6 ms·

A Person Paper on Purity in Language - Douglas Hofstadter

39 points by mustpax 16y ago

mustpax 16y ago
The discussion about affirmative action and sexism on the HN front page (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420553 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420553) reminded me of this amusing satire piece by Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame). Only tangentially related but might still be interesting.
tjmaxal 16y ago
This IS satire right? It's so hard to tell in our world gone mad.
- bitslayer 16y ago
  The "Post Scriptum" makes it clear that it is, but I believe it was originally published in Scientific American without that. I agree with you that all too often it's hard to tell. (Of course it is written under a pseudonym that gives it away.)
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
Aside: people get upset about the idea of using "they" as a gender-neutral third person pronoun on the basis that it is generally regarded as the plural form; yet no one seems to have a problem with the gender-neutral second person pronoun "you", which also started out as the plural form but has since grown to displace the singular "thou" and encompass both.
- hugh3 16y ago
  That's right, people get upset about changes which are happening now, but they care much less about changes which happened several hundred years in the past. I don't see this as irrational. If it were irrational then we could say "since New Yorkers don't complain about the fact that their city is no longer New Amsterdam, they shouldn't complain if we now rename it to, say New Bonerville, should they?" And for what it's worth, I think the move from thou to you was a bad move, it creates too much ambiguity. It has also led to at least two nonstandard plurals "youse" and "y'all" which have arisen among speakers in various parts of the world to resolve the ambiguity. (Of course I don't care enough to start speaking like a jerk [or worse still an SCA member] in order to try and bring "thou" back.)
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    The use of the singular "they" dates back to the 1300s.
    - stan_rogers 16y ago
      Just a little bit further back than anything that could be called a "standard English", then. The languages in England at the time were not mutually intelligible, nor were they codified in any way -- "axe" (or "aks") and "ask" were regionalisms, and one would hardly say today that "axe" would be acceptable except when recording dialog. And just try going to the store and asking for a dozen eyren and see how far that gets you
      - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
        Come on. It's been in continuous use ever since then. Jane Austin used it, for heaven's sake.
  - davidmathers 16y ago
    I mostly agree with your point, but your city name example is bad. It sidesteps the consistency issue.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      Well the consistency argument seems even sillier; that would imply that we should change all English pronouns to their plural form just because we already did it three hundred years ago. Now this might just be our personal opinion, but we happen think that this would sound pretty silly.
  - dhimes 16y ago
    Actually, I'm still a little pissed about the "thou" thing...
- stan_rogers 16y ago
  A further aside: the use of "you" (as opposed to "thou") arose as the result of the generalisation of the polite form. The use of the second person singular in, say, French (tu) or German (du) is restricted to the familiar (at least in polite society), and cannot be used across class or organisational hierarchical levels despite any actual familiarity. (English retains a similar structure in the use of "woman" versus "lady" -- females of both higher and lower status have, until very recently, been referred to using "lady".) In other words, dropping "thou" in the few special cases that allowed its use was a natural process of language change. The singular "they", on the other hand, is artificial, at least among people of my generation -- we already have "one", thank you very much.
  - ostso 16y ago
    > The singular "they", on the other hand, is artificial, at least among people of my generation -- we already have "one", thank you very much. Huh? Singular "they" has little to do with "one" -- it's used as an alternative to "he"/"she" when the gender is unknown (like the Finnish "hän", for instance). It may or may not be artificial, but what would you use instead?
    - hugh3 16y ago
      I usually find that one can rephrase one's sentences using "one" in order to avoid committing oneself to the gender of one's hypothetical individual. It can be awkward in many circumstances; eg turning "The President can choose his own staff" --> "If one is the president then one may choose one's own staff". Of course "The President may choose their own staff" sounds awkward as well. "His own staff" would have been standard English at just about any time in the last N centuries.
      - epistemenical 16y ago
        http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27
- baddox 16y ago
  Judging language is tough, especially for English, which has no governing body. It's reasonably to allow "they" as a gender-neutral third person pronoun, both because of its ubiquity and because there is no better way to express that idea. The problem then is figuring out which mistakes have been used frequently enough for long enough to be "acceptable." If the President of the U.S.A., while addressing the nation, used "ain't" or a non-literal double negative ("I don't see no problem with the economy"), can we say for sure he made a grammatical error? The example in the first paragraph seems to hint that we can't ever really call something a grammatical error since there's no formal grammar for the language in question. However, the example in the second paragraph most certainly screams "GRAMMAR ERROR!" How do we rectify these two notions?
- qq66 16y ago
  In the South, the plural form of "you" is "y'all" and it actually does minimize communication errors. I've tried to bring "y'all" to Palo Alto but it hasn't worked.
  - PotatoEngineer 16y ago
    The Californianism seems to be "you guys". A little awkward, but it still cuts down on the communication errors.
    - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
      The New Jersey analogue is "youse guys".
presidentender 16y ago
I like Hofstadter, and I like this piece, although I disagree with the thrust of it. Then again, I am not a woman.
petercooper 16y ago
A fun read containing quite some insight, though I think that, sadly, it would be seen as a crazy scrawl if it were not written by someone so respected.
vessenes 16y ago
This column is 25 years old. It's surprisingly fresh. He mentions that he finds it shocking. I think it's a measure of societal language change that I don't find it shocking. Of course, race politics are very different in America today, and language has moved (in some ways) from the mid 80's. No woman is a 'salesman' in America today, but in the 80's this was not so, and in fact was the subject of vigorous debate. I did find it fascinating to see race forced on a person by language as we force gender in English, and I don't think that element of his our language has changed much at all in the last 25 years. Nr, Ns. and Niss where unbelievably brilliant language additions, Ble / Whe a little less so to me. Also, "One small step for a white, one giant leap for whitekind" was just perfect. Sorry ladies; I wish the space race had some benefit for you, instead it was only mankind.

39 points by mustpax 16y ago

The discussion about affirmative action and sexism on the HN front page (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420553 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420553) reminded me of this amusing satire piece by Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame). Only tangentially related but might still be interesting.

tjmaxal 16y ago

This IS satire right? It's so hard to tell in our world gone mad.

bitslayer 16y ago
The "Post Scriptum" makes it clear that it is, but I believe it was originally published in Scientific American without that. I agree with you that all too often it's hard to tell. (Of course it is written under a pseudonym that gives it away.)

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

Aside: people get upset about the idea of using "they" as a gender-neutral third person pronoun on the basis that it is generally regarded as the plural form; yet no one seems to have a problem with the gender-neutral second person pronoun "you", which also started out as the plural form but has since grown to displace the singular "thou" and encompass both.

hugh3 16y ago
That's right, people get upset about changes which are happening now, but they care much less about changes which happened several hundred years in the past. I don't see this as irrational. If it were irrational then we could say "since New Yorkers don't complain about the fact that their city is no longer New Amsterdam, they shouldn't complain if we now rename it to, say New Bonerville, should they?" And for what it's worth, I think the move from thou to you was a bad move, it creates too much ambiguity. It has also led to at least two nonstandard plurals "youse" and "y'all" which have arisen among speakers in various parts of the world to resolve the ambiguity. (Of course I don't care enough to start speaking like a jerk [or worse still an SCA member] in order to try and bring "thou" back.)
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  The use of the singular "they" dates back to the 1300s.
  - stan_rogers 16y ago
    Just a little bit further back than anything that could be called a "standard English", then. The languages in England at the time were not mutually intelligible, nor were they codified in any way -- "axe" (or "aks") and "ask" were regionalisms, and one would hardly say today that "axe" would be acceptable except when recording dialog. And just try going to the store and asking for a dozen eyren and see how far that gets you
    - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
      Come on. It's been in continuous use ever since then. Jane Austin used it, for heaven's sake.
- davidmathers 16y ago
  I mostly agree with your point, but your city name example is bad. It sidesteps the consistency issue.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Well the consistency argument seems even sillier; that would imply that we should change all English pronouns to their plural form just because we already did it three hundred years ago. Now this might just be our personal opinion, but we happen think that this would sound pretty silly.
- dhimes 16y ago
  Actually, I'm still a little pissed about the "thou" thing...
stan_rogers 16y ago
A further aside: the use of "you" (as opposed to "thou") arose as the result of the generalisation of the polite form. The use of the second person singular in, say, French (tu) or German (du) is restricted to the familiar (at least in polite society), and cannot be used across class or organisational hierarchical levels despite any actual familiarity. (English retains a similar structure in the use of "woman" versus "lady" -- females of both higher and lower status have, until very recently, been referred to using "lady".) In other words, dropping "thou" in the few special cases that allowed its use was a natural process of language change. The singular "they", on the other hand, is artificial, at least among people of my generation -- we already have "one", thank you very much.
- ostso 16y ago
  > The singular "they", on the other hand, is artificial, at least among people of my generation -- we already have "one", thank you very much. Huh? Singular "they" has little to do with "one" -- it's used as an alternative to "he"/"she" when the gender is unknown (like the Finnish "hän", for instance). It may or may not be artificial, but what would you use instead?
  - hugh3 16y ago
    I usually find that one can rephrase one's sentences using "one" in order to avoid committing oneself to the gender of one's hypothetical individual. It can be awkward in many circumstances; eg turning "The President can choose his own staff" --> "If one is the president then one may choose one's own staff". Of course "The President may choose their own staff" sounds awkward as well. "His own staff" would have been standard English at just about any time in the last N centuries.
    - epistemenical 16y ago
      http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27
baddox 16y ago
Judging language is tough, especially for English, which has no governing body. It's reasonably to allow "they" as a gender-neutral third person pronoun, both because of its ubiquity and because there is no better way to express that idea. The problem then is figuring out which mistakes have been used frequently enough for long enough to be "acceptable." If the President of the U.S.A., while addressing the nation, used "ain't" or a non-literal double negative ("I don't see no problem with the economy"), can we say for sure he made a grammatical error? The example in the first paragraph seems to hint that we can't ever really call something a grammatical error since there's no formal grammar for the language in question. However, the example in the second paragraph most certainly screams "GRAMMAR ERROR!" How do we rectify these two notions?
qq66 16y ago
In the South, the plural form of "you" is "y'all" and it actually does minimize communication errors. I've tried to bring "y'all" to Palo Alto but it hasn't worked.
- PotatoEngineer 16y ago
  The Californianism seems to be "you guys". A little awkward, but it still cuts down on the communication errors.
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    The New Jersey analogue is "youse guys".

presidentender 16y ago

I like Hofstadter, and I like this piece, although I disagree with the thrust of it. Then again, I am not a woman.

petercooper 16y ago

A fun read containing quite some insight, though I think that, sadly, it would be seen as a crazy scrawl if it were not written by someone so respected.

vessenes 16y ago

This column is 25 years old. It's surprisingly fresh. He mentions that he finds it shocking. I think it's a measure of societal language change that I don't find it shocking. Of course, race politics are very different in America today, and language has moved (in some ways) from the mid 80's. No woman is a 'salesman' in America today, but in the 80's this was not so, and in fact was the subject of vigorous debate. I did find it fascinating to see race forced on a person by language as we force gender in English, and I don't think that element of his our language has changed much at all in the last 25 years. Nr, Ns. and Niss where unbelievably brilliant language additions, Ble / Whe a little less so to me. Also, "One small step for a white, one giant leap for whitekind" was just perfect. Sorry ladies; I wish the space race had some benefit for you, instead it was only mankind.