On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncogh...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Guido van Rossum <gu...@python.org> wrote: >> That's how I felt 20 years ago. But since then I've come to appreciate >> they as a much better alternative to either "he or she" or "he". Just >> get used to it. > > If anyone wants to further explore this question, the Stack Exchange > on English usage is a decent place to start: > http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/192/is-it-correct-to-use-their-instead-of-his-or-her > > What it boils down to is that "their" is the least bad of all of the > available options.
No wonder that thread went to 100+ replies. Can we cut English some slack here? Unlike most other languages we don't assign nouns, like rocks and sofas, a gender. Personally I'd be happier if everyone switched to using "she," instead of revolting against the old default of using "he" by using the ear jarring "he or she," or the dissonant "their." For an amusing take on how a well intentioned attempt to make the written law more pleasingly "correct" see this post[1] (the ambiguous pronouns resulted in an ambiguous statute). English is highly mutable so I expect this will all shake out in a generation or two. Or maybe not - we still don't have a common word that means a positive answer to a negative question despite centuries of want. -Jack [1] http://volokh.com/2011/03/04/the-strange-glitch-in-the-rhode-island-rules-of-evidence/ _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
