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Old August 17, 2010, 05:24 AM
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laepelba laepelba is offline
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Lightbulb Gender Neutral Pronouns in English?

This is an interesting article for your consideration: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson&fsrc=nwl
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  #2  
Old August 17, 2010, 09:13 AM
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Haha... no way I'm going to learn new pronouns.
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Old August 17, 2010, 08:19 PM
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I thought everyone was already using 'they', 'them', and 'their' for both singular and plural persons, especially when no specific gender is mentioned.

If anyone has a problem with this, they can lump it.
I can't believe this person on the phone. They're saying I've won a car.

All proper grammar around these parts.
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Old August 18, 2010, 12:25 PM
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I vary between using plural or masculine singular pronouns when an epicene is required, according to register and probably to what I ate for breakfast
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Old September 02, 2010, 04:34 PM
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one can always use one if one wants, especially if one is the Queen, who used to called we. We in the UK are often unsure about whether collective nouns should be treated as singular or plural. The police (plural) are rarely seen on the streets. The staff (plural) are taking a lunch break. The crowd (singular) is dispersing. Is there any logic here?
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Old September 02, 2010, 04:59 PM
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When it comes to English, abandon logic. That's my motto.

Everyone needs to throw up their arms in disgust.
( The plural possessive pronoun 'their' refers back to the singular subject 'everyone' ... hey, wait a minute! Shouldn't everyone be plural? It refers to many people, right? Everyone here thinks so. Rats! There we go again, writing the verb as if the subject 'everyone' were singular. What a singular thing that is! That it's singular, I mean. )
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Old September 02, 2010, 06:21 PM
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Ejem... "Everyone" is very "singular" because it refers to every single individual called "Juan"... and yes "every-Juan" are very many "Juans" but each one of them is very singular!
Sincerely,
One Pablo (or Juan Pablo) (Juan of the many Pablos, of course)

In all seriousness, this "plural/singular" thing happens in Spanish too, when we use "la gente" we use "singular" (properly) but also plural... "la gente es muy interesante"
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