h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> Okay, I'm feeling silly. <<


It's about time.

Next!

~jwf~

Children AREN'T of foreign origin - well, mine aren't, anyway. I have gleefully added boxen to my own idiolect, but won't pass it on.

The next item on the agenda is pronouns. Is the ere anything else that is referred to as she except female animals?("Who's 'she'? The cat's mother?) ie do we still refer to boats as "she"?
In "thar she blows" the whale could preumably be male?
btw agenda is one of those foreign plurals, now used as a singular

Dunno about animals, anhagas cow thread covered that a bit.
But it seems nowadays that blokes refer to cars / motorbikes, boats / ships / 'planes and other infernal mechanical contraptions as 'she'.
Whereas women seem split as to whether vehicles are she or he.
to attempt a completely unscientific and probably totally biased division there, in my experiance girly girls seem to go with vehicles being she whereas the more tomboy women refer to them as he.

I shall now cower in the corner whilst the assorted females of HooToo and their supporters complain loudly about the above generalisation!

Criteria - why do people use the plural when they mean the singular? It makes me wince.

*wanders in at random*

I tend not to use he/she when referring to inanimate objects. It feels a bit dated to me and I use 'it'. This is particularly so in the case of modes of transport. They are simply means of getting from A to B IMHO (yes, even a Ferrari).

As for the criteria for criterion, what is the provenance of premia as the plural form of premium?

turvy

Is the plural of "Thermos" "Thermoi"?


(still feeling silly)

>> ("Who's 'she'? The cat's mother?) <<

LOL. Hadn't heard that one in ages.

'Thar she blows' is one of those times when an all male community of sailors is referring not just to the specific animal in the sighting but to the whole phenomena, the sighting, the action now required, the decisive 'moment' and the risk of events to come.

As Scotty so often said to Capt Kirk when more speed was demanded of the warp engines, "She's gonna blow Captain."

Many of the pagan gods, especially those connected to nature, animals, physical phenomena, chance, Fate, luck (and other unpredictable events) were seen as goddesses.

Try thinking of these expressions as cognition of natural, supernatural or unpredictable events, in an almost 'religious' pagan kinda way.

That's all she wrote.
That's the way she goes.
She's gonna be a tough row to hoe.
She's coming down in buckets.
She's blowing up a storm out there.
The moon is a harsh mistress.


~jwf~

ow! ooh!

I reckon this use or non-use of forren plurals is quite a handy indicator of class/educatedness or whatever other malarkey you want to call it. There are some forren plurals I wouldn't dream of using ('haiku' for example ) but others I'd insist on. While at university I wanted to use the plural 'corpuses', mostly because it rhymes with 'porpoises'.

Then again I too get a wee bit narked when people use 'criteria' as a singular, but I don't really know why...

A similar case to 'criteria' is 'charisma', plural of 'charism'.

One thing I notice a lot recently is the tendency of people to drop the 'is concerned' from the expression 'As far as XXX is concerned'. Often they just never get around to it, particularly if the XXX is a long phrase. To take a horrendous example:

As far as the symbiotic relationship, in which two or more organisms live together for mutual benefit - for example coral and zooxanthellae, with the coral protecting the zooxanthellae and providing access to sunlight so that the zooxanthellae can photosynthesize, while the zooxanthellae provide energy to the coral in the form of sugar produced during photosynthesis - is concerned...

People should just say 'As far as concerns...' then they can be as verbose as they wish, without producing a nonsense remark.

But people are tending just to drop the 'is concerned' even when the subject is a short one. Politicians do this in interviews these days. 'As far as public transport, we have always said...' It will probably become quite normal and acceptable and unremarkable soon - if it hasn't already.

Bels

One of my personal bugbears is the misuse of the reflexive pronoun:

"If you have any questions you can call Fred or myself"

No. I can call Fred, but I can't call yourself. Only you can call yourself. I could call you, but not yourself.

This is becoming so prevalent that it is rare to hear "me" anymore.

anhaga,

Would you care to expand on that as I'm afraid I'm probably one of the sinners and don;t understand the distinction you are making. Are you saying there is a difference between 'me' and 'myself' ?

"myself", "yourself", "himself", "herself", etc. are reflexive pronouns (except when being used as intensifiers which is not the case in the uses I get upset about). Reflexive pronouns are used in cases when the subject and the object of the verb are the same individual: "I cut myself", "he shot himself in the foot", "the suicide bomber blew herself up".
"me" is the accusative form of the first person pronoun. It is used in cases in which the speaker is the object of the verb and someone else is the subject: "The hoodlum cut me", "she shot me", the suicide bomber tried to blow me up."

The usage that I find annoying is when the reflexive form is used in a situation that should have just the plain old accusative: "the hoodlum cut myself", "she shot myself", "the suicide bomber tried to blow myself up." It's a usage that doesn't bother myself; it annoys the h@$% out of *me*!! It is very often used by salesmen and it often has the form I mentioned in my previous post: "you can contact myself". Again, no, I can't contact yourself. I can contact you.

BTW, when used as an intensifier it's okay: "I shot him myself", "you, yourself, can contact me".

the examples you gave there I would find to be awkward and somewhat stilted in conversation and would have thought there was something wrong with them without knowning the technicalities.

For some reason 'you can contact myself' doesn;t seem as wrong although now i say it I would probably automatically correct it to 'you can contact me' simply because it sounds right!

Hmm, something else I 'knew' without knowing it. I wonder where I get this sense of wrongness and rightness (that should annoy a few people ) from given that I barely took any notice during english lessons at school.

the thing I find so annoying about this use of "myself", etc. is not that it goes against some arbitrary grammar rule; it's that it violates simple logic. Only you can contact yourself; only I can contact myself. Maybe it's the underlying logic which you unconsciously recognized.

In Germany there is a lot of controversy about the meteorologists using female names for anticyclones and male names for cyclones (or vice versa - I'm honestly not sure) Anyway, they changed it this year, to pacify the feminists and whoever else.

Right - I've looked it up. "In 2002 areas of low pressure were named after women." The names are allocated in alphabetical order. The alphabet was used 5 times and a 6th time up to "S (Sonja)" in 2002 alone.

In 2003 the low pressure areas are being given men's names and you can pay to have your name used and take over the "fostering" of an anticyclone. Wherever that gets you!

It can get you confused, that's where it can get you:

"Bob's your auntie-cyclone."

Does he/she/it look exactly the same as Bob then?

turvy

Does he/she/it look exactly the same as Bob then?

turvy

On the male/female nomenclature thing, I've been rehearsing a show with a director who refers to almost everything and everyone as Mrs, particularly stage business. So we have Mrs Sing, Mrs Chatter, Mrs Bow, and more unfortunately, Mrs Run and Mrs Clap. Oddly, though, we had Mr Orchestra and Mr Chorus (the latter particularly odd as the ladies outnumber the men). Unfortunately, it appears to be catching, and the musical director has been referring to Mrs Dido, Mrs Harpsichord and so on, and it has begun to affect the speech of the members of the company in everyday conversation. So, all actions are female, all singular nouns are female, but it seems collective nouns are male. At least to one particular crazy thespian...