From owner-freebsd-chat Fri Feb 9 12:38:46 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from milquetoast.cs.mcgill.ca (milquetoast.CS.McGill.CA [132.206.2.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6CA7537B6AC for ; Fri, 9 Feb 2001 12:38:24 -0800 (PST) Received: (from mat@localhost) by milquetoast.cs.mcgill.ca (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA19657; Fri, 9 Feb 2001 15:37:43 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 15:37:43 -0500 From: Mathew KANNER To: Greg Lehey Cc: Brett Glass , Rahul Siddharthan , Dag-Erling Smorgrav , "G. Adam Stanislav" , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Laugh: [Fwd: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-008] Message-ID: <20010209153743.D18596@cs.mcgill.ca> References: <3A81DDC9.EF6D7D84@originative.co.uk> <3.0.6.32.20010207223155.009d42a0@mail85.pair.com> <20010208110159.E2429@lpt.ens.fr> <20010208150641.A15166@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010208193726.04763b10@localhost> <20010209143121.J16260@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: Greg Lehey's message [Re: Laugh: [Fwd: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-008]] as of Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 02:31:21PM +1030 Organization: I speak for myself, operating in Montreal, CANADA Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Feb 08, Greg Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 8 February 2001 at 19:39:21 -0700, Brett Glass wrote: > > At 07:06 AM 2/8/2001, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > > >> And I learned of this amusing situation in French: the plural pronoun, > >> unlike in English, is gender-biased; it's "elles" only when the gender > >> of all parties is feminine, otherwise (for all-masculine or mixed) > >> it's "ils". > > > > Ah, but at least they have the unisex pronoun "on." > > "on" is masculine. Yes, it's used to represent females as well. But > that's what we did in English too, until Political Correctness got the > better of grammar. Really? I have a vague memory of being taught that it was used when the speaker is referring to a group of people, which he is a member of -- no inference on the makeup of the group nor speaker can be made, Much like "we" in English. On a un-related note, when I was growing up, I bounced between fracophone and anglophone schools, as a result, I don't really know any language well. Can anyone suggest a good "English grammar for programmers" type book? --Mat > > Greg > -- > Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key > See complete headers for address and phone numbers -- Mathew Kanner Sys Admin at large Obtuse quote: He [not me] understands: "This field of perception is void of perception of man." -- The Quintessence of Buddhism To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message