Re: ENGLISH!

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:31:21 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Iskandar Baharuddin <brengsek@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 08:02:39 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Why, "they", of course. But you knew that.

Why am I not surprised?

In order to weasel around this burning issue you have redefined
"singular".

I've redefined it to mean "referring to a single individual", just as
it does when "you" or "we" is singular.

It is really amusing to watch you NESsies struggling with a problem
unique to the English language.

I don't think we're struggling with anything. We're just reporting
the language as it's actually spoken. It's non-native speakers who
get confused by the difference between "singular" and "plural" as
applied to pronoun agreement and "singular" and "plural" as applied to
verb agreement.

Which does, I'll grant, vary by dialect, but saying "if only English
had a gender-neutral third-person singular animate pronoun" is a bit
like saying "if only English had a second-person plural pronoun." If
you find the need for one, use one of the ones used by dialects that
have one. People will understand you.

Well, actually it does. The thing is, very few English speakers say
"thee", "thou", "thy" or "thine" these days.

But, of course, both "thou" and "you" are gender-neutral, as are "I"
and "We".

The vestige of grammatical gender remaining as "he" and "she" and all
related forms seems to drive some people up the wall.

Surely you don't think I was being serious. I am merely amused by the
contortions, convolutions and self-flagellation I observe regularly.

I was doing a stint with an Australian company. The female office
manager had set up a macro to scan every document and beep up
discoveryof a non-gender neutral pronoun. I got a beep when I referred
to the Chairman of a client as "him".

I refused to amend the document on the grounds that the Chairman's
floppy bits, if examined, would undoubtedly reveal that he was not
gender neutral.

She yielded gracelessly and sought revenge, fortunately without
success.

Lord love a duck!
--

Shalom & Salam

Izzy

Help is coming!:

"Who Says English Ain't Phonetic?: 267,982 Simple Rules for Perfect Spelling and Pronunciation."

In leading bookstores QI 2562.
.

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