William Morder via tde-users wrote: > > > On Thursday 07 September 2023 15:32:58 deloptes via tde-users wrote: >> Mike Bird via tde-users wrote: >> > As to Deloptes original question, I am unclear as to whether they want >> > to > >> >> Delopes is a he :) They are (if in one person) anomaly :) >> It is unusual feeling being called they, even if I understand the >> politeness in the background. I just want to say it is not necessary for >> me. > > Ah, you have got caught up in our culture wars. It is a pity that this > stupid non-question has become an obsession for so many people who take > different sides and evidently do not know at all anything about, say, > linguistics or the established etymologies of words. > Well, today using they is signalling progressiveness. AFAIR from the English classes "you" is sufficiently polite and would prefer this as pronoun reffering my person. > I, too, get annoyed by this kind of misuse of language, which is a kind of > pretension to some "better knowledge"; but the funny thing is, practically > everybody is wrong on this matter. > > The use of *they* as a kind of indeterminate form can be considered both > right and wrong, depending on one's point of view. It is used to be > deliberately non-specific, or maybe "polite" usage: neither male nor > female, neither singular nor plural, nor giving other indications about > one's relations to others (as one finds in languages other than English). > I think maybe it's because English lost the use of gender in language for > ordinary words. I don't hear about people debating whether, in other > languages, a wall or a house ought to be masculine or feminine, etc. That > part of the culture wars seems to be peculiarly an American phenomenon, or > at least it is very much anglocentric. > I do not want to prolong this discussion in the linguistic direction as it is getting OT. However "they" is nowdays plural in contradiction to archaic use as you describe. "You" is the accepted pronoun. The progressives try to insert all kinds of other pronouns or variants of spelling, but there is the principle of economy of language and it is not likely to succeed (from theoretical and historical PoV). > And yet, I must point out that the use of the words *they* and *them* in > this sort of indeterminate or "polite" sense is actually quite ancient, > and can be traced back a part of speech that was lost. There are traces of > this, for example, in French, as when one says "On dit" (They say), as in, > "They say it's going to rain sometime later today." Who is this "they"? > > This seventh form or declension (not sure if my terms are correct here, as > it's been decades since university) dropped out of most Indo-European > languages sometime at the brink of the historical record. It used to exist > (I believe) in Old Irish and the other oldest European languages, but then > gradually disappeared. > You mean dualis, which stands for 2, meaning both of us. I was always curious. I know in Europe the Slovenians still have dualis. > Personally, I wish scholars, linguists, grammarians, makers of > dictionaries, politicians -- whoever it is that gets to decide these > matters -- could get it together, and come up with a kind of all-purpose, > inclusive term (one that doesn't offend anybody) to cover this problem of > the "third gender" or third sex; not to make any kind of political > statement, but only because it is a concept that is recognized in many > cultures already, and can be found in our own history, going back before > the Classical period. > Well, from theoretical PoV the scholars follow the development in the language. The philosophers or alike create or perhaps more accurately develop the concept and the people either accept or reject it. For example the above mentioned "they" was used only when reffering the Emperor which was inherited from the Roman-Byzantine empire, where they had two equal in power and they find a way to address them without insulting one or the other. The simple people then adopted it as polite form, but for example in Austria or Prussia/Germany they were forbidden to use it and they used "he" or "she" instead of nowdays "you" reffering a single person. > And then maybe we could all get back to living our lives again, instead of > fighting these stupid culture wars over things that aren't even real. > My strategy is "ignore", but I still prefer to be he and addressed by "you". This is what I wanted to highlight originally. And if someone can tell me how to solve the issue with the generated mail, it would be great. BR ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
