From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Feb 8 5:59:24 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from flood.ping.uio.no (flood.ping.uio.no [129.240.78.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E0DD37B401 for ; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 05:59:06 -0800 (PST) Received: (from des@localhost) by flood.ping.uio.no (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA67924; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 14:57:57 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from des@ofug.org) X-URL: http://www.ofug.org/~des/ X-Disclaimer: The views expressed in this message do not necessarily coincide with those of any organisation or company with which I am or have been affiliated. To: Rahul Siddharthan Cc: "G. Adam Stanislav" , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Laugh: [Fwd: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-008] References: <3A81DDC9.EF6D7D84@originative.co.uk> <3.0.6.32.20010207223155.009d42a0@mail85.pair.com> <20010208110159.E2429@lpt.ens.fr> From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav Date: 08 Feb 2001 14:57:57 +0100 In-Reply-To: Rahul Siddharthan's message of "Thu, 8 Feb 2001 11:01:59 +0100" Message-ID: Lines: 17 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) Emacs/20.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Rahul Siddharthan writes: > The idea is that if "his" is supposed to be gender-neutral in > generic situations, "her" should also be regarded as gender-neutral. This discussion reminds me of the LaTeX macros that you use instead of third person singular pronouns and possessive adjectives, which alternate between the male and female form. BTW, Norwegian has a very useful word which means "the concerned person", which makes it relatively easy to construct gender-neutral phrases. The only way to do that in English is to "play the pronoun game", i.e. use (gender-neutral) plural forms instead of singular forms, which makes for some pretty corny sentences... DES -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@ofug.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message