5 ms·

Pardon the derailment, but "To each is own" is a fascinating mondegreen [1] I've been seeing surprisingly often lately. The classic phrase was the strangely gen

Pardon the derailment, but "To each is own" is a fascinating mondegreen [1] I've been seeing surprisingly often lately. The classic phrase was the strangely gendered "to each his own [choice]" and the "proper" phrase is probably "to each their own [choice]". "To each is own" implies something else, but I'm not entirely sure what. "To each is own[er] [of choices]" perhaps? I've seen it like two or three times in recent weeks and find it fascinating. (Sorry, not trying single you out, or derail the conversation too much, but armchair linguistics is a hobby of many on HN and somewhat curious if others have spotted it.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

gdbate 6y ago
haha interesting, I think I was trying to emphasis personal preference, some of what picking a framework comes down to.
eindiran 6y ago
In my idiolect, changing the gender of pronouns inside of idioms is highly marked, even though I use singular "they" as the epicene pronoun. > The classic phrase was ... strangely gendered I don't think it was "strangely" gendered; despite recent growth in the corpus frequency of singular "they", many formal manuals of style still prohibit its usage, preferring "one" as the epicene pronoun. Singular "they" has existed for about as long as Modern English, but generic "he" was significantly more common throughout the 20th century. Given how long idioms take to change, generally speaking, I think it should be unsurprising that this usage of generic "he" remains common. The classic paper on this is "Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar", from 1974, which presents the argument that singular "they" was more common before the prescriptive grammar movement in English, which greater increased how common generic "he" was[0]. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/abs/androcentrism-in-prescriptive-grammar-singular-they-sexindefinite-he-and-he-or-she1/5F82DDFEC41B3D2BC5E55C29B74310D1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/...
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  "Strangely" was my simplistic way of very briefly glossing over that history that those "prescriptive grammar" changes was a I feel strange period in the language where Classical Latin studies influenced a redirect of the language's course that shifted a lot of idioms from say their Shakespearean Middle English states for some weird idea that being more like Classical Latin was a good thing for English.
cercatrova 6y ago
Probably a typo on "to each his own"

gdbate 6y ago

haha interesting, I think I was trying to emphasis personal preference, some of what picking a framework comes down to.

eindiran 6y ago

In my idiolect, changing the gender of pronouns inside of idioms is highly marked, even though I use singular "they" as the epicene pronoun. > The classic phrase was ... strangely gendered I don't think it was "strangely" gendered; despite recent growth in the corpus frequency of singular "they", many formal manuals of style still prohibit its usage, preferring "one" as the epicene pronoun. Singular "they" has existed for about as long as Modern English, but generic "he" was significantly more common throughout the 20th century. Given how long idioms take to change, generally speaking, I think it should be unsurprising that this usage of generic "he" remains common. The classic paper on this is "Androcentrism in prescriptive grammar", from 1974, which presents the argument that singular "they" was more common before the prescriptive grammar movement in English, which greater increased how common generic "he" was[0]. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/article/abs/androcentrism-in-prescriptive-grammar-singular-they-sexindefinite-he-and-he-or-she1/5F82DDFEC41B3D2BC5E55C29B74310D1 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society/...

WorldMaker 6y ago
"Strangely" was my simplistic way of very briefly glossing over that history that those "prescriptive grammar" changes was a I feel strange period in the language where Classical Latin studies influenced a redirect of the language's course that shifted a lot of idioms from say their Shakespearean Middle English states for some weird idea that being more like Classical Latin was a good thing for English.

cercatrova 6y ago

Probably a typo on "to each his own"