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I'm entirely sympathetic with his preference for precision when at all possible. One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision
by xoa 8y ago
I'm entirely sympathetic with his preference for precision when at all possible. One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision of usage, which I think leads to a lack of precision of thought and communications that creates bad feeling and wastes time unnecessarily. When people are lazy about using words correctly they can also become more generic over time in general, which in turn robs other people of the ability to get their thoughts across as well down the road.
However while I think his examples of where "they" can lead to ambiguity are fair, his argument that "we have a clean, clear and natural solution" is not supported by his own examples. Take the first one for they:
>"When my child was removed and placed with Dad, they internalized it and took it like they did something wrong."
Let's try his "natural" answer:
>"When my child was removed and placed with Dad, person internalized it and took it like pers did something wrong."
What. That's awful. Certainly no better then "ze internalized it" or any other entirely made up word. "Per" and "pers" and "perse" are not "equivalent and interchangeable" with person in normal English at all, and in fact "per" is already in usage as a preposition. He does this whole setup but then his solution falls hilariously flat, and in fact illustrates precisely why people use "they".
If people just want to bite the bullet and try to push a universal gender neutral singular pronoun like "ze" or "zhe" or whatever for English I don't have any problem with that. I think it also might be practical to achieve, it's just "the singular of they" so plural doesn't change and nobody ever needs to think about it again. It has the advantage of laziness, everyone can just start using it everywhere and never have to think about it again. I don't think it can really be pretended that anything existing can just slot in there though, certainly not what RMS came up with.
- gameswithgo 8y ago>I'm entirely sympathetic with his preference for precision when at all possible. One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision of usage, which I think leads to a lack of precision of thought and communications that creates bad feeling and wastes time unnecessarily. I have this same feeling but I also recognize you can be as pedantic as we want to be, or you can be happy and get along with normal humans.
- honestoHeminway 8y agoPrecision is the death of creativity, look around you, all the great inventors are gone- your crusade purged them from history- those who mix up things in theire heads, they do no longer come to be. Havent you dont enugh damage?
- monocasa 8y ago> One of my great pet peeves in modern usage of language is the lack of precision of usage What makes you think this is a modern thing?
- tedunangst 8y agoEverything bad is modern. Things used to be so much better back in the before times.
- monocasa 8y agoMake English Great Again</s>
- wirrbel 8y agoThe great thing about language is that you can choose the level of precision you want to use. Gender and Numerus (Singular Plural) ia usually not the kind of precision valuable in my opinion so I am fine with singular they. Also, as a non-native speaker I don't get how people get outraged about singular they but not singular you. For credibility stallman should start using they.
- maxerickson 8y agoBelief that (extreme) precision of thought and communication has been achieved is probably more harmful than words having slippery definitions.
- Izkata 8y ago> I think it also might be practical to achieve, it's just "the singular of they" so plural doesn't change and nobody ever needs to think about it again. It has the advantage of laziness, everyone can just start using it everywhere and never have to think about it again. It's already been achieved, and is totally ignored by activist types - "they" has been singular for "they" for hundreds of years.