View RSS Feed

I like frogs

Regurgitated from an older blog... Relevant only this instant

Rate this Entry
10 Comments
by
Martyr
, 08-03-2011 at 02:16 PM (1410 Views)
A pencil is not more than one pencil. It is a single pencil. As such, it ought to be referred to as a single pencil and not more than one pencil.
There are writing tactics to make this happen, preventing any reader confusion over how many pencils are being referred to at any given time, be it one or more than one. These grammatical institutions are commonly known as plural or singular. A singular object is singular because it is a single object, as opposed to more than one object [double the object, triple the object etc]. Plural is the term for grammatical forms used to describe multiples of an object. Often, the only difference between the singular or plural word is a mere "s."

Singular: Pencil
Plural: Pencil[B]s[/B]

Now, here comes the juicy part: Pronouns.

Pronouns, terms used to refer to nouns, like pencils, have special rules assigned to them so that they can refer to singular and plural forms without causing reader confusion. Let's cut to the chase:

Singular - It
Plural - They/Them/Those

This technique would be as flawless as it is simple if not for one terror of confusion that has stricken the writing world.

PERSON

A person is not an "it." A person is either a "he" or a "she."
BUT WHICH IS IT??????

Old school writing, which existed under a patriarchal society, determined that, for a person to whom no specific gender can be applied, the pronoun "He" should be used.
This was a simple fix for centuries but now, women have taken offense to such sexist institutions. They want to implement the complicated he/she structure or some such bogus crap.

Now, the most recent attack on the english language by defiant liberal idiots who want to make simple trout complicated is the substitution of "They" for the ungendered person's pronoun.

THEY?! No. Never. I don't care what your stupid reasons are. I don't care that your life is so wonderful that you must choose to take offense to language mechanics instead of something really offensive, like money problems or thieves and whatnot.

Here are your solutions:
1. Ruin and complicate your writing with he/she and his/her forms.
2. Use "he" like we have successfully done for as long as we can recall.
3. Use "she" if you would prefer, because, frankly, "masculinists" don't give a rat's ass.

Honestly, barring option 2, I could support a variation of option 3. It would be sensible enough for the gender of a "person" in an essay to be the same gender as the writer. Chick writers probably visualize themselves as the generic human they are writing about, and, being female, they probably don't like using the "he" term.
Understand that I understand.

Now, understand me. Nobody, while I am alive, will ever institute such overwhelmingly preposterous lingual blasphemy as making it law to refer to a singular term as a plural.
Tags: None Add / Edit Tags
Categories
Uncategorized

Comments

  1. demondude's Avatar
    ...

    :up: ?
    Updated 08-03-2011 at 06:39 PM by demondude
  2. rubah's Avatar
    sorry dude, but I can't support prescriptive linguists.

    anyone who goes in for prescriptivism has some control issues in their head~
  3. Martyr's Avatar
    Control issues?
    Maybe. There is certainly an element here where I am trying to control the way people speak, possibly even to the detrimental degree of trying to thwart the natural and inevitable evolution of language as we know it.

    But I think there is enough reason to fight change in this case for my attempt to "control" the language to be legitimate. I honestly believe that I am fighting for a just cause here, to prevent singulars from being referred to as a plural. I think that would be making our language more broken than fixed.

    And, uh, I guess that there is an element of control there, but a controlling element exists in everything that is maintained, right? I mean, the more I think about your comment, the less I understand it.
    Are you honestly saying that we should be less restrictive with grammar rules? Communication is already hard enough, especially written communication. Because of the lack of intonation, cultural equality in understanding and general literary education, people can hardly understand what they're actually reading as it is. If we were more creative with grammar (not with our words , imagery and all that mind you- I'm only referring to grammar elements here), then I think we'd just have to chalk up our understanding of other people's writing to dumb luck.

    No. I don't think I have control issues. I think I have a simple desire to make communication as easy as possible, and, since I have a degree in the most illustrious art of writing, I am confident enough in my ability to suggest a defense of certain systems that are already in place.
  4. Loony BoB's Avatar
    I'm happy enough using 'they'. It sounds nice enough. If you're that bothered, use "the person" or "the individual". If you want a single word that will not be confused for plurals, perhaps a new word should be invented.

    EDIT: "Nobody, while I am alive, will ever institute such overwhelmingly preposterous lingual blasphemy as making it law to refer to a singular term as a plural."

    I don't think you have control over that, unless you have an early expectation of death.
  5. Martyr's Avatar
    Yeah.
    It's an issue that most people don't care about.
    I don't really care when I hear it in speech. I suppose speech rules are completely different from writing rules anyway.
    I thought about inventing a new word, but that seems nearly impossible to implement. I mean, how long, seriously, would it take to get everybody who speaks English to start using a different word than they have for a few centuries now? Like, on command? I don't think it would work well. Not until a bunch of children grow up and a bunch of geezers die, assuming it takes.

    But anyway, I know that most people don't care. Maybe that's one of the reasons I feel like I should care. In my opinion, it is absolutely wrong. Worse than bizarre conjunctions like ain't, which has a cultural value anyway, or a confusing and easy error like there/etc and its/it's. I mean, it's a singular being called more than one thing!

    In any event, I do know enough people in high enough academic circles to get a shot in at defending one rule or another if somebody actually did make a sincere move to change the rule to make the official word "they" instead of "he." So, although I can't honestly claim that AI'll die before I see it happen, I could make myself a slight influence from one side or another. I could probably break into an official debate.
  6. Loony BoB's Avatar
    Let's face it, the language of the future will probably go in the complete opposite direction. A person will be come a "you, they, them, their" and multiple people will become "yous, theys, thems, theirs" or something. Because of all the people out there who say "yous fellas". =| Language moves in odd ways.
  7. Martyr's Avatar
    That is a terrible fact that we will all someday face, yes, but while I'm here, can't I at least pretend that I can preserve the ways of today for the people of tomorrow?
    Since when did we start living by the uncommon saying, "when the going gets tough, quit"?

    I suppose there are bigger problems to worry about. Like lunch.
  8. rubah's Avatar
    a unified grammar is a construct only necessary if you want to reach a diverse wide band of people.

    otherwise, people you communicate with regularly will know your personal grammar and both of you will have some [un]spoken accord about what is appropriate.

    As it stands, most language systems have their own unique grammars, but few people whine about unifying them. You just accept that if you want to communicate with the French, you'll put your quotations in <<angle brackets>> and not capitalize proper nouns the way you would in English, besides putting your adjectives behind your nouns (usually).

    not unifying English? Fine, it just means we'll have two languages stemming from the English root in a few thousand years. The progress is slower due to the fact that our excessive printing and typesetting technology has created a relatively non-perishable, extremely available record of language (we are still able to read books from 100 years ago, and make copies of them that will last for another 100 years).

    But that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's just another evolutionary process. The grammars that people use will survive in a form such that people will use them more than other grammars.

    To try to stymie this process is basically unnatural and futile, and you're either in denial or have issues with control and superiority if you try Grammar is an excellent way for those with a little intelligence and learning to judge those with less. Just see AngelWing8's thread in GC for an example of purporting superiority over people with "inferior" grammar.

    tl;dr: what b0b said about the change of language is not bad. It's not inherently good. It is just a thing that will happen, and won't have any bearing on your quality of life and enjoyability of life today if you don't want it to, and won't on your potential progeny.
  9. rubah's Avatar
    "They" would not be such a widespread replacement for "he or she" if those in the current generation didn't think there needed to be one.

    The cultural shift between thinking it fine to accept all people as male by default to not thinking it fine is one cause for giving this pronoun its new usage. The desire for an easy to use and extant word or phrase is another. Otherwise, ze, or hir, or any of the novel words that were invented in the hopes of a genderless English would have been adopted en masse.

    tl;dr, many people have reached an accord on how to approach this problem and it is a solution that works, and requires adding one small meaning to a word when others may have dozens of meanings already.
  10. Martyr's Avatar
    We're just recycling information now.
    But I'll keep going because I'm already here.

    I just think that singulars should have singular pronouns. If the language evolves, it should maintain some sort of sensible roots to avoid confusion. If you're going to call that controlling, then you may. Personally, I think that allowing the rules of grammar to flow too loosely will break our ability to use it creatively. You can't break rules when there are no rules. You can't understand how things are operating when there are no rules to govern understanding. I think that meaningfulness in language must be maintained just like the oil in a truck. I don't change the oil in my truck because I am controlling. I do it because I want my engine to run smoother. That's it.

    If this argument has turned into nothing more than a statement that our language will change, no matter what I say, then I can't disagree. It'll probably warp around so much that it will become multiple languages, not merely dialects, the same way we have French, Spanish and English as completely different languages with the same roots.

    But even if I am a hopeless control freak martyring myself in a needless, idiotic bid to attempt to stop the inexorable evolution of our language, it doesn't make my point any less valid. One thing isn't more than one thing and one person is not multiple persons. It just isn't.
    I've already acknowledged that nobody else cares. It doesn't mean I have to follow suit.

    In any event, I think the "they" thing is how the problem is fixed in French, and French people seem to manage alright.
    So I know that our people and our planet will survive, even if I fail.

    But I'm not French, I'm American. I was born in the western hemisphere in a country forged from blood and rebellion! And I'm going to quit while I'm falling a little behind.
    Goodnight rubah.
    and BoB.
    And every other unlucky chucklehead who wanders into here.