on Mon, 02 Aug 2004 01:06:24PM -0700, Steve Langasek insinuated:
> On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 04:02:58PM -0400, Nori Heikkinen wrote:
> > > What can we do to get this sort of thing fixed?
>
> > well, first, i'd think we'd need to have specific reasons why it
> > needs to be changed (easy to write up, but need to be phrased
> > nicely), and also specific suggestions of how to fix it. i'm a
> > fan of the pronoun "they" as a gender-neutral 3rd-person singular,
> > but some people insist that's ungrammatical.
>
> Most of the people who insist it's ungrammatical should be dying of
> old age soon, except for the ones who are undead.
... or those who are young, like the bull-headed DD to whom i
referred, but foreign, so think they have the upper hand of what their
English textbooks told them in insisting they're correct and i'm
overpoliticizing it.
/me fumes, steam coming out her ears, realizing at the same time that
she's preaching to the choir ...
actually, there's something to the above besides just reactionary bile
on my part. as someone just mentioned in this thread, a lot of
developers speak english as a second (or third+) language, and
therefore just don't see why this can be a problem in english. we
should make sure that we explain why it is in fact a huge problem,
instead of just assuming that they know or will understand once it's
pointed out.
</nori>
--
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