(Pause while Veb reels in amazement that AlphaGene somewhat agreed with him/her, even from pure pissant perversity)
I was gonna say something profound about the Germanic roots of English/American (yeouch!) linguistic oddities, but flashed back to the hairy armpit tree-hugger thing and got lost in contemporary symbolism. (Germany is NOT notable for obsessive concern about arm pit hair, male or female.)
Does it strike anyone else as hopelessly muddled when body hair gets muddled up with neo-whatever politics and deconstructionist interpretations of talking the hell with one other?
Call me hopelessly primitive, politically naive and at least 5 trends behind the wave, but is this futile or what?
Hey, I don’t call you “she” if you don’t assume I’m “he”. Other languages incorporate this stuff; not seamlessly, but it keeps grad students in grants and away from the general public.
Gender variations, politics and associated keruffles are one thing (ok, several, actually) but is just getting along without undue offense all that hard???
Who said that the switch to non-sexist language was a horrible thing? not I. I said the change was led by feminists. Am I wrong? Men on their own would never have thought of it. Stop jerking your knee, Alphagene. For the record, I am pro inclusive language. You ought to read a post more carefully before you attack.
Watch who you call ignorant, son. If you have a problem, take it up with Fowler’s Modern Usage. Edited by R.W. Burchfield. 3d ed., p. 358., from which paraphrased the statement above. I will also quote Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, 4th edition, p.60, " The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language." Merriam-Webster’s College Dictionary, 10th ed., says he is “used in a generic sense or when the sex of the person is unspecified.”
OK, I have cited sources, so shut up and sit down, Jo3sh.
For the record, I have been earning a living from writing, teaching, and editing for the past decade, so any self-
appointed language cops would be wise to think twice before taking me on. If coprophagous wankers like Jo3sh wish to write condescending posts, then they should bring some knowledge of the subject to the discussion instead of spouting PC nonsense.
Jerking my knee? How is my response a knee-jerk reaction? And I’d imagine men are capable of concieving of gender neutral pronouns. Don’t they exist in some other languages?
Oh, you’re implying my reading comprehension is subpar. Now who’s being condescending? Well pardon me, but that wasn’t exactly made clear in your post. You mention that feminists are trying to eradicte sexist language and then mention that you think using “they” makes people sound uneducated. So you are actually “pro inclusive language”. Fine. But it’s not like your post clearly indicated that.
First: I have not taken you on, you have taken me on. As I look back through this thread, my first posting appears quite well above yours. Then you burst upon the scene and started flinging bullshit. Worse still, it was erroneous bullshit, and unresearched. Also, I feel it’s worth pointing out that I was responding to people, yourself included, who were playing language cop, not playing at it myself.
Second: while I have respect for your years as an editor, teacher, and author, I have nothing but scorn for your apparently closed mind.
Third: it appears that you have not followed the links that I and others have provided, or you would realize that even Cecil Himself wrote, “However, as sociologist Ann Bodine points out, singular ‘they’ was in wide use by distinguished writers of English prior to the attacks of 19th-century grammarians, and its use in speech has persisted to the present day.” (Bolding is mine.) This pretty much destroys your claim (not quoted above) that the use of “their” as genderless pronoun began in the 60’s.
Fourth: if I appear condescending to you, it may be because you’re worthy of condescension. You’re certainly uneducated about English, for all your years using it professionally.
Fifth: spouting it may be, but it is neither PC nor nonsense. I and others here have given scholarly citations supporting our theses, and you have not, trotting out only your years of experience. Just as an experienced coal miner need not know much about geology but only how to wield the tools of his trade, so it appears that an experienced editor need not have studied much (or care much) about the history of English, but only how to wield his sacred style manual.
Sixth: I feel that I have given strong evidence of these points:
– The use of “their” as singular genderless pronoun has centuries of history, and is not, contrary to your statements, an invention of feminists in the 1960’s.
– The use of “him” and its variants as genderless pronouns originated in the 18th or 19th century, not the dawn of the language.
– You’re an unlettered idiot.
Well, not quite Icelandic persay, but, Scandanavian. Also, much of the French words in English come from Middle French, obviously not modern French.
Anyway, here’s what my Webster’s dictionary says about the origin of English (i’ll try to keep this as concise as possible):
"The term English goes back to the name of one of the Germanic tribes -the Angles- who, according to the Venerable Bede, began to invade Britain in the year 449. “English” derives from “Angle-ish,” "…
“The Angles, and also the Saxons and Jutes, who, according to Bede, joined in the invasion of Britain, all spoke dialects of a language scholars call West Germanic, no contemporary records of which are extant. Other current West Germanic languages, along with English, are Dutch and German (and also Frisian, who live in the area the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles came from, IIRC. Frisian is the closest relative to English. Friesland is a part of the Netherlands, and I think also a little of Germany, but i’m not sure). West Germanic was closely related to North Germanic, which survives today in the Scandanavian languages such as Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. Originally both West and North Germanic were the same language, called Germanic, before its speakers split up and in time evolved their own distinctive speech”.
While much of the vocabulary of English comes from Latin, French, or Scandanavian, that does not mean the language is from all of those languages (i’m speaking of the structure, obviously, and to those who don’t know this). The substrate of English is Germanic.
I’ll leave the Ph.D. student, been-teaching-compositon-for-6-years-crap aside (though I still don’t accept plural/singular construction from my students) and instead marvel that nobody has brought up Henry Beard’s solution to the problem: that we contract “he or she or it.” The resulting gender/object neutral word is “h’orsh’it.”
**I’ll give you a hint…**never mind, it’s the first one.
Possessive its does not take the apostrophe. Your solecism is made tragic by the expectation that you reviewed your comments for mistakes of spelling and -grammar prior to submission.
I reject the possibility of typographical error—anyone who struggles to tolerate so abecedarian a blunder could never have missed it. The inescapable conclusion is that you never learned the difference—in which case you are incompetent to comment on any ̶g̶r̶a̶m̶m̶a̶t̶i̶c̶a̶l̶ subject ever.
It’s weird to see a longstanding member (friedo) referred to as a troll. Then I saw the date and it was just past his join date. Must have been one of his first posts.
That is funny funny material … I like one as a pronoun … it’s singular and makes one sound cosmopolitan. Y’all is an excellent choice for a plural, but don’t you goddam call me a ewe.
I think you’re wrong here. Anyone can make a typo. I damn well know the difference between “you’re” and “your” but I’ve made that blunder before.
(I also once sent out a memo to everyone at my workplace, telling them not to “horde” printer toner cartridges. And I once printed up business cards that had the word “privelege.” Ow.)