English, gender and God

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Why? Like I said...that took a whole of 15 seconds. It wasn't like I was trying very hard.

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It shows - a little more effort in actually reading the links rather than just grepping the term would have perhaps been appropriate.

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You need to read it again. It wasn't 60 years ago.

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You're right. 62 years. Sorry.

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No, not apparently. After all, they were using it beforehand. What was brought to the public was the reaction to it.

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I disagree - reading the reports it seems pretty clear that the phrase itself was also brought to the public's attention. I would be interested to see if there are any examples of recent common usage of niggardly pre-dating the publicity over Howard's usage. So far you have only come up with an older use of "niggardly budget" which, as I have pointed out, could as easily be explained as a cliche.I suppose you could argue that people commonly form the past tense of hoist as hoist rather than hoisted and that petard is a common term for a bomb or grenade. No doubt in your idealized community of mavens it is so.

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And why is that a bad thing? You seem to be saying that because people you don't like are using the word, that somehow has an effect on whether or not the word is being used "legitimately."

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You misunderstand. It is not the writer's opinions that interest me in this case, but the fact that he is using the word to form an acronym. Using a word specifically to fit an acronym hardly counts as common usage.

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pamboli: As ever, the onus in the natural course of language is on the speaker or writer to take account of their audience or readership, rather than the formalized social niceties built on an idealized view of language that Rh seems to prefer.

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rh: No, I say it goes both ways. Just as it is vitally important for a speaker to consider the audience, it is just as important for the audience to consider the speaker...including making sure that you didn't mishear.

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Again you are being presciptive rather than descriptive. I was simply describing that in the natural use of language, speakers disambiguate. You might not like it, but that's the way it goes. You seem determined to impose social rules on people to suit what you apparently see as your superior use of language. Unfortunately, it comes across as arrogant, which I hope is not the case - perhaps this is a pose for the anonymity of the internet and in real life you are not quite so obstreperous?BTW and off topic - did you get round to Carpe Jugulum? I'm not a great Pratchett fan at all, but this was an excellent long-haul-flight read.

In re the original topic of this thread, and the discussion of he as a gender-netural pronoun, the following article may be of interest, written by the resident lexicographer on that venerable conservative journal, The Spectator.http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion...

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‘If you dial 1471,’ writes Dr Roger James, a reader, naturally, ‘you are likely to be told by a recorded female voice that The caller withheld their number. This is an example of the difficulties that our language gets into because it lacks a word that means his or her. Years ago, she would have said, The caller withheld his number, but political correctness has taboo’d that way out. What should the recorded operator say?’

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What, indeed? I think I prefer ‘The caller withheld their number’ to ‘The number you have dialled knows you are waiting’, which is not true literally or figuratively.

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The loss of he as a sexually neutral pronoun is certainly a nuisance, more often awkward than the loss of man in the sense ‘anthropos’ or ‘homo’. The deranged people who rewrite the Bible and the liturgy get round it by recasting sentences to make them plural instead of singular (‘Foolish people say in their hearts there is no God’). That is often disastrous. But it interesting to note that the use of they/them/their has a quite different effect.

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Something for everyone here, I think. Naturally I rejoice at the writer's recognition of The loss of he as a sexually neutral pronoun but I am sure Rh can find comfort in their description of deranged Bible rewriters.BTW, the details of the phone messages are of course specific to UK. 1471 is the equivalent of *69. The number you have dialled knows you are waiting is the silly and potentially misleading message one receives when encountering the call waiting service.

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By the way, bonus points for those who know where "sweetie, honey, baby, pussycat" comes from.

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Little Shop of Horrors - but not sure if it's original to that.