I just love the irony of USians discussing the correct use of English. Just sublime.


BTW, any ideas for gender-neutral titles/salutations to replace Mr, Mrs etc?

chairman bill wrote:I just love the irony of USians discussing the correct use of English. Just sublime.

Given the penetration and spread, it's fairly clear that UK English is a dialect at this point, in the same way that Spain Spanish is actually a dialect that's very difficult to understand for most Spanish speakers.

chairman bill wrote:
BTW, any ideas for gender-neutral titles/salutations to replace Mr, Mrs etc?

I vote we just drop them and call everybody by their name.

The wikipedia article on the subject is extensive but i have to say not very decisive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun

One mentioned on there i came across recently was the use of Ve, Vis, Ver, Verself in the Greg Egan book Diaspora. He uses the pronoun for all software based post-human intelligences that no longer have genders. A little confusing when you just jump into it without having somebody explain it to you, which is i guess the big point against using any of these alternatives. Until we have enough gender neutral people walking around (or hanging out in cyberspace) to encounter this problem a lot, we're not going to be forced to get used to it.

Thon is one of the proposed ones on there i think is particularly cool sounding, but NOT easy to say.

Here's my question: what pronoun do you use for a collective consciousness that refers to all of its selves as one? Has anyone thought this through at all? The Borg from Star Trek said "We" but would also have separate speakers address humans saying things like "three of five," so it's not truly collective - there was always the quality of a first person speaker representing them all. If you had an emergent intelligence that was a collection of other minds, how would it refer to itself? my proposal: Ourself. It's a lot to say, and i have no idea how someone would refer to this thing in the 3rd person, but it's a start.

GreyICE wrote:

Scott H wrote:*snip*

If thou werst but half as clever as thou thinks thou are, thou would find thineself twice as clever as thou really arst.

Did you intentionally make all of those errors?

katja z wrote:Shouldn't it be "thinkest"?

No, that would tempt me with the superlative.

katja z wrote:

shh wrote:Has anyone come across any other places where they felt "we need a new word here"? If so where?

About three times a day when I'm working. But then, I'm a translator. There are enough differences in how different languages conceptualise reality (let alone which reality they conceptualise) to make you want to throw your teacup through the window in frustration on a regular basis. Then you learn to work around these constraints and use each language on its own terms. It helps if you're willing to accept that what's correct or acceptable in a language at a given time is determined by usage (convention), not by how you personally feel it "should be".

The least you could have done is give me some examples, this is just teasing. And not the good kind.

chairman bill wrote:BTW, any ideas for gender-neutral titles/salutations to replace Mr, Mrs etc?

OI!.

shh wrote:

katja z wrote:

shh wrote:Has anyone come across any other places where they felt "we need a new word here"? If so where?

About three times a day when I'm working. But then, I'm a translator. There are enough differences in how different languages conceptualise reality (let alone which reality they conceptualise) to make you want to throw your teacup through the window in frustration on a regular basis. Then you learn to work around these constraints and use each language on its own terms. It helps if you're willing to accept that what's correct or acceptable in a language at a given time is determined by usage (convention), not by how you personally feel it "should be".

The least you could have done is give me some examples, this is just teasing. And not the good kind.

Might be a bit difficult since you presumably don't speak Slovenian, my target language ... And usually the problem is not the complete absence of a word to refer to something, its' more that the word you do have might be either more or less specific than the one you're trying to translate, or it may have different connotations. A simple example of a word I'd like to have in Slovenian is "intriguing". I never know what to do with this one! Or "amused" in attributive use (as in, "an amused smile"). Of course I can express those things, but I need to use more words. A more serious problem with levels of specificity is illustrated by the French word "conscience" which means both "conscience" and "consciousness" - isn't it more practical to have separate words? (Btw, this makes it possible to get away with some sloppy thinking too - I remember trying to translate a conversation with Deleuze (I think) and giving up because I couldn't follow his continual shifting between the two senses of the word "conscience" in French. Another language would have forced him to be clear on what he was talking about!)

My comment on correctness/acceptability referred more to grammar - more specifically, to the kind and amount of information specified by grammatic features. For example, the complex system of tenses in English forces you to provide more specific information on verbal actions than you would normally do in Slovenian. Both have advantages and in some situations I just feel life would be easier if I could use the structures of the other language! On the other hand, nonfinite clauses in English often leave the relationship between the main and the subordinate clause very vague (temporal? causal? ...) and it's a huge problem especially in literary translation, so that makes me wish I had a structural equivalent for that in Slovenian. Or, a bit closer to the theme of this thread, the pronouns and the number: Slovenian has a grammatical feature called the dual (think of it as a special case of the plural: pronoun, noun, adjective and verb forms for two persons or things) that is especially handy for love poetry. I bet all poets in other languages, once they hear of this, dream of having it in their own language as well I often wish it existed in French and English; the dual/plural distinction is something I have to specify in Slovenian, so I have to guess/decide how many people are referred to in the sentence I'm translating. If you aren't very careful, this can lead to some very interesting twists to the original story
[/derail]

chairman bill wrote:BTW, any ideas for gender-neutral titles/salutations to replace Mr, Mrs etc?

OI!.

How about she+he=it = s/h/it?

NineOneFour wrote:How about she+he=it = s/h/it?

See page one of this thread

Scott H wrote:

katja z wrote:Shouldn't it be "thinkest"?

No, that would tempt me with the superlative.

Lol Wow Scott, you made a Joke, and it's a funny one. Wd.