Helen Faulkner wrote: > Well, actually that is incorrect. They as a singular, gender neutral > pronoun has been used in English for centuries (surely, if Shakespeare > used it, its good enough for Debian). See, for example > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
I'm tired of this crusade against the English from our resident sexists, grounded only in the Sapir-Whorf *hypothesis*. If you would like some example genders switched to make a bit more of a mix, or avoided entirely, then fine, but please don't continue mangling plurals and singulars. It's confusing. In the worst case, people might think they group-apply to NM. Current English singular thirds are he, she and it. The common third has been on the way out for yonks: deal with it. By the way, can you substantiate that Shakespeare claim? To forestall the one in the Comedy of Errors, "not a man" = "no men", which is a plural, so "their" can be accurate. Many alleged examples of the "singular their" are zero rather than singular and yet more are indefinite numbers. -- MJR/slef See also http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
