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

Oh? There was football on the other night, was there?

You'll neeeever walk alooone!
I have almost zero interest in football (which, in Scotland, is tantamount to a declaration of sexuality)...but I do have tribal loyalties to the red team. The disturbing thing is that in Glasgow, most peple seem to know which out of Liverpool and Everton is the Catholic and Protestant team. Now, I grew up in Ireland's capital-over-the-water, and I can assure you that we were unaware of any sectarian divide. (In Liverpool, hatred is reserved for Man U)

Anyway...poulet de lac...If a camel is the ship of the desert, are ships camels of the sea?

<>

I quite like 'poulet de lac'... I am reminded of what I learned in 1999 about speech therapy for people who have had brain injuries, and how people with various types of aphasia get round an inability to remmeber a word.

Also, of the fact that I have seen (in an American magazine) tuna advertised as 'chicken of the sea.'

The US media celebrity, Jessica Simpson, famously puzzled over whether it is chicken or fish.

I once knew a speech therapist who told me that one of her stroke patients was remarkably inventive in coming up with alternative names for things when he couldn't get the right word out. To him, a microwave oven was a "ting ting bloody quick" - a phrase I now include in my own vocabulary.

It also brings to mind the Melanesian pidgin in which a helicopter is "Big Magimimix come from sky him belong Jesus Christ".

Magimimix? Magimix!

<>
That's brilliant!

A friend of mine who is Chinese, but not Cantonese, was in a chinese supermarket buying new year's cakes. She asked the assistant how to cook them and she replied "just ting" them. So, apparently "ting" is the colloquial Cantonese for microwave (as opposed to the official word which tranlates as something like "very small wave oven").

Reminds me of many raucous nights trying to remember all 7 verses of "Seven Drunken Nights". Everyone can remember the 7th verse, but you stumble over yourself getting there - through verses 4, 5 and 6, for example.

The sentence
"Each user will have their own login in the Portal."
has been pulled up by MS Word because of 'reflexive pronoun use'.

So, what is reflexive pronoun use? The sentence as it stands seems perfectly OK to me, so where am I going wrong?

Or is this just MS Word trying to be clever again and getting it totally wrong?

89btw, it is highlighting the 'their own' word pair as at fault).

Maybe it objects to the use of the gender-neutral pronoun 'their'. If so - it's wayyyy behind common usage.

As a rule, I find it best to ignore the green squiggly lines. I can generally do grammar much better than Word can.

Shouldn't that be "possessive pronoun" and not "reflexive pronoun"?

It was the big problem that Abi was faced with when they introduced the "Friends Lists" here on hootoo. She was in a quandary as to whether to say "so and so hasn't added any friends to "his"/"her" or "their" list".

After much debate, it was democratically decided that it should be "their" list. Which is why it reads so oddly now. It wasn't a good decision.

Probably MS wants you to put "Each user will have their own login in the Portal" - which makes more grammatical sense as "Each user" can only be one person. "Their" is a politically correct, but grammatically incorrect compromise.

It wouldn't have done to put "So and so hasn't added any friends to his list" - but nor could you put "... to her list".

English does not have a word (except the newly-bred hybrid "hir", which most people wouldn't understand) for this situation.

Sorry - I forgot to correct the sentence. Perhaps Word wants you to say "Each user will have his own login in the Portal"

Now it makes sense. I read and previewed - honestly. It must be getting late.

>>"Their" is a politically correct, but grammatically incorrect compromise.

So which grammar textbook has been enacted by Parliament, then? . In English we are free to bend and modify the rules. As we did, for example, in the 19th century when we dropped the apostrophe for plurals such as "banana's" (Jane Austen used the greengrocer's apostrophe as standard - and if it was good enough for her...).

And I'm glad you've mentioned that old chesnut of political correctness, because it's given me an excuse to link to this article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1490623,00.html#article_continue

"Shouldn't that be "possessive pronoun" and not "reflexive pronoun"?"

TC, I dunno, should it be? It certainly wasn't, it definitely said 'reflexive pronoun use' in word. Not that means it was right, but that is what it said.

Thanks for the replies, but what is a reflexive pronoun?

Something ending in -self.

Yhis "Each" usage is, I feel, pretentious. (And I know about pretentiousness. )
Why not go for clear English:
"All users will have their individual login ... "
or, better yet:
"You will have your own login ... "

>> Why not go for clear English:
"All users will have their individual login ... "
or, better yet:
"You will have your own login ... " <<

Once again we are indebted to plaguesville for his common sense, good taste and natural simplicity, which always proves both elegant and eloquent. Good communication skills are based on honesty and clarity.

And, clarity is often best achieved by framing your intended thoughts as if asking a direct and simple question in the simplest, friendliest and most conversational way.

Each of us must, in our own way, come to realise that hateful Pretention, aka 'Fashion' with all its insinuendo and dark complexities, is to be avoided at every turn.

What each of us does with that realisation will be their business but at least now we can't say they haven't been properly informed anymore than they can complain that we weren't told. For each of us knows their limits when talking about ourselves in the third person plural. I know I do, and I'm gonna sit write down and right my self a letter before I go postal.

jwf

<>

as usual, jwf...

>(T)his "Each" usage is, I feel, pretentious.
OK, although I'd be interested to know why? I used 'each' because it has precisely the meaning I wished to convey. I.e. that there would be one individual user account per individual user.

>"All users will have their individual login ... "
Now, y'see, that sounds awkward to me. The combination of 'all users' and 'individual' in one sentence seems to jar, possibly because we are going from 'all users' which deals with a group, to 'individual' which is dealing with single entities within that group.

>"You will have your own login ... "
I try to avoid phrases such as this in formal design documentation (which, I have to admit, I didn't mention above!). It is seen, by some, as unprofessional I believe. It certainly comes across as more 'chatty'.

How about "Each user will have an individual login" (avoiding pronouns altogether)

Thanks for the link, Edward. I honestly didn't realise that PC now had connotations of pretentiousness in the UK. I thought I was just saying that the use of "he"/"him"/"his" etc was now not accepted because it only applied to half the population and ignored the female half.

Personally I don't mind being lumped in with the "he"s in such cases, but I can see the point of those who do.

The worst cases are found in baby care books and articles. Whereas when I was in the Junior Red Cross, a baby was a "he" regardless of what it had in its nappy. These days women's magazines and books for young mothers are so confusing to read, as they change from "he" to "she" that I'm not surprised young mothers are so worried.

Even when speaking of animals, I can't use the word "it" - that's not political correctness, though - it's just as bad as calling a baby "it" as far as I'm concerned. It's probably like many people in the car business would never use the word "car" - as each car has its own designation. Or a horse person would never use the word "horse" - they would say "mare", "filly" or "gelding" etc, etc, because that's what they see.

Like the story of the man who went to complain to the local farmer that his cows were all over his lawn and eating the flowers. The farmer went out the back to look and said that his cows were all safely in their stalls, he'd counted them. The irate neighbour rang a couple more times until the farmer finally gave in and said he'd come and look. He came over and on looking at the animals, said that they weren't cows, they were heifers.

Well, you *can* tell that so it comes out funny, I can't tell jokes.

That's one joke that wouldn't work in globish!!!

Doch!