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Do I have to, or is it suggested, I use gender-neutral language (for objective third person pronouns)?
i.e. "One, in his or her own opinion, may find it irrelevant."
vs.
"One, in his own opinion, may find it irrelevant."
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Bordello
00:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Why is singular they a monstrosity? It can be found as early as Middle English, and in any case it doesn't only respond to gender. There are many cases of they with sex specific antecedents. Holden Caufield says something like: "I hate a guy who's always flicking their towel at everyone. (can't remember the exact quote). in the Catcher in the Rye.
Really, there's no "flaw" in the language. There's only a flaw in trying to impose a prescription that is based on misunderstanding how the language works. Specifially, pronouns in English do not need to agree with their antecedent in grammatical number. In some cases, they can't. If you don't think so try to interpret "Everybody got up, and then he left the room" with the he coreferring with everybody. (doesn't get better with he or she either.) mnewmanqc
In fact, it is appearing in many more or less formal written contexts too. I've noticed it in journalistic writing as well as some academic work, particularly that published in Britain. Somehow, the we still manage to communicate. mnewmanqc
My son has a friend that is from Canada and she tells him that the word "friggin" or "frigging" is a swear word in Novia Scotia. Can someone please tell me if this is true. Believe it or not, it is causing him a lot of stress.
Dear friends, Plz help to! i am from India & I really want to speak american english but do not know how to start. Kindly suggest me some steps to start my practice to make it possible as soon as possible.
tara
What does this Croatian phrase mean ?
This phrase returned sites which ended in .hr A search for 'country domain names' will tell you that .in = India, .hr = Croatia etc..
Please point me to a translation site where i don't have to specify the 'From' part, ('From'=Croatian, 'To'=English) because I don't recognize the alphabet of the language.
Thanks
Where can I find paradigms of English verbs when there was still some significant conjugation? Shakespeare's use of the lady doth protest too much probably exceeds that period a little, but I assume that doth was kept for to do while perhaps other forms were dropped. I'm just curious into the latest paradigms of verbs before they were mostly deprecated. I guess this really should be on wiktionary (project with great potential - just needs a lot of content) but I can't find much information there. John Riemann Soong 23:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
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The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions at one of the pages linked to above. | ||||||||
|
Do I have to, or is it suggested, I use gender-neutral language (for objective third person pronouns)?
i.e. "One, in his or her own opinion, may find it irrelevant."
vs.
"One, in his own opinion, may find it irrelevant."
-
Bordello
00:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Why is singular they a monstrosity? It can be found as early as Middle English, and in any case it doesn't only respond to gender. There are many cases of they with sex specific antecedents. Holden Caufield says something like: "I hate a guy who's always flicking their towel at everyone. (can't remember the exact quote). in the Catcher in the Rye.
Really, there's no "flaw" in the language. There's only a flaw in trying to impose a prescription that is based on misunderstanding how the language works. Specifially, pronouns in English do not need to agree with their antecedent in grammatical number. In some cases, they can't. If you don't think so try to interpret "Everybody got up, and then he left the room" with the he coreferring with everybody. (doesn't get better with he or she either.) mnewmanqc
In fact, it is appearing in many more or less formal written contexts too. I've noticed it in journalistic writing as well as some academic work, particularly that published in Britain. Somehow, the we still manage to communicate. mnewmanqc
My son has a friend that is from Canada and she tells him that the word "friggin" or "frigging" is a swear word in Novia Scotia. Can someone please tell me if this is true. Believe it or not, it is causing him a lot of stress.
Dear friends, Plz help to! i am from India & I really want to speak american english but do not know how to start. Kindly suggest me some steps to start my practice to make it possible as soon as possible.
tara
What does this Croatian phrase mean ?
This phrase returned sites which ended in .hr A search for 'country domain names' will tell you that .in = India, .hr = Croatia etc..
Please point me to a translation site where i don't have to specify the 'From' part, ('From'=Croatian, 'To'=English) because I don't recognize the alphabet of the language.
Thanks
Where can I find paradigms of English verbs when there was still some significant conjugation? Shakespeare's use of the lady doth protest too much probably exceeds that period a little, but I assume that doth was kept for to do while perhaps other forms were dropped. I'm just curious into the latest paradigms of verbs before they were mostly deprecated. I guess this really should be on wiktionary (project with great potential - just needs a lot of content) but I can't find much information there. John Riemann Soong 23:20, 22 July 2006 (UTC)