Moscow News - Columnists - It’s not personal, it’s pronouns: "In English-speaking cultures, however, people ponder away furiously, if largely fruitlessly, over gender marking for pronouns. Take this quick fill-in-the-blank quiz: 'If a performer arrives late for a concert, _____ (he; she; it; they) should apologize to the audience.' The correct answer is ... that there is no correct answer, at least not right now; while a plurality of English speakers would probably write 'he,' there are significant constituencies for 'she' and 'they' as well. And if present trends continue, an 'it' voting bloc could arise in the near future.
Extreme Extra Credit: In what recent American novel was a pronoun-hypersensitive professor awarded the nickname "Orshee"?
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
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