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Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

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Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

unofan said:
Speak for yourself.

I edit other attorneys' writing daily. I'm constantly changing "they" to "it" when referring to a company or other collective entity. One of the most consistent edits I have to make.
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I do this on all sorts of papers, manuals, etc. I try to catch myself as much as possible. But I'm usually pretty vigilant. I've made sure the several hundred pages of standards for our engineering department don't use 'they' as singular. Comes up all the time.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Take it up with the Norman invaders. They're the reason English lost the neuter and a proper dative case ("whom" doesn't really count).

D@mn French, ruining everything that isn't food. ;)
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Saxon looks pretty daunting. Heavily inflected languages are scary.

Here is the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence in Icelandic:

Þegar maður er á gangi mannlegra atburða verður það nauðsynlegt fyrir eitt þjóð að leysa upp stjórnmálasveitirnar sem hafa tengt þau við aðra og taka meðal valds jarðar að sér þá aðskildu og jöfnu stöð sem lög náttúrunnar og náttúrunnar Guð veitir þeim rétt, ágætis virðing fyrir skoðunum mannkyns krefst þess að þeir lýsi yfir ástæðum sem knýja þá til aðskilnaðar.

Looks like f-cking Elvish.
 
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Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Well, I know my non-binary friends hate being called "it." Their pronouns are they/them, and even though you don't like it, it's part of life now. It really doesn't take a lot to respect a person's pronouns.

APA says it's okay.

The official Merriam-Webster Dictionary added "they" as a singular.


You asked me to educate you. I am. And yet, some of you are turning your noses up at it.
 
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Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

MissThundercat said:
Well, I know my non-binary friends hate being called "it." Their pronouns are they/them, and even though you don't like it, it's part of life now. It really doesn't take a lot to respect a person's pronouns.

APA says it's okay.

The official Merriam-Webster Dictionary added "they" as a singular.


You asked me to educate you. I am. And yet, some of you are turning your noses up at it.
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Or, you just refer to that person by name instead of a pronoun.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

dxmnkd316 said:
Or, you just refer to that person by name instead of a pronoun.
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Ms. Johnson was strict, but she was fair.

Ms. Johnson was strict, but they was fair.

Ms. Johnson was strict but fair.

Instructor Johnson was strict but fair.

It'll take a while for old-school writers to adapt, but it's always that way with the old and infirm.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

burd said:
Ms. Johnson was strict, but they was fair.
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No, it's "they (singular) were." We're taking this all the way to To Be.

<img src="https://media.giphy.com/media/qEoFZbytpCvnO/giphy.gif" height=300>
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

dxmnkd316 said:
Except you can search for "whsitle" and "whistleblower" in the Cafe and all that will turn up is everyone using 'he' instead of 'she or he'. I can't find a single instance of 'they' being used going back a month.

Actually, nix that. Scooby used "him/her" in a post. Hovey used "they".
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I always use singular they for a person of unknown gender
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

MissThundercat said:
Well, I know my non-binary friends hate being called "it." Their pronouns are they/them, and even though you don't like it, it's part of life now. It really doesn't take a lot to respect a person's pronouns.
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The old will die off; the young will use it without thinking.

The intolerant make their own slaughterhouse. Our job is to live and steer clear of the smell.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

MissThundercat said:
If a person tells you their pronouns are they/them, what's wrong with respecting that?
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I don’t see how I’m not respecting that person’s request by just dropping the pronoun altogether. That’s probably an even better solution, at least in English. If that person is non-binary, it doesn’t change the fact that there is still only one person. If that person doesn’t like ‘he’ or ‘she’ or any of the alternatives, I think dropping the pronoun is perfectly acceptable. Yeah, I would need to be more careful about my sentences and how they are structured. But it solves both problems and respects that person’s desire to not be referred to as a pronoun that implies a gender.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

dxmnkd316 said:
I don’t see how I’m not by just dropping the pronoun altogether. That’s probably an even better solution, at least in English. If that person is non-binary, it doesn’t change the fact that there is still only one person. If that person doesn’t like ‘he’ or ‘she’ or any of the alternatives, I think dropping the pronoun is perfectly acceptable. Yeah, I would need to be more careful about my sentences and how they are structured. But it solves both problems and respects that person’s desire to not be referred to as a pronoun that implies a gender.
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It's a linguistic dodge, usually employed by somebody trying to hide or avoid a topic. I have an old work friend, she used to date a woman whose nickname was Charlie (short for Charlotte) back when she was 21 and still in the closet to her coworkers. Instead of saying it something was hers (in reference to Charlie), she would use Charlie's name. To anybody paying attention, the absence of certain linguistic phrases in her general speech rang through clear like a bell, to the point that when she finally came out of the closet it was a surprise to all of nobody.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Kepler said:
The old will die off; the young will use it without thinking.

The intolerant make their own slaughterhouse. Our job is to live and steer clear of the smell.
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Don't confuse the issue by implying we're all intolerant because we abide by the constructs of the language. There are plenty of creative ways to satisfy all parties.The intolerant ones are people who would refer to MissThundercat as 'he/him'. That's unacceptable. I know virtually everyone on this board would agree.

We can debate the structure of "to be" for the next hundred years. I imagine we will. Perhaps it will evolve, but we need to establish rules to ensure there is no confusion when specific language is required. If some people want to adapt immediately to show they are somehow more progressive than us ghouls who prefer to distinguish between one and more than one, great. They can hopefully sleep at night then.

It's not going to be fixed overnight because several other changes to English syntax need to be agreed upon before we start using that change in language as anything more than slang or strictly informal writing.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

dxmnkd316 said:
Don't confuse the issue by implying we're all intolerant because we abide by the constructs of the language.
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My firehose may have inadvertently touched you. I was spraying elsewhere.

I would say when weighing words and people choose the people. Language isn't sacred. And I'm saying this as someone who would happily trade 98% of the Earth's population to save one Shakespeare play. After all the people grow back.
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Kepler said:
This is actually a great idea. We need the Rube thread and the Rover thread to segregate that stuff. If you insist, we can have the Kepler thread, too, but then all the other threads would wither and die from lack of interest.
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Nah you are fine...most of the time when you post something it doesnt lead to 5 pages of people jumping all over themselves to tell you how stupid you are ;)
 
Re: Nice Planet 17: I Need a Cold ****ty Beer to Deal with You ***holes

Handyman said:
Nah you are fine...most of the time when you post something it doesnt lead to 5 pages of people jumping all over themselves to tell you how stupid you are ;)
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It's just kind of understood.
 
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