On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 8:00 AM, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, March 5, 2008 7:39 pm, Ralph Shumaker wrote > > But then again, [sigh], if it catches on enough, it will become normal, > > and once normal, then correct. [sigh] > > NEVER!!! > > But you're right. My 4th Grade teacher (Eisenhower administration) was > still fighting the good fight, insisting that "everyone," "anyone," > someone," and "none" (being a contraction of "no one") were singular. The > problem with that is, with gender pronouns, you end up offending women > with "everyone should bring his raincoat," and performing a cumbersome > abomination with "everyone should bring his or her raincoat." "Their" > spares you the embarrassment of gender, so most say "... bring _their_ > raincoat" which is plural.
I was under the impression (don't know if I ever heard it in an educational setting) that "their" had become the gender-neutral singular pronoun... kind of like how "sie" in German can be "she," "you," or "they" depending on context and capitalization. So it's not that "everyone" is treated as plural, it's that "their" is treated as singular. > Another ugly trend is the loss of the plural forms of to be. I can't tell > you how many times I hear supposedly edicated people say: "educated," maybe? :-D > There's three reasons we shouldn't do that. > > Of course, this should be: > There are three reasons ... I think that the main reason for this is just laziness in speech. I tend to be the type that composes sentences in my head before saying them out loud (which I suppose is why I often say little), but a lot of people these days start talking before they have a thought fully formed. People start off a sentence with "there's," not yet having considered the multi-item list they're about to come up with on-the-fly. -- Brad Beyenhof http://augmentedfourth.com I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ~ Galileo Galilei, astronomer and physicist (1564-1642) -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
