From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Mon Mar 04 2002 - 17:03:41 MST
> (Miriam English <miriam@werple.net.au>):
> At 05:13 AM 05/03/2002, Colin Hales wrote:
>
> >"I taught him/her to think for himself/herself yesterday but when I asked
> >him/her he/she had forgotten" becomes
> >"I taught lem to think for leirself yesterday but when I asked lem ley had
> >forgotten"
> >(note the new 'i before e except after c and possibly l?' :) The technical
> >term for this whole thing is, I think, Yuck).
>
> What is wrong with:
> I taught them to think for theirself yesterday but when I asked them they
> had forgotten.
> ????
Nothing, if you don't care whether your listener thinks you're talking
about one person or more than one. Otherwise, what you gain in gender
equality you sacrifice in clarity. Some uses of "singular they" don't
have that problem: even some staunch language purists have a hard time
objecting to "everyone removed their hat." But your sentence above is
a great example of language abuse.
Also, I should point out that the reflexive form of the ey/em/eir set
is "emself", not "eirself", since the plural is "themselves" (by analogy
to "himself"; use of "hisself" and "theirselves" is a shibboleth of poor
education) I don't particularly find the superfluous added "l" to have
any value, but if you insist it should still be "lemself", not "leirself".
Also, the i-before-e rule is not violated the least here, since every
rational version of that rule mentions explicitly that all cases
pronounced as the "ay" diphthong are properly spelled "ei".
Wanting to change the laguage to correct its flaws is a noble goal,
but let's not be sloppy about it, or we just create more problems than
we solve.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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