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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 15, 2019 12:54:40 GMT
How delightful!
It’s certainly proof, if any were needed, that language changes.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 15, 2019 19:14:57 GMT
LJH: What a find! Thanks for posting the link. I particularly like the wordbōc.
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 15, 2019 21:13:16 GMT
Lovely stuff!
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 18, 2019 21:04:19 GMT
A nonsense perpetrated by the increasingly turgid alphabet soup of gender-non-specific terminology: themself. My OED does not recognise the word; its only related entry is themselves, which we know to be a plurale tantum. If the author of the article had instead used one of the recent inventions such as ze for the child’s pronoun, then perhaps there could be zeself. (?) This is the article that set me off during breakfast.
While I don't have a problem with people's assuming whatever gender identity they choose, I baulk at this bastardisation of existing language. New terms (e.g. ze/zir) have been coined; I wish affected persons would use those. Here is a table of proposed alternative pronouns. Examples of how these pronouns may be employed: She went to her bedroom. / He went to his bedroom. Ze went to hir bedroom. / E went to eir bedroom. I am her sister. / I am his sister. I am hir sister. / I am eir sister. She shaves herself. / He shaves himself. Ze shaves hirself. / E shaves emself.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 18, 2019 22:22:50 GMT
The hir/hirs/hirself version seems pointless to me.
It looks like the standard female set and it can (and mostly will) be pronounced like the standard female set. Not very neutral at all!
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 19, 2019 4:21:24 GMT
The hir/hirs/hirself version seems pointless to me. It looks like the standard female set and it can (and mostly will) be pronounced like the standard female set. Not very neutral at all! Agreed, Dave. It strikes me as a knee-jerk reaction rather than something well thought out. Just take the title Ms for example: I've heard that pronounced Məss, Məzz, Muzz, Mɪz,* and Mmz (no vowel at all). * The OED pronunciation
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 19, 2019 11:38:31 GMT
I don't understand how the pronouns are gender neutral; as far as I can see they're as gender specific as the ones they're replacing. All those Zes and Zirs will be welcome in England's West-Country though.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 19, 2019 11:51:18 GMT
I don't understand how the pronouns are gender neutral; as far as I can see they're as gender specific as the ones they're replacing. All those Zes and Zirs will be welcome in England's West-Country though. The French would probably like ze too, thinking that English is finally spelt how les grenouille pronounce it. ;-)
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 21, 2019 3:06:24 GMT
Today I deleted the biggest spam post I’ve ever seen. It was 253 lines long, posted to a thread that had been dormant for a decade, and seemed to be promoting Viagra, Cialis, and similar, as well as medicines for STIs.
A pox upon spammers!
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 21, 2019 9:54:10 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 22, 2019 11:54:49 GMT
How interesting. It is barely possible to recognise it as English. Mind you, some of today’s offerings on social media would be a mystery even to a late 20th century reader. Google, Twitter, Brexit, Instagram, iPad, Novichok, digitising, internet, hypertext, CRISPR, Facebook, Facetime, podcast, blog, Skype, etc., etc.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 29, 2019 20:48:14 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 30, 2019 15:31:22 GMT
Thank you, Vv. The Korean use of plural pronouns with a singular meaning reminds me if the “royal we” except that the latter certainly had the purpose of emphasising exclusiveness rather than having a sense of inclusiveness. This may further illustrate the comments made in the article about the English language sounding “cold, even selfish” to a Korean speaker. I can’t adjudicate on whether the use of togs for clothing had lost this meaning by the 1930s in Oz but it was certainly used at my school (especially for sportswear) and by my northern English family well into the 1950s and we also used cozzies for swimwear — still do as it is a useful word if one doesn’t wish to differentiate between a woman’s swimming costume and a man’s swimming trunks. “Have you put the cozzies in the car?” was often asked before a trip to the beach. The word ”tog” has apparently been used as a standard measure of thermal insulation since the 1940s especially for duvets (doonas) and sleeping bags. According to this en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tog_(unit) the term indeed derives from the informal use of togs to mean clothes. If the term was north English dialect it is pleasing that the north English Shirley Institute adopted the word for the unit of measurement. Also, according to the Wikipedia article, togs as clothing probably derives from the Roman toga.
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