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

"Man is the naming animal" should of course be "Humans are naming animals", or similar - given that I use 'man' in a gender-specific sense in the very next sentence.

Oh, and that smiley should have been

Hi Lucinda,

Thanks for the info. Certainly looks like a well-researched entry. How long did it take you to write that? Fascinating subject, languages (even if we're not allowed to use them here ) Just finished reading 'Mother Tongue' by Bill Bryson.

I reckon it took at least three hours to write, six hours to revise, and probably about six hours of research, total. Worth the effort, though - I'm very pleased with the finished result

Anywho, let me know when you're done: I'd like to have a final check-through before it goes live

Sure thing. I'm away most of this week-end, so I most likely won't get doing anything to it until Monday.

Fred.

How's it coming along? I hope you do find the time to sub it, because I've always found that sub-editors do a much better job of editing than the in-house editors.

-Lucinda

Hi Lucinda,

My apologies for the delay. I had really wanted to go and find some obscure languages with gender-neutral pronouns, and actually have something really intelligent to contribute, and my eyes lit up when I saw mention of French and German, but alas, you seem to have thought of everything there.

I've noted your suggestions on breaking up the entry and the comments on SAMPA compatibility, I'll probably add them to the comments when it's submitted to the powers that be. You've done a great job on this, there was very little to find fault with (try though I might).

Please let me know if you'd like anything else doing with it.

So its the Italics who decide about splitting up entries? I wondered if that was the sub-eds job...

Cheers for the update. And I'm glad my French and German looked correct to you - it's been a long time since school!

Love and such
-Lucinda

I just discovered from Jack Naples (F94576?thread=197152) that "Possession (1)" should be "Possessive Adjective" and "Possession (2)" should be "Possessive Pronoun". You live and learn, eh?

There is some more language info here: F90491?thread=200044 - Turkish and Obijwa...

RE: Just finished reading 'Mother Tongue' by Bill Bryson.

GASP!

You gynocratic gender obsessed hatemonger! That should be "Parent tongue" by SAIR Bryson!

It should not be Mystery! MISTER! E! HATEFUL! Change it! To Sair-e!
Nor should it be manhole! Personhole!
Nor should it be Mississippi! It should be Sair-sippi!
AGH!

Sir, your satire is sharp enough, but I fear somewhat misplaced. Where have I called anyone a hatemonger? Where have I criticised any individual's choice of words, except in the most general terms?

Anyway, I'll respond to your other thread...

Note to sub-ed:
> "To refer to people when you want to keep their gender a secret."

Should be:
> "To refer to a person whose gender you wish to keep secret."

Or possibly:
> "To refer to people when you want to keep their genders secret."

Getting mismatched number in a sentence is particularly bad in an entry that talks about singular they!

Note to sub-ed:

> "Unfortunately, 'one' currently has a very specific meaning: essentially an abbreviation for 'everyone'. This is a very limited use, though no less useful for that."

to quote from the OED...

'any person, the speaker or writer as representing people in general', which seems more accurate and clear than my 'essentially...'. The OED has further advice that uses of one in the objective(one), possessive(one's) or reflexive(oneself) senses should always point back to a previous use of one as a subject. (IE 'one shaves oneself before going to work').

Declining one as one/him/his/himself *is* acceptable in American English, but is now regarded by the OED as incorrect in British English.

-Martin (still learning)

note to (increasingly absent) sub-ed:

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0768217.html

Bunch of words like 'postman', etc, that have been changed. Ignore them. At the bottom, though, there's an interesting comment on use of his/her in law.

> "In 1984 the Minnesota State Legislature ordered that all gender-specific language, which only refers to one gender, usually males, be removed from the state laws. After two years of work, the rewritten laws were adopted. Only 301 of 20,000 pronouns were feminine. “His” was changed 10,000 times and “he” was changed 6,000 times."

Hi Lucinda,

Just working through your comments for you:

Post 2: "Man is the naming animal" - I actually thought you were deliberately making the point about patriarchal language there, with the second sentence supporting this. It seems to make more sense to me, because of course 'Man' is the naming animal, which is why so many words exclude 'woman'. I thought you were illustrating how wrong this is by example, but if you don't think this is clear enough we could make the requested change if you really want.




I've made a number of the other changes as requested, but I'm not sure where you want a lot of this exta information to go. As the thread is under the entry itself, isn't it covered sufficiently there? As I'm only a lowly in-house sub, I'd hate to make these changes in the wrong place.

Jimster

* Hey, maybe I was making some kind of point in 'Man is the...' without knowing it. Sure, if it sounds good to you, why not?

* Possession(1) is repeated at various points throughout the entry (under the alternatives section), so that could be changed as well.

* The info about Turkish and Obijwa should go under 'other languages'.

* The info on 'one' should replace this para:

> "If one doesn't mind sounding a little upper class, one can resort to using 'one'. Curiously, while 'one' used to decline as 'one/his/himself' (before this grew to be considered incorrect), there is now an alternative declension of 'one/ones/oneself'. This new declension was first proposed by Robert Baker in 1770, not without opposition. Unfortunately, 'one' currently has a very specific meaning: essentially an abbreviation for 'everyone'. This is a very limited use, though no less useful for that. Sadly, extending it can cause confusion, and unlike 'they' it has no history of being used in a wider sense."

With:
--
If one doesn't mind sounding a little upper class, one can resort to using 'one'. Curiously, while 'one' used to decline as 'one/his/himself' (before this grew to be considered incorrect), there is now an alternative declension of 'one/ones/oneself'. This new declension was first proposed by Robert Baker in 1770, not without opposition. Both declensions are acceptable in US English, but according to the OED, only the modern version is acceptable in UK English.

Unfortunately, 'one' currently has a very specific meaning: according to the OED, 'one' means 'any person' or 'the speaker or writer as representing people in general'. This is a comparatively limited use, though no less useful for that. Sadly, extending 'one' can cause confusion, and unlike 'they' it has no history of being used in a wider sense.
--

* The stuff on law in Minnesota could probably go under the para beginning "Even where the correct meaning is understood..."
under 'alternatives'.

--
Even where the correct meaning is understood, it still feels to some women that this language excludes them, whether deliberately or accidentally. It's even been used as a tool of sexism - it's not unheard of for governments, clubs and other groups to reinterpret sentences like 'every member must take off his shoes before entering the chapel' to mean that therefore female members may not enter the chapel! In 1984 the Minnesota State Legislature ordered that all gender-specific language, which only refers to one gender, usually males, be removed from the state laws. After two years of work, the rewritten laws were adopted. Only 301 of 20,000 pronouns were feminine. “His” was changed 10,000 times and “he” was changed 6,000 times.
--

* What think you about splitting it into two entries?

Cheers for checking in with me Jimster, anyway. The dangers of having your assigned sub-ed run away, eh?

-Martin

That's much clearer now, thanks for that (it's Friday and I have a week off for extra-curricular writing purposes, so forgive me )

The Obijwa info causes a few complications as we don't have that character set in our tools here - but I think that spoon's explanation is clear enough.

All the rest are in there.

I'm really not sure about spliting the entry - it's very tightly constructed and flows very nicely without a natural break. The only one that comes to mind is where you originally suggested making 'them' a separate entry, but then again you'd lose an important point from this entry.

It's a bit of a hefty entry, but then I'm not really in a position to criticise anyone for that

Thanks for the feedback though, it's definitely made this a lot tighter!

Jimster

Yet another typo...

> "Third-person singular pronouns (though not plural) are also effected by gender"

I'm pretty sure that should be affected, not effected.

Dang English language, eh?

Have fun with your mini-sabbatical...

Found, pegged, amended.



Jimster