On Mon, Jan 31, 2005 at 12:11:36AM +0000, MJR wrote: > 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.
Bollocks [1]. Randomly switching genders all the time is *way* more confusing than using "they", "their" etc. "They" is in common use as a singular, and has been for yonks; deal with it. As far as the Shakespeare goes, in the context of "There's not a man", "not a man" is clearly not = "no men". In fact, "none" would be a more obvious replacement, and "none" is singular. Trying to think of a more obvious example... how would you rephrase "Imagine that you are in a dark room when you hear someone enter. Having entered, they close the door behind them." without butchering it completely? [1] Seemed like an appropriate expletive, in the circumstances ;-) Cheers, Nick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
