
A Person Paper on Purity in Language - Douglas Hofstadter - mustpax
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html
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RyanMcGreal
Aside: people get upset about the idea of using "they" as a gender-neutral
third person pronoun on the basis that it is generally regarded as the plural
form; yet no one seems to have a problem with the gender-neutral _second_
person pronoun "you", which also started out as the plural form but has since
grown to displace the singular "thou" and encompass both.

~~~
hugh3
That's right, people get upset about changes which are happening now, but they
care much less about changes which happened several hundred years in the past.
I don't see this as irrational.

If it were irrational then we could say "since New Yorkers don't complain
about the fact that their city is no longer New Amsterdam, they shouldn't
complain if we now rename it to, say New Bonerville, should they?"

And for what it's worth, I think the move from thou to you was a bad move, it
creates too much ambiguity. It has also led to at least two nonstandard
plurals "youse" and "y'all" which have arisen among speakers in various parts
of the world to resolve the ambiguity.

(Of course I don't care enough to start speaking like a jerk [or worse still
an SCA member] in order to try and bring "thou" back.)

~~~
RyanMcGreal
The use of the singular "they" dates back to the 1300s.

~~~
stan_rogers
Just a little bit further back than anything that could be called a "standard
English", then. The languages in England at the time were not mutually
intelligible, nor were they codified in any way -- "axe" (or "aks") and "ask"
were regionalisms, and one would hardly say today that "axe" would be
acceptable except when recording dialog. And just try going to the store and
asking for a dozen eyren and see how far that gets you

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Come on. It's been in continuous use ever since then. Jane Austin used it, for
heaven's sake.

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mustpax
The discussion about affirmative action and sexism on the HN front page
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1420553>) reminded me of this amusing
satire piece by Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame). Only
tangentially related but might still be interesting.

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vessenes
This column is 25 years old. It's surprisingly fresh. He mentions that he
finds it shocking. I think it's a measure of societal language change that I
don't find it shocking. Of course, race politics are very different in America
today, and language has moved (in some ways) from the mid 80's. No woman is a
'salesman' in America today, but in the 80's this was not so, and in fact was
the subject of vigorous debate.

I did find it fascinating to see race forced on a person by language as we
force gender in English, and I don't think that element of his our language
has changed much at all in the last 25 years.

Nr, Ns. and Niss where unbelievably brilliant language additions, Ble / Whe a
little less so to me.

Also, "One small step for a white, one giant leap for whitekind" was just
perfect. Sorry ladies; I wish the space race had some benefit for you, instead
it was only mankind.

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petercooper
A fun read containing quite some insight, though I think that, sadly, it would
be seen as a crazy scrawl if it were not written by someone so respected.

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tjmaxal
This IS satire right? It's so hard to tell in our world gone mad.

~~~
bitslayer
The "Post Scriptum" makes it clear that it is, but I believe it was originally
published in Scientific American without that. I agree with you that all too
often it's hard to tell. (Of course it is written under a pseudonym that gives
it away.)

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presidentender
I like Hofstadter, and I like this piece, although I disagree with the thrust
of it. Then again, I am not a woman.

