The Oracle Speaks!

The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

O Great Oracle, please help me with my difficulty.

I am a personnel manager for a large company. With the recent requirements for
political correctness I am concerned about my title, and the fact that I use a personal
computer. The problem is obvious: "personnel" has "son" in it as does personal, and
"manager" has "man". I have therefore sent out a memo which I reproduce below:

From: J. Bloggs, Perpeoplel perpeopleager
To: All staff
Re: Perpeoplal computers

Henceforth all "personal computers" will be known as "perpeoplal computers" in
recognition of the potential political incorrectness of the former name.

J. Bloggs, chairperpeople, PC committee

Anyway, to my question:
My analyst has started asking for danger money. Should I pay?


And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

It's even worse than you thought.

The English "people" comes from the Latin "populus." While "populus" refers to
people in general, it is gramatically of masculine gender. However, it may be
replaced by a gender-neutral term for a gender-neutral concept, such as the Tlingit
word "makchutep," meaning people in general. Unfortunately, makchutep contains
the syllable "chu," which is strongly reminiscent of the Lahu word "chur," meaning
one's best friend's uncles. It must therefore be replaced by the Lower Middle Late
Pidgin Yiddish "Svolbtz," a slang term for collateral relatives of any gender. This
may be done freetly, since LMLPY is completely free of gender references
(coincidentally, this language was only spoken by a group of seven shopkeepers and
their families in a small village near Gdansk, where it soon passed out of use, since it
proved impossible to gossip effectively in LMLPY). To sum up, you may safely refer
to yourself as a "Permaksvolbtztepl Permaksvolbtztepger" without fear of offending
anyone. Other words may be changed accordingly.

Your analyst is a heavily disguised alien from Venus. It is attempting to charge you
more in order to finance the construction of a mind-control network base on
microwave oven technology. Kill it. Kill it now.

You owe the Oracle a gender-neutral translation of the Kama Sutra.


Peter Leppik