Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 10:09:26 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Mathew KANNER <mat@cs.mcgill.ca> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>, "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Indo-European Grammar (was: Laugh: [Fwd: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS01-008]) Message-ID: <20010210100926.P16260@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20010209153743.D18596@cs.mcgill.ca>; from mat@cs.mcgill.ca on Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 03:37:43PM -0500 References: <xzpzofxffa2.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <3A81DDC9.EF6D7D84@originative.co.uk> <3.0.6.32.20010207223155.009d42a0@mail85.pair.com> <20010208110159.E2429@lpt.ens.fr> <xzpzofxffa2.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> <20010208150641.A15166@lpt.ens.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20010208193726.04763b10@localhost> <20010209143121.J16260@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20010209153743.D18596@cs.mcgill.ca>
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On Friday, 9 February 2001 at 15:37:43 -0500, Mathew KANNER wrote: > 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. You can use it like that as well, unlike "one" in English. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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