Nonbinary Neo-pronouns: Aur/Aure, Aer/Aere, Ær/Ære
Alice Scarlet Death
After thinking about my article yesterday, I decided to try to come up with something that wasn’t straight up “she” or “they.” I came up with Aur/Aure for transmen and Aer/Aere (aslo Ær/Ære if you’re looking for variations to a theme) Behind every neo-pronoun there’s a story. Whether it was in a fiction novel, or academic paper in the 80s. Or even simply a tumblr article. Considering all words were made up at some point, so here’s the story of how I invented some pronouns.
So it was an early morning and I was chatting with fine folks at Asexual/Aromantic Discord Server in their gender channel, and I brought up the topic of wanting a pronoun for nonbinary transwomen. In my previous article, I explain why I felt “they” was not appropriate for me and that I went by she/her pronouns.
But I wasn’t content with she/her. Reminds me too much of toxic binary thinking.
So, I ended up thinking: Let’s use glottals!
When I took a voice and diction class, we learned all about the different sounds the mouth could make. Fricatives, plosives, glottal, etc.
I felt that something made up of entirely a glottal would represent the nature of the spectrum. No stops or closed sounds just open. So we came up with “Aur/Aure.” The semiotics behind “Aur” is that it represents the complete openness but also reminds people of saying “our.” Which would normally be used for systems, pluralities, egregors, or tulpamancers. However, “our” is supposed to remind us that gender is not binary. It’s neither he, she, or they.
Aur and more specifically “Aure” are for nonbinary transmen, transmasculine, and agender people. The “u” in the pronoun gives off that manly presence of a grunt. Base nature, low frequency. Strength, but expansive, fluid, and pure. There’s also a Japanese pronoun “ore” which is traditionally use by males. And with “Aure” sounding like “our-ay” or “our-ray.”
“Aer/Aere” has an ‘e’ that differentiates it between the higher pitched sound. Less gutteral and more lateral type of a rhotic. There are already records of people using “Ae/Aer/Aerself” but that exists outside of this triplicate of pronouns.
Aer is pronounced like “Air.” And “Aere” is pronounced like “eres” in Spanish but without the s. Eres in Spanish means “you are.” It is also a genderless expression. However, it could also be likened to “Ella” except in reverse with the e and the a. Implying reverse femininity. However, femininity can be anything. The reverse gives more prudence to the idea that it lies on a spectrum and is not implicitly binary.
And finally there’s Ær/Ære. The first is pronounced like “ear.” The second is pronounced like “ee-ray.”
They combine both philosophies of the other two. The general feel of the word is still fluid, but has a feminine “e” sound turned into a somewhat masculine one. These pronouns would be good for people who are straight up nonbinary and agender (or anyone who chooses too, of course) people who don’t feel comfortable using feminine or masculine pronouns but still want that glottal vastness.
To summarize:
Aur/Aer/Ær are singular. Aure/Aere/Ære are possessive, personal, and plural.
There is no Aureself/Aereself/Æreself or Aure’s…etc because it does not follow the glottal rules. For this to mean anything all of it must be glottal.
Sample Sentence Using She/Her Pronouns: “Her umbrella broke, although it wasn’t hers in the first place. She really prides herself on that umbrella collection.”
Sample Sentence Using Aer/Aere Pronouns: “Aer umbrella broke, although it wasn’t Aere in the first place. Aer really prides Aere on that umbrella collection.”
Part of the point of all this is to replace the generic English “s” in possessive’s with n “e.” These pronouns were developed in mind for Latin languages in mind as well as Japanese considering the coincidental homophonic similarities.
