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

Oh, I see... It's all perfectly straightforward. I just wondered if it were something I had never heard of. Silly me!

From 'Practical English Usage' by Michael Swan.

He or She:

Traditionally, English has used 'he' in cases where the sex of a person is not known, or in references that can apply to either men or women, especially in formal style.

If I ever find the person who did that, I'll kill him.
A doctor can't do a good job if he doesn't like people.

Many people now regard such usage as sexist and try to avoid it. The expression 'he or she' is becoming increasingly common.

A doctor can't do a good job if he or she doesn't like people.


They with singular reference:

In an informal style, we often use 'they' to mean 'he or she', especiallly after indefinite words like somebody, anybody, nobody, person. This usage is sometimes considered 'incorrect', but it has been common in educated speech for centuries.

If anybody wants my ticket they can have it.
There's someone at the door. Tell them I'm out.
God send everyone their heart's desire. (Shakespeare)

The use of they/them/their is convenient when the person referred to could be male or female. He or she/him or her/his or her are clumsy, especially when repeated.

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I agree that using 'he or she' is often very clumsy and rather than use 'he' in these situations I prefer using 'they'.


az

A friend of mine wrote an Open University textbook. In the preface, she managed to get away with 'Throughout this book, the female pronoun, 'she', has been used to refer ton persons of either sex '.

Yes, I agree that in English, 'he' has been the traditional default. But that was in the days when a) grammar and style manuals were written by men, for men and b) women were excluded from every other aspect of public life. However....language should never be regarded as a stable entity, nor as a set of received rules from on high. The change towards the sex-neutral singular pronoun 'they' is a conscious, political recognition of how we have moved on. OK - it may look unfamiliar in some situations - but we can always get used to it. Not to do so is to reveal a preference for the old order.

The m-word: I'd always assumed that it was just short for 'Michael', which in England at least was always regarded as an Irish Catholic name. In fact, when my brother was given it, my grandfather (Liverpool Orange background) apparently made some mild objections.

In the UK these days, the (mildly?) derogatory term for Irish people is 'Paddy'. Mr Recumbent can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't *think* it has the force of the n-word. For example, there was even an Irish band called 'Paddy Goes To Holyhead' - and Christy Moore used it in a comedy song - admittedly in the days before he reinvented himself as a freedom fighter.

Similarly, the Scots are called (by the English) 'Jocks', and the Welsh 'Taffys'. While neither of these are considered polite, and would not be used by the Scots or Welsh themselves, neither would they considered fighting talk. (I say this as a Scot of English ethnic origin)

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My comment was not against the use of 'they.' My comment was against the use of a faulty referent.

If the noun to which the pronoun refers is singular, then the pronoun must be singular. If it is plural, then that introduces ambiguity into the sentence. To what does the plural pronoun refer? To the singular noun? Or to some other plural noun which has never been mentioned.

Add a few of those problems to a paragraph and you have reader resistance.

So: plural noun and plural pronoun is what I (and the Canadian Writers' Handbook) are recommending over here on this side of the Pond.

Frankly the English can call me by my name: Ani. I am not asking them to invent names for me, thank you very much. And 'paddy' will have me leaving the room just as quickly as 'm--k.'

There is a law on the books in Dublin, btw, which prohibited English officials from asking the Irish to provide the 'English equivalent' of Irish names. The use of the 'English equivalents' was breaking the line of Irish family names which were extremely important to the Irish. For instance, if my name is Seamus, you cannot ask me to give it to you as 'James.' Seamus and James, Sean and John: these are one on one names. I can't imagine the chaos which ensued when the English required someone named Milcho (for example) or Ban (for example) to translate his or her name.

Ani: I wasn't meaning to imply that the various words I used were OK - just that *on the whole* they treated more lightly in Britain.

On the 'they' issue: Yes...a faulty referent unless we change our grammar to suit. When a sex-neutral singular 3rd-person pronoun was desired, one option was to invent a new one ('per' was one example that was tried out by a few feminist writers). This could happily have agreed with singular verbs. Instead, 'they' has caught on. Nobody enforced it. It just caught on. And at the same time, some people started to find it necessary and satisfactory to start using it with singular verbs.

One view is that this is 'against the rules'. Another is that there are no 'rules', simply common patterns of usage.

With this one, I'd say that the present situation is that the 'rule' is in flux: 'They (+ singular verb)...' does not feel wholly natural to most.

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Messenger and De Bruyn took this into account when writing CWH. The recommendation for agreeing the pronoun with the noun (plural to plural) was for clarity not for upholding rules.

CWH is full of examples of 'common patterns of usage' which have become part of Canadian academic style but are not accepted among the academia of other countries.

Well that's clear. If it offends you I won't mention it, except to say that in my opinion the moderators would probably not find it sufficiently offensive to censor.

Ernest Shackleton, the Irish antarctic explorer, kept his Irish accent all his life, despite living in England and being educated in an English school from the age of 11 or so. He kept his school nickname, which referred to his Irishness, though it is also a name for the penis, and a Disney cartoon character, and even signed his letters from his various travels to his wife with that nickname. Unaccountably Kenneth Branagh changed it in his TV film 'Shackleton' to the name of the humming mouse who is found at U99875. Branagh also ditched all traces of an Irish accent in 'Shackleton', which he needn't have, despite coming from Belfast I'm sure he could have done a reasonable Dublin or Kildare accent, he's a clever chap.

À propos of nothing

What on earth are you talking about, Recumbentman? Your case is adequately summarized in the first eleven words. The rest of it is self-negating.

Apologies. Heavy-handed.

Why hadn't I discovered this thread before? I *want* the Burgess book.

You are a scarily learned bunch, but - hey - if I hang out with the dudes, maybe one day I'll be myself.



Shrodinger's God. Yep. A thought I have already had, but not heard expressed so elegantly, and one I am coming to think is probably as near the truth as any of us will ever get. I had expressed it as a god who both exists and does not exist, both a wave and a particle. But that is encapsulated in those two words so much more effectively.



>> Derrida was making a point about the primacy of the written word over the spoken

I am currently reading Melvin Bragg's book on the English language, and he is emphatic about the importance of the written language in the 8th and 9th century. His view, possibly derridative, () is that English was more resilient than other languages because so much of it (comparatively) was written. I am skeptical - how many people could read? - how much of that judgement is based on modern access than contemporary reality? But it is interesting to know where he might have got his ideas from.



>> "I'm not a very good Christian, and I'm not a very good atheist either" -- what do you say to this point of view?

Works for me, but substitute 'Buddhist' for Christian and 'Nihilist' for atheist. Though that depends on whether or not I know what nihilist means!



>> In the UK ... we are left floundering with 'African-American'. Not only is the 'American' inappropriate, but the 'African' fails to fully include both those from the former African colonies and those who see themselves as having a distinct, West Indian heritage.

There was a suggestion at one time that Black Britons be called 'Afro-Saxons'. That got me hyperventilating on behalf of those Britons who are Celtic or Norse in bloodline, rather than Anglo-Saxon. The ignorance! (The irony!)



>> 'Queer' extends beyond gayness to trans, bondage, s&m and so on.

Which is useful. Not only are there sexual practices and tastes that dare not speak their name, there are ones that actually *have* no name. It is helpful that "Queer" covers most of them. I have more to say on lables, and whether they liberate or confine, but am too enthralled with the backlog.



>> One could attempt to draw an analogy with the m-word.

I hate to ask this, but what is the m-word? - Ah, KA got there first.

Interesting. I had *no* idea it was that offensive.




>> Shakespeare apparently used "them" with a singular referent. Acceptable or not?

Absolutely. I do it all the time in situations where I wish to be gender neutral, or gender obscure. I listen for it too. It is amazing what you hear when you listen.



>> 'Paddy Goes To Holyhead'

How great!



Ben

<<'Throughout this book, the female pronoun, 'she', has been used to refer ton persons of either sex '>>
I always did that, Edward, on the grounds that "turnabout is fair play", and got into heaps of trouble with a psychology lecturer who wrote "sexist" all over my essay! (She is anomalously, the only right-wing lecturer in the Teachers' College I was attending.) No one else ever noticed or objected!
Generic 'he' grates on me, and I meet it in books by Americans, but only very rarely by authors of other nationalities.

B:

The Burgess book is FANTASTIC. I think it's out of print just now, but it's easily found used via Amazon. Other good books for amateur linguists (such as myself): The Language Instinct (Stephen Pinker); The Power of Babel (John McWhorter - although he has some muddled thinking about a single 'proto-language'); The Oxford Guide to World English; The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language.

I saw the Bragg series myself, but on that basis didn't fancy the book much. I think he's entirely mistaken in singling out English as a special case - there are plenty, plenty of languages that are just as fluid and flexible. All he's really pointing out is the incomplete hegemony of Norman culture - but that's true in a lot of places. Why, in India they still speak many languages, despite having been goverened in English for 200 years; They still speak French in Canada and Spanish in the Southern US; Basque has survived against Spanish and French....etc. etc. (And there was *very* little written Basque, and only in one dialect). Plus, his hair got increasingly silly as the series went on.

I must admit that he is failing to convince me that there is anything more than geopolitical chance in the supremacy of English. At least, reading the book, I cannot see his hair!

English may have the world's largest vocabulary, but as a result it also has what has to be the world's most inconsistent spelling, and I would really hate to have to learn our irregular verbs.

What English does have is wonderful flexibility of expression and a truly amazing amount of nuance. I cannot think of any examples, of course. But I think anyone with a sensitivity to language must be aware of it. Actually I can think of one example - a poem I read recently talked about a 'missed lover'. There was in the context a wonderful ambiguity over whether the lover was missed in the way that cars miss each other in the street, or whether he was missed in the way that one wishes one still had something one has now lost.

Enough rambling.

Ben

And I'm sure that anyone with a sufficient knowledge of, say, Arabic, Chinese, Russian or Wolof could come up with wonderful examples from those languages, too.

A couple years ago, a newbie posted on the R4 Word of Mouth board:
'I think that English is superior to other languages because it has so many nuances (sic!)'

A bit like Dubya's 'The problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepeneur.'

>> And I'm sure that anyone with a sufficient knowledge of, say, Arabic, Chinese, Russian or Wolof could come up with wonderful examples from those languages, too.

Which is one of the reasons I like reading Nabokov - he gives insights into other languages while having past-mastery of English.

I take my admiration for the flexibility of English from highly competent foreigners. One of my best friends is German, and she says that English is massively the more flexible language. Actually, I find myself wondering if the lego-block nature of German contributes to the logical and structured habit of German thought, and their skill as engineers.

B

Oooh! We're getting dangerously close to the Sapir-Whorff hypothesis here!

Just to discount the German/Engineering hypothesis: 1) Most Germans are not engineers. They also have many famous poets and composers. 2) Are Scots in any way similar to Germans? Yet they are reknowned for their engineering.

Yes, English does have a particularly rich, cross-cultural vocabulary. It enriches through borrowing. Plus, unlike other languages (German, French) we do not have an 'Academy' to standardise our language. (Mind you - you should try understanding Germans when they're speaking their local dialect!). But then again, all languages contain words which are not easily translatable into other languages. I've mentioned before that Czech has a verb for 'to forget what one was going to say because one is speaking too much.'

>> 'to forget what one was going to say because one is speaking too much.'

Now that is one that I need!

There is a language in India which has two verbs that send shivers up my spine: 'to pretend to love' and 'to love for the last time'.

B

>> 1) Most Germans are not engineers. They also have many famous poets and composers.

True. But they do have an observably more structured way of thinking and working. I have worked in Scotland and Germany: I was married to a Scot for years, and one of my best friends is a German. I am English. Trust me on this, 'cos it's true.

B