all the news that print will fit.
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| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
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Tuesday, January 30, 2007 I wrote this earlier today in an email and it got out of hand. So I'm posting it here, largely because it's the kind of tripe I ought to be posting here. Leave your thoughts in the comments. -- The evolution of the English language, specifically because of technology, is a really fascinating thing. I had some great discussions in my rhetoric/composition course in college about the future of English as a less and less formal language thanks to the in-formality of the internet. That even 'professional' writing has become less formal largely because of the speed and environs of the 'net. Blogs in particular - now there's a kettle of fish. (Meta. Woah.) The elimination of case and gender in our language (hardly anyone says 'whom' anymore, and people who know how to use it correctly, rarer still) was one big leap. I personally am for two new, but practical, adaptions. First, an acception of the spelling "alright" for "all right." The two words are rarely separated and have become a pretty standard response in questions concerning mood or temprement. 'Alright' as a saying even denotes something arguably different than 'all right.' (Does anyone else agree with me on this? I think they mean different things - shades apart, but different definitely.) Second, the acceptance of 'they' and 'theirs' as third person neuter singular objective and possesive pronouns respectively. Though we ditched gender as a language almost entirely (the exception being pronouns), we don't have a neuter gender that functions for things we typically do assign genders to - like humans or animals. 'It' just doesn't cut it when you're referring to an unknown gendered baby, for instance. Parents might take offense. So what if the gender of the individual is unknown? "I wonder who ate my cake." "I don't know, but he/she obviously was hungry." He or she? Give me a break. "I don't know, but they obviously were hungry." Better. Now here's where things get tricky since in order for the subject/verb to make sense, 'they' has to be paired with 'were,' a plural verb. "They was" would just sound strange. 'Were' can make appearances with singular pronouns, such as in the subjective case: "If I were a fireman, I'd slide down that pole so fast..." English is already full of contradictory rules and regulations - why not one more exception? It makes practical sense. posted by J. Neas | 1/30/2007 09:07:00 AM
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You already know I'll do anything to avoid studying for the bar, so maybe you'll find this interesting..
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In an effort to be more gender-neutral, the law has undertaken to change the fact that every person or potential person has, in the past, always been a "he." (They specifically mentioned their efforts to be less sexist in a couple of the Bar/Bri lectures.) As a result, they've changed probably 85% of the "he"s to "she"s (instead of changing them to "they," which makes more sense to me). Unfortunately, about 90% of the time that the Bar/Bri materials, or the law generally, refers to a person, that person has done something wrong (frequently horrifyingly so). The unintentionally hilarious result is that now, the vast overwhelming majority of wrongdoers are women in both summaries of rules, and hypothetical examples. I am not sure how much of an improvement this actually is. |
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