Comments on: When They Became Him

By: becks54

becks54 — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:57:00 +0000

Cynthia, I love your article, especially the last line. Despite those couple errors (that we’ve all made), it’s concise but says a lot. I’m also all for using ‘their’ as a singular possessive.
My stance is less about the sexist aspect, more about being correct in the communication. Using ‘he’ when gender-neutrality is intended is misleading, just as using ‘her’ would be. Coming up with new words like ‘hir’ or the annoying ‘s/he’ is absurd, since ‘their’ is already there and used most prominently in everyday speech.
While ‘his’ may be less grammatically suspect since it maintains concord in subject-pronoun agreement, it is more erroneous in concept since it intrudes on the gender by adding an element that simply is not true. If a male is not specific to the sentence, ‘his’ should simply not be used. Writing is about telling stories and, unless you are writing a scientific or economic piece—and often even then, gender is usually more important than number.
The fact that grammarians have not distinguished between the singular and plural of ‘your’ or ‘who’ should prove that this is an arbitrary rule, dreamed up by the nit-picky rather than the writers and speakers who actually use the English language in their craft. It should be expelled just as the beliefs that you can’t split an infinitive or start a sentence with ‘And’ have. Of course there should be a standard so that we may properly communicate with each other, but rules that make little or no sense should not be part of that standard. From what I can see, the topic of your article is the most perverse of English rules out there at the moment. Someone of authority needs to come out and state it decisively.
(By the way, the Chicago Manual of Style did promote the use of ‘their’ as a singular possessive recently (14th ed. maybe), but they have since lost their nerve and rescinded)

By: Mirage_GSM

Mirage_GSM — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:03:27 +0000

[quote]finsalscollons said: “As a foreign guy who has been learning English for the last 25 years and still find it complicate, I will tell you that the last thing we need is another source of confusion.”[/quote]
As a foreign guy who has been learning three other foreign languages (french, latin and japanese) and dabbled in several more (spanish, romanian and a few others) I can tell you that english is one of the least complicated laguages there are.
[quote]It was bad enough when, centuries ago, the singular “thou” was replace by “you”. Last month, when I protested to a representative of a company, I said “You suck” (referring to the company) and the representative took it as a personal insult.[/quote]
No surprise there. I would feel insulted by that even if I realized you were talking about the company. As a general rule you should avoid cursing and swearing in a language that is not familiar to you! (In a business environment you should avoid swearing and cursing altogether.)
[quote]And what about “can” and “can’t”. Since the “t” is not pronounced, the only difference lies in the vowel. The difference is so tiny that most times I don’t know whether I can do something or not.[/quote]
I don’t know where the english speakers you routinely talk to come from, but in my experience the “t” isn’t dropped at all. There may be some people whose pronounciation is that slurred, but so far I’ve had the luck not to have to interact with them ;-)
[quote]English language has only a handful of words that make the masculine/femenine distinction: personal pronouns, some names of people and animals. A tiny percentage of the language. The vast majority of English words are gender neutral.[/quote]
Which is one reason the english language is so easy to learn. Try learning french or german…
(I’m not saying I don’t like french or my native german, but it is harder to learn for foreigners.)
[quote]So let’s imagine a contract “The trainer will pay the members of the team. They will be responsible of the costs of the clothes”. Who is they? The trainer or the members of the team? Who is responsible to pay for the clothes.[/quote]
Counter-example: “The share-holders elect the members of the board. They are responsible for waiving the budget.” In this case there is no choice but “they” (if you want to use a pronoun) and the wording is still imprecise. That is the reason why you usually don’t find many pronouns at all in legal texts, gender-neutral or not. It is perfectly acceptable to repeat the subject for clarification, like “The members of the board are responsible for waiving the budget.”

By: finsalscollons

finsalscollons — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:45:48 +0000

Please don’t do it. If you want to be politically correct, use “she” as a gender neutral pronoun.

As a foreign guy who has been learning English for the last 25 years and still find it complicate, I will tell you that the last thing we need is another source of confusion.

It was bad enough when, centuries ago, the singular “thou” was replace by “you”. Last month, when I protested to a representative of a company, I said “You suck” (referring to the company) and the representative took it as a personal insult.

And what about “can” and “can’t”. Since the “t” is not pronounced, the only difference lies in the vowel. The difference is so tiny that most times I don’t know whether I can do something or not.

The fundamental distinction in English language is between singular and plural. Almost any word has this distinction (exception: the infamous “you”). English language has only a handful of words that make the masculine/femenine distinction: personal pronouns, some names of people and animals. A tiny percentage of the language. The vast majority of English words are gender neutral.

So try to blur a fundamental distinction (singular/plural between he/she and they), to be accurate in a very unimportant distinction (he/she) does not make sense grammatically. Yes, in the past that was the case, but in the past everybody used “thou”, “shalt” and so on and so forth.

So let’s imagine a contract “The trainer will pay the members of the team. They will be responsible of the costs of the clothes”. Who is they? The trainer or the members of the team? Who is responsible to pay for the clothes.

If you want to help women, please stop domestic violence. Please help the women who are hungry in Africa. There are thousands of ways to help women and make this world better for them and less male chauvinistic. When a woman is discriminated, she doesn’t mind if something refers to her with “he” or “they”. So please spare us all this unnecessary and confusing change of grammar.

By: a1c

a1c — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:44:30 +0000

Whom were was here. Who?

By: Mirage_GSM

Mirage_GSM — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:57:16 +0000

[quote]craigfowings said: “The third person masculine had already been accepted as a gender-neutral usage, as she noted in the original article, for over 150 years. Why, then, should we now introduce a new substitute with its inherent problem of using a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent?”[/quote]
Correct. But as the article points out it has only been this way for about 150 years. Back then someone like you could have opposed the change with the exact same reasoning you now use, and maybe we’d still have they/their/them as 3rd person singular today…

By: Alchemist

Alchemist — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:03:19 +0000

[quote]>I married a Louisiana Cajun and after 6 years he still “axes” me questions. I grit my teeth and leave it be. :)”[/quote]

I read somewhere that both aksan and askan (aks and ask) were interchangeable in old English. So, you could aks someone a question, but with an older form.

Also, I find it interesting they way technology influences that convention for italics/ underline in referencing. Back in the day, even with early word processors it was often difficult to get italics. For a manual typewriter, you’d need to replace the keys (or the ball) to get a different type face (or, “font” as they say not-so correctly these days).

By: Sir Osis Of Liver

Sir Osis Of Liver — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:57:00 +0000

Regarding grammar, one of my pet peeves with the media is their constant use of “and” or “but” to begin a sentence. I thought we were taught in school that it was taboo, and that it formed an incomplete sentence. Surely an organization like a media outlet who make their living from writing words should know the basic rules of grammar, no? And it just bugs me. But not too badly.

By: Old Man

Old Man — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:57:19 +0000

I've actually adopted the reflexive pronoun "themself" on occasion, too. Of course it's not a word, but it should be. It will be necessary if we accept the singular "they/them/their".

And it's my understanding that quoted book titles are only to be underlined, not italicized, when they are handwritten.

And that Canadian Parliament building is damn ugly! A sense of proportion, please.

By: yesyouam

yesyouam — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 03:50:54 +0000

Wow. That first sentence burned my eyes! I almost didn’t read the rest of the article. I’m such a tool.

By: emerald

emerald — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:22:49 +0000

Jim Baerg said: "I think it's a bit ironic that the photo beside the article is not of the British Parliament buildings in London, but of the Canadian parliament buildings in Ottawa."

I noticed that too. Considering it snows very rarely in London, and it doesn't usually stay very long when it does, there probably shouldn't be snow on the building. Also the roof to the British Parliament is mostl dark, where the roof to the Canadian Parliament is bright green copper (mostly).

Here are some pictures of the actual British Parliament:British Parliament: View from the Thames, British Parliament: Big Ben .

Here are some additional pictures of the Canadaian Parliament:Canadian Parliament: Winter , Canadian Parliament: Snow , Canadian Parliament: Garden , Canadian Parliament: Light Show , Canadian Parliament: Peace Tower , Canadian Parliament: Christmas .