Re: New Front Desk members
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/
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