On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 08:14:33PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
| Hmmm. My (female) grammar teachers would have deducted major points
| for mixing pluralities.
I've had at least one teacher who breifly discussed this. He noted
how in common usage, "their" is often singular even though it is
officially plural only.
| I like Colin's idea of improving the language. What are some words
| for "gender-neutral 3rd-person" in other languages?
In Spanish, the word "el" is used for
a) male, singular
b) unknown, singular
and "ellos" is used for
a) male, plural
b) unknown or mixed, plural
I've heard that (at least before the feminist movement) that in
English, "he" was used as it is in spanish, which makes the complaints
all the more amusing.
Add to the mix a fragment of a conversation amongst a group of girls
(at least for the high school and college age groups) where they refer
to an all-female or mixed-gender group as "guys" (eg "Hey you guys,
...").
I'm all for politness and practicality over political correctness.
-D
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