, gender-neutral equivalent of that. It needs to be polite and professional, and maybe a bit authoritative-sounding, so something like "dude" obviously won't cut it.
And I need it both for trans/non-binary people, and people whose gender just isn't clear on the phone because they're in a panic, calling from a potato, and/or just have a somewhat ambiguous voice.
Normally I just have to pick one and go with it, and they'll either correct me (in some cases, choosing the wrong one might actually be more effective at grabbing their attention because astonishingly (/s) people don't enjoy being misgendered and they jump at the opportunity to correct that) or they also just roll with it.
But I'd really like to avoid that if I can, and I haven't really found a good option for it yet.
Have you tried a dolphin impersonation? I think that's gender neutral.
"EEK EEK EEK EEK EEK"
If we're going non-English, I'd prefer to address people like Death of Rats
Honorifics are part of my culture and tradition. I've let go of a lot of other things from my culture that interfere with loving my neighbor, but there's certain social mores I don't want to abandon. Honorifics are a way of showing respect to others in my culture, it is as ingrained as taking off one's hat and standing for a funeral procession.
Korean is easier, just call everyone Teacher. Problem solved.
I'd low key support using teacher. You could pull it off. If everyone can be "my friend," which is used, they can be teacher. Sends a nice mssg. Even if they are not my friend, they can be my teacher
I'm gonna use Professor if I want something more formal than Chief
Curious about your culture, in the North American anglosphere at least Professor has some negative/sarcastic connotations if you're not actually a professor (essentially suggesting someone is a dumbass). Just be careful with that one.
Thank you, that is a valid concern.
It's all about tone. I'm most concerned about in-person interactions, and tone and intent is easier to convey in that type of encounter. I used to be a very sarcastic PoS, so I'm pretty aware of how to use words and tone The result is I'm pretty good at conveying earnestness and empathy. My challenge is that my speech patterns for polite formal are heavily engrained, so I'm looking for substitutes that flow with my existing speech patterns.
Also this has been a fascinating discussion and I'm loving all of the responses and suggestions, including yours. Thank you for contributing :-)
the word you mean (선생님) is quite different from 'teacher' tho, can't think of an english equivalent of that word..
Could… could it be summed up… like considering cultural context, including historical respect for certain vocations, and Confucian influences in earlier centuries, as a word like, I don't know, Teacher?
I kid I kid, i get what you're saying, but teacher is generally accepted as the English translation for 선생님 to the best of my knowledge. Granted, I haven't studied the language for almost 20 years but I think that's still the case, yes?
Also, and genuinely curious here, what is used for "teacher" in a school setting? Like I can see a little kid saying 제 선생님은 재미있서 because of how 선생님 is used. But if a teenager said their teacher sucks what word would they use?
honestly i'm not sure lol
you're right but that's mostly in the context of students referring to their teachers, i had the impression it's quite different from the way it gets used as a second person pronoun or as a way of showing respect to someone.
선생님 is the primary way of refering to teachers, but if one's being rude they might as well say "선생" (without the "님") or their name, nickname, etc..
english isn't my primary language so i'm not sure if my comment makes sense lol
Oh yeah, dropping the 님 makes total sense, I just didn't know if there was another word used besides "선생" for teacher in a general sense.
Don't worry about your English, it's better than mine and I'm a native speaker and occasional pedant. Your comment absolutely makes sense.
that sucks.
Check their question again. It's pretty ingrained in some dialects
Gentlepeople?
But what if they are an MMA fighter?
I like that in Battlestar Galactica, Sir is the honorific for all military officers. They use madame for the president, but the military calls everyone Sir.
That's not strictly a scifi thing, it was a prevailing real-world military custom for a long time to address all military superiors as "sir" regardless of gender. These days the thinking varies, and as women have been integrating into the military for many generations now in more and more places women officers may be addressed as "ma'am."
I use "Captain". It has been met with 100% success.
Came here to say this, or "cap"
"Citizen."
I was actually going for 1960s Batman.
RoboCop "citizen"
Greetings, sentient!
Your highness
I love this question and the discourse it's spawned!
personally I'll use "friend" if I'm at all acquainted with the other person or bend over backwards to not use one if I'm not. not too hard to leave it out if you try, and like anything becomes second nature pretty quick.
that being said I do use "chef" a lot, especially the phrase "heard, chef!" and I haven't worked in a kitchen in almost a decade lol
I can't hear friend without thinking. im not your friend ....
I use 'homie' sometimes. It's not always the right option but it's another arrow in the quiver.
Homie comes from hommes, which is French for man/men. May also be closely related to hombre, which is man in Spanish. Definitely think it's risky to use it as a gender neutral term even though it's just regular slang in English.
This is just made up nonsense.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homie
Might be a descendant of Latin "homo" (man), but that doesn't matter a damn, x homie" just isn't gendered and etymology doesn't change that.
@[email protected] @[email protected] Wait, that wiktionary explanation seems weird too. I always thought of homie as being a derivative of "homeboy" or "homegirl". I could be wrong, but I definitely started hearing homie after those two and have always thought that they were connected. In fact, the wiktionary page for homeboy lists homie as a related term, so to me it seems like the two pages are contradicting each other.
"Um ackshually it's man in Latin!" ☝️🤓
Yeah, okay, thanks for proving my point. Probably shouldn't be using a word that means "man" in several romance languages if your goal is to be gender neutral.
"My friend" is pretty safe
I'm not your friend, buddy!
Don't like forced closeness as a neutral greeting, comes across to me as either manipulative or meaningless.
I'm not your buddy, pal!
It works for person's of middle eastern cultural descent for sure, but it's fairly casual for a native English speaker from Appalachia
I prefer "fellow human" spoken in a slightly suspicious manner.
Sorry for the non answer, but here's a little rant:
Honorifics should go away. They unnecessarily create and restate hierarchies that don't really need to exist.
On the receiving end, it has always felt weird being called "sir". A smile is more than enough, thank you very much.
If a person who knows me calls me “sir” I ask them to not call me sir. I loathe being called sir lol.
Yeah, in Scandinavia you just say "you" or use a person's name when referring to somebody else. Or their job title if it fits the context. You can really feel that you're not "below" anybody, we all deserve the same level of respect and the language reflects that. Additionally, you don't need to guess anybody's gender if you're not sure, avoids uncomfortable situations.
Just say Y'all, it pretty much covers that
Folks. It's my go-to.
Found Obama
The scousers (people from Liverpool, England, UK) have a very useful one in their dialect, "Youse" (pronounced Ewes, like the sheep)
And it's gender neutral, but also double as a group pronoun
(Person, are you going to use that?)
(Depends on context, can be singular, can be group, either "Person, are you going to go outside?" or "People, are you going to go outside?")
It's v useful
two yutes.
❓
it's from the movie "My cousin Vinny".
Ah nice, I remember it now, though it's actually taken from real Italo-American dialects I think
Nice to see the Scouse dialect get a mention! But sadly I have to inform you that we nicked that particular one from the Irish.
Y'know, makes sense, y'all were one of their biggest trading partners for literally like 500 years
We're all some degree of Irish here, even if just honorary.
Pittsburg is similar. Yens
Huh, it's similar to the Glasgow, Scotland, UK gender neutral one, yons
From the Ozarks, we have a similar "yuns."
I assumed it was a shortened form of "you ones."
There's a lot of your dialect based on Scottish and Irish, so it makes sense, y'all were Dutch + Scottish + Irish + English invaders if I remember rightly
Just a bit north in the Lou area we use y'all quite liberally.
It's the etymology of it here
Lean into the southern-ness and call them Honey, Sugar, or Sweetie?
It gets easier to pull off the older I get.
I feel like I might get a call from HR if I use those.
Ants are eating Jim
Mate
Marcie calls Peppermint Patty Sir, so maybe that works. Only half joking.
This is hard.
Buddy? Sounds dismissive.
My friend? Sounds like you're a scammer or a slimy salesperson.
Pal? Sounds mildly aggressive.
Dude? Arguably masculine.
Gen Alpha might have it right -- "bro" seems to be gender neutral and used by both boys and girls.
Dude is absolutely gender neutral, didn't you learn anything from Good Burger?
I agree, but not everyone agrees. And the problem with these "honourifics" (or whatever these are called) is that you have to get them right before the recipient heard them.
Sibling; cuz; fam
Good Burger came out 30 years ago and is only notable because there's a song about it, dude was gender neutral before that. I'm not gonna change my speech to accommodate someone's anachronistic definition of a word lol
I think technically it's "bru", possibly "bruh"
I don't know about all gen-x but I feel a strong aggressive feeling at 'bruh'. Maybe the legion of kids saying it so often that you wish for a 'literally' as respite has given me opinions.
I assume this is what getting old feels like is all. We rolled our eyes at the adults who rolled their eyes at things we said that were "cool". And now we roll our eyes at the young kids (who are in their 30s now). heh
I think young Millennials and Zoomers said "bruh", and it was mostly used ironically.
Younger Zoomers (I think?) started using "bro" unironically, and it caught on big time with Gen Alpha. At least from what I've heard.
My partner and I landed on "Captain" (or the truncated "Cap'n"). But that might be all the star trek we watch bleeding over (I never thought having "make it so, number 1" whispered in my ear would be so hot).
I like referring to all as boss or chief.
Sounds like something a food truck vendor selling spicy shawarmas would say.
Sounds like something a villain's goon would say.
I've written about this before, but "neighbor" or "cousin" or "my friend" usually work. If you can have a bit if fun with it, "Senator" is great. If plural, "folks".
I like to use “dude” or “guy” in a neutral way.
I often say 'man' as an affectation regardless of gender, but today I accidentally said "thanks man" to an obvious trans woman at the kitchen store and felt really bad but she pretended not to notice.
That can be the challenge with Chief as well, it's often said in a masculine context. Boss and Captain don't have the same challenges (although penal culture can affect when Boss is appropriate to use)
Some people who aren't men have a negative reaction to being addressed as "dude" or "guy" nowadays. There's been a lot of writing about it online by women and non-binary folks, and some people in my life IRL have expressed that feeling as well.
"Guy" and "dude" had been all-encompassing gender-neutral terms in my head for ages (I grew up in the 1980s-1990s when we were all dudes) but I've been making an effort to switch away from using them that way because I like my speech patterns to be kind by default.
M'dude.
Sa'am.
Oftentimes I just leave out honorifics when I am unsure of the gender or preferred terms of the person I am speaking with. If I know for a fact that they are non-binary then "Mx" can work, though not everyone is fond of it and I would hate to offend. Honestly I usually just substitute it in ways such as the below (though i speak pretty casually in general).
What can I do for you friend?
Sure thing love
Have a nice day hun
Writing it is one thing, but how are you supposed to pronounce it? It can't possibly be "mix;" that'd be like pronouncing "Mr." as "murr" instead of "mister."
You are correct in that "Mx" is most often pronounced as "mix". It isn't a direct abbreviation like "Mr" is to "Mister", but rather derived as a neutral variant to those types of honorifics, so don't over think it. This is the wild world of the English language after all
I can't think of one that would be as universal as the sir/ma'am pair.
I think it's probably most polite to ask them.
Or at least to assume one or the other, use it with an enquiring tone, apologise if corrected and move on.
But that won't fuel the internet discourse™!
S'mr'amr
Just invent something. English isn't even a strictly gendered language. Just don't expect anyone to want to use a lame word like xir or some other derivative hipster shit you gotta stick the landing. You can just choose to create new words and see if something catches on noone will stop you from trying. People do tend to be masc or fem for a reason and probably don't want to be treated like something inbetween so keep that in mind.
I was told "dude" counts as gender neutral these days, but people seem to differ in opinion on that one.
Yo!
One of my favorite sci fi authors addressed it like this:
M.
Mr? Mrs? Miss? Ms? Nope. "M."
Steve Perry - great books. He did a bunch of licensed books for Star Wars and Aliens, but his own universe is excellent!
Xir?
In writing it works, in person, not so much.
Kinda like saying most churches are more interested in profits than prophets. It takes very precise pronunciation to deliver that one verbally lol
"Hey"
Buddy, Friend, Majesty, Squire
Personally, I'm in favour of "mamsir", which is the obvious compounding of "ma'am" and "sir". The Internet tells me it's used in the Philippines, but I could have sworn I first heard of it being used in India 🤷♀️
I think boss works decent as a neutral way to respectfully address some body in a position of authority, I have refered to many a manager and or client as "boss" when I dont know know their name
Not champ
What about Sport?
In a similar vein, what are you supposed to call aunts/uncles that are non-binary?
Auncles
Certainly not late for dinner. Or at least that's what they tell me
I think devils panties had a comic around this topic. can't remember if she had anything in the notes with an answer.
Dude
I use Mx or Mxtress with my Owner
How exactly are u pronouncing that? Like Mx = "em-ex"?
I kinda do Mix which they don't seem to mind
In Dragon Age, Serah and Messere and the gender neutral terms, which i alway thought went nicely with "Ladies & Gentlemen, Serahs & Messeres!” However Serah is for those equal or lower in status and Messere is higher status. Choose wisely.
Avoid honorifics with "there" (e.g. hello, sir - > hello there) or drop. Otherwise use boss, friend, chief or captain depending on vibes.
Mx may work for that. To my knowledge there's no accepted sir/ma'am equivalent, though most nonbinary folks I've met prefer sir to ma'am unless they lean solidly to the feminine.
Go by language rules - It.