Re: grammar usage (was: Re: [PATCH 4/4] services: openssh: Add 'subsystems' option.)

[John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>]

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On Fri, Mar 17, 2017 at 11:08:04AM +0000, ng0 wrote:
     John Darrington transcribed 1.1K bytes:
     > On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 08:45:27PM +0000, ng0 wrote:
     > 
     >      ps Cl??ment: 'them'/'they' are pronouns if you don't know the gender and/or
     >      prefered pronoun of a person :)
     > 
     > 
     > ... according to some. -  but most linguists, and many orators (the president of 
     > the Free Software Foundation being one of them) consider this to be a misuse of 
     > the English language and refuse to (mis)use these words for such a purpose.
     > 
     > J'
     >      
     > 
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     You keep mentioning this every time it comes up. It's annoying, really.
     Linguists aren't the central authority of a language.

1.  Yes.  I have mentioned it several times when the subject has been brought up,
and I see no reason why I shouldn't do so the next time it is brought up.

2.  If you find it annoying then - DON'T BRING IT UP.

3.  You are right that linguists are not an authority - I never claimed that
so please don't make a strawman out of that.

     If it's bothering you that much, this is on topic as it is in the
     documentation of Guix, and there are several ways to express gender
     neutral pronouns in some languages. 

4.  So when using those languages I will be all in favour of people using
the correct word for that language.

	"According to linguists" what a
     larger group of people in Germany uses is also a misuse of the language.
     Do they care? No.

5.  That is unfortunate.  As a resident in Germany whose first language is
not German, sometimes I make mistakes when speaking German.  When I do - and
when people take the time to correct me - then I am always grateful to them.
Conversly, I often correct Germans who make mistakes in their English.  Most
appreciate the help - some, like you say, don't care.  But guess what: Das ist
mir Scheissegal!

J'


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