Package squidpony

Enum Messaging.NounTrait

java.lang.Object
java.lang.Enum<Messaging.NounTrait>
squidpony.Messaging.NounTrait
All Implemented Interfaces:
Serializable, Comparable<Messaging.NounTrait>, Constable
Enclosing class:
Messaging
public static enum Messaging.NounTrait
extends Enum<Messaging.NounTrait>
Properties of nouns needed to correctly conjugate those nouns and refer to them with pronouns, such as genders. Includes parts of speech, which only are concerned with whether they refer to a singular noun or a plural noun, and genders for when a gendered pronoun is needed. This provides substantial support for uncommon cases regarding gender and pronoun preferences. That said, gender and pronoun preference can be incredibly hard to handle. The simplest cases are for first- and second-person pronouns; here we have "I/me/my/myself" for FIRST_PERSON_SINGULAR, "you/you/your/yourself" for SECOND_PERSON_SINGULAR, "we/us/our/ourselves" for FIRST_PERSON_PLURAL, and "you/you/your/yourselves" for SECOND_PERSON_PLURAL; there are more pronouns this can produce, but they aren't listed here. Third-person pronouns are considerably more challenging because English sporadically considers gender as part of conjugation, but doesn't provide a universally-acceptable set of gendered pronouns.
This at least tries to provide pronoun handling for the common cases, such as "you" not needing a gendered pronoun at all (it uses SECOND_PERSON_SINGULAR), and supports male, female, genderless (using "it" and related forms; preferred especially for things that aren't alive, and in most cases not recommended for people), "unspecified" (using "they" in place of "he" or "she"; preferred in some cases when describing someone with a non-specific gender or an unknown gender) pronouns, and group for when a group of individuals, regardless of gender or genders, is referred to with a single pronoun. As mentioned, this has support for some uncommon situations, like additional gender (as in, a gender that is in addition to male and female but that is not genderless, which has a clear use case when describing non-human species, and a more delicate use for humans who use non-binary gender pronouns; hopefully "xe" will be acceptable), and finally a "special case" pronoun that is unpronounceable and, if given special processing, can be used as a replacement target for customized pronouns. For the additional gender, the non-binary gendered pronouns are modified from the male pronouns by replacing 'h' with 'x' (he becomes xe, his becomes xis). The "special case" pronouns replace the 'h' in the male pronouns with 'qvq', except for in one case. Where, if the female pronoun were used, it would be "hers", but the male pronoun in that case would be "his", changing the male pronoun would lead to a difficult-to-replace case because "his" is also used in the case where the female pronoun is the usefully distinct "her". Here, the "special case" gender diverges from what it usually does, and uses "qvqims" in place of "his" or "hers". The "special case" pronouns should be replaced before being displayed, since they look like gibberish or a glitch and so are probably confusing out of context.