A random side note is that I once coined sjoe as a gender-neutral pronoun for one of my conlangs — more specifically ⟨sjoe⟩ is one of the two standard ways of romanizing this word, but it’s the romanization that I use by far the most often because it’s ASCII friendly.
To quickly explain the etymology of the pronoun sjoe: it comes from sj- (root for 3S pronouns) + -oe (standard gender-neutral equivalent to -a / -e). I can go in more depth but I don’t think that’s necessary, you get the picture.
Anyways, after getting comfortable with using the word sjoe in my conlang, I even started sometimes using sjoe in English when referring to third-gender or non-binary characters from my conworld — I justified this practice by saying that the word sjoe was to many of these characters essentially a sacred and untranslatable mark of respect. And then when I started getting comfortable with using sjoe in English for fictional characters, I even started considering using sjoe for myself, because I’d already coined the word and I liked the sound of it and it’s my conlang so I can do whatever the heck I please with it.
…And then one day I decided to look up “sjoe” on Wiktionary on a whim, just to see if this word happened by some off chance to coincidentally also be a real word used in any natural languages.
…
…Alright so it turns out that South Africans, through some bizarre twist of fate, apparently use sjoe as an interjection. Which means that South Africans — although the sjoe of my conlang is etymologically unrelated and not pronounced the same as the interjection sjoe — probably would’ve read the things I’d written about my conworld’s characters as something like, “Phew! castrated whoo!-self as a teenager and became a choir singer, but due to rejection from whew!'s family ended up running away; sheesh! ended up finding a powerful sentient shield in a forest built by an ancient civilization, and with this shield wow! came to uncover all the secrets and conspiracies of yeesh!'s world…”
I ultimately decided against using sjoe for myself.
A random side note is that I once coined sjoe as a gender-neutral pronoun for one of my conlangs — more specifically ⟨sjoe⟩ is one of the two standard ways of romanizing this word, but it’s the romanization that I use by far the most often because it’s ASCII friendly.
To quickly explain the etymology of the pronoun sjoe: it comes from sj- (root for 3S pronouns) + -oe (standard gender-neutral equivalent to -a / -e). I can go in more depth but I don’t think that’s necessary, you get the picture.
Anyways, after getting comfortable with using the word sjoe in my conlang, I even started sometimes using sjoe in English when referring to third-gender or non-binary characters from my conworld — I justified this practice by saying that the word sjoe was to many of these characters essentially a sacred and untranslatable mark of respect. And then when I started getting comfortable with using sjoe in English for fictional characters, I even started considering using sjoe for myself, because I’d already coined the word and I liked the sound of it and it’s my conlang so I can do whatever the heck I please with it.
…And then one day I decided to look up “sjoe” on Wiktionary on a whim, just to see if this word happened by some off chance to coincidentally also be a real word used in any natural languages.
…
…Alright so it turns out that South Africans, through some bizarre twist of fate, apparently use sjoe as an interjection. Which means that South Africans — although the sjoe of my conlang is etymologically unrelated and not pronounced the same as the interjection sjoe — probably would’ve read the things I’d written about my conworld’s characters as something like, “Phew! castrated whoo!-self as a teenager and became a choir singer, but due to rejection from whew!'s family ended up running away; sheesh! ended up finding a powerful sentient shield in a forest built by an ancient civilization, and with this shield wow! came to uncover all the secrets and conspiracies of yeesh!'s world…”
I ultimately decided against using sjoe for myself.
Yeah that’s true it’s basically like saying wow or damn or phew. So yeah it would be confusing to read.
It reads like poetry, maybe you’ll come around to it eventually.