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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
by 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 agoThe use of the singular "they" dates back to the 1300s.
- stan_rogers 16y agoJust 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 agoCome on. It's been in continuous use ever since then. Jane Austin used it, for heaven's sake.
- davidmathers 16y agoI mostly agree with your point, but your city name example is bad. It sidesteps the consistency issue.
- hugh3 16y agoWell 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 agoActually, I'm still a little pissed about the "thou" thing...