Posted on 07/14/2011 12:59:33 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Then there’s Spanish...
A SPANISH Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
‘House’ for instance, is feminine: ‘la casa.’
‘Pencil,’ however, is masculine: ‘el lapiz.’
A student asked, ‘What gender is ‘computer’?’
Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two
groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer’ should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.
The men’s group decided that ‘computer’ should definitely be of the feminine gender (’la computadora’), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2 The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
(THIS GETS BETTER!)
The women’s group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (’el computador’), because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can’t think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.
The women won.
On the contrary, the example of "you" and "thou" you give is very salutary. "Thou" was the singular and "you" was plural. Now "you" is both plural and singular and "thou" is archaic. My reading of the current situation is that x years from now (and I don't know how long it will take) "they" will come to mean not only "more than one person" but also "one person whose gender is unknown". This does not destroy a grammatical principle, it merely alters the grammatical rules. It won't be the first time that has happened and I'm confident it won't be the last either.
Yes, it may happen, but at this point in time singular “they” just sounds ungrammatical, and, further, unnecessary.
Thank you.
I noticed that servers on a network are called a “he”. I don’t know the reason.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.