From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Mon Mar 04 2002 - 08:20:37 MST
It appears as if Miriam English <miriam@werple.net.au> wrote:
|
|I have never been able to understand why people have a problem with "you",
|"they", "them" or "he/she". I have even seen "(s)he" on occasion which I
|thought inventive, if a little strained.
|
|I, personally, have never had a problem with "he", "man" (as in mankind),
|etc. being generalised to encompass all people. To worry about it always
|seemed a bit nit-picky to me. I think we have bigger problems than desexing
|pronouns.
|:-)
In the Finnish language there exists a single personal pronoun used of humans:
<PRE>
_ _ _
| |__ (_)_(_)_ __
| '_ \ / _` | '_ \
| | | | (_| | | | |
|_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|
</PRE>
So I find it weird to always have to specify the sex of a person when using
any of the Indo-European languages. Especially so on the net, where a name
means next to nothing and in most cases does not specify the sex of the
entity in question. (E.g. Swedes use "Jan" and "Janne" as names for for boys.)
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