Warp wrote:
> Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>> (has the
>> shift from using "humanity" instead of "mankind", or "businessperson"
>> instead of "businessman" damaged anything?)
> 
>   The latter sounds to me like ridiculously PC hypercorrection. A totally
> abstract construct, not a natural developement of the language.

	It may not yet have overtaken businessman, but it's quite common here.
I doubt it raises any eyebrows.

	Same goes for layperson.

	Sure, no doubt it did seem that way when people started using it. A
generation or two later, it will be the norm. I can't seem to find any
argument against it other than "sounds weird".

	For the record (Merriam Webster):

businessman: a man who transacts business; especially : a business executive




-- 
Whose cruel idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have a "S" in it?


                    /\  /\               /\  /
                   /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                       >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                   anl

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Rune <aut### [at] runevisioncom> wrote:
> Conversely, I 
> think the sentence below with "he" sounds very weird:

> "Readers of women's magazines are not known to be very loyal. If a reader 
> finds that his favourite magazine have gotten pricier than it used to be, he 
> will often tend to buy a different one instead."

  I can honestly say that the use of "he" did not sound odd or out-of-place
to me at all in that sentence. Maybe it's because I'm so used to using "he"
as the neutral pronoun.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Mueen Nawaz <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
>         It may not yet have overtaken businessman, but it's quite common here.
> I doubt it raises any eyebrows.

>         Same goes for layperson.

  I always notice specifically when someone uses "person" instead of "man"
in a common term like those. If the "man" is used instead, I don't even pay
attention. It sounds completely normal to me.

  The fact that I specifically notice it as something a bit out-of-place
means that I feel that it's artificial and an attemp at being hypercorrect.

  OTOH, I'm not a native speaker.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sat, 09 Feb 2008 09:35:42 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> On 8 Feb 2008 13:06:28 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> 
>>  English lacks a gender-neutral pronoun for people
> 
> Well put, I for one won't argue with that.
> 
> Regards
> 	Stephen

"They" and "Them" is about as close as we get in modern usage, but to me 
it sounds awkward.

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> Rune wrote:
>> Conversely, I
>> think the sentence below with "he" sounds very weird:
>
>> "Readers of women's magazines are not known to be very loyal. If a reader
>> finds that his favourite magazine have gotten pricier than it used to be, 
>> he
>> will often tend to buy a different one instead."
>
>  I can honestly say that the use of "he" did not sound odd or out-of-place
> to me at all in that sentence. Maybe it's because I'm so used to using 
> "he"
> as the neutral pronoun.

Hmm. Okay.

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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In article <47ae4a7c$1@news.povray.org>, aut### [at] runevisioncom 
says...
> 
> Warp wrote:
> > Rune wrote:
> >> Conversely, I
> >> think the sentence below with "he" sounds very weird:
> >
> >> "Readers of women's magazines are not known to be very loyal. If a rea
der
> >> finds that his favourite magazine have gotten pricier than it used to 
be, 
> >> he
> >> will often tend to buy a different one instead."
> >
> >  I can honestly say that the use of "he" did not sound odd or out-of-pl
ace
> > to me at all in that sentence. Maybe it's because I'm so used to using
 
> > "he"
> > as the neutral pronoun.
> 
> Hmm. Okay.
> 
> Rune
> 
Actually, where it bugs me is in customer service. You never use he/she, 
but you use sir, mam, miss, mrs, etc., and its too damn easy when tired 
and/or distracted to mess that up. Something like "ker" which was used 
in C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series as a kind of general honorific would be 
a whole hell of a lot less a) embarassing, b) insulting to people that 
are offended easy, and c) likely to be misused. So, yeah, I would vote 
for some set of gender neutral words too.

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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> Actually, where it bugs me is in customer service. You never use he/she, 
> but you use sir, mam, miss, mrs, etc., and its too damn easy when tired 
> and/or distracted to mess that up. Something like "ker" which was used 
> in C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series as a kind of general honorific would be 
> a whole hell of a lot less a) embarassing, b) insulting to people that 
> are offended easy, and c) likely to be misused. So, yeah, I would vote 
> for some set of gender neutral words too.

Quoting a site:

I took a call from a customer who sounded like quite a nice old lady. 
Querying the customer database through the serial number, I found the 
customer's name to be "Carol" and her surname to be impossibly long and 
presumably Eastern European. Fortunately -- or so I thought at first -- 
she didn't want tech support and was only calling to claim a free 
software offer that was a part of the packaged bundle. I checked on the 
issue and the offer had expired a good three months before.

  * Me: "I'm sorry, ma'am, but the offer has expired."
  * Customer: "What?"
  * Me: "This offer has expired, ma'am, I'm sor--"
  * Customer: (her soprano turning into a growling contralto) "What do 
you mean it has expired? I've got the right to get my free CD! I paid 
for it! You will give me my CD."
  * Me: (explained again)
  * Customer: "Oh yeah? I'll talk to your supervisor, then."

Sure, escalate the call, but she wasn't going to get it. I told her so 
in the nicest and sweetest of the tones I'm capable of.

  * Customer: "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU ANY MORE. GET-ME-YOUR-SUPERVISOR!"

Wow, talk about getting emotional. I called my supervisor who would take 
the escalated call and try to talk some sense into her, but he failed. 
The call escalated a second time as the area supervisor took the call 
and once more as the shift supervisor took over.

I couldn't believe it. There we were, all four of us sitting in a row, 
listening to the call that -- for an encore -- got escalated once more. 
A customer satisfaction specialist took the call and didn't do any better.

We decided to roll it around once more and patched her through another 
tech, who finally placed and solved the ACTUAL problem.

  * Tech Support: "Your name is Carol...what? Oh sure, yes SIR...sure, 
I'll fix your entry in our database right away."

Or hanging jaws nearly hit the floor. "Carol" was A GUY -- even though 
he sounded like a Powerpuff girl -- and we had all been calling him 
"Ma'am" all along. The whole company laughed at this for almost a week.

-- http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_comeagain.shtml

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> In article <47ae4a7c$1@news.povray.org>, aut### [at] runevisioncom 
> says...
>> Warp wrote:
>>> Rune wrote:
>>>> Conversely, I
>>>> think the sentence below with "he" sounds very weird:
>>>> "Readers of women's magazines are not known to be very loyal. If a reader
>>>> finds that his favourite magazine have gotten pricier than it used to be, 
>>>> he
>>>> will often tend to buy a different one instead."
>>>  I can honestly say that the use of "he" did not sound odd or out-of-place
>>> to me at all in that sentence. Maybe it's because I'm so used to using 
>>> "he"
>>> as the neutral pronoun.
>> Hmm. Okay.
>>
>> Rune
>>
> Actually, where it bugs me is in customer service. You never use he/she, 
> but you use sir, mam, miss, mrs, etc., and its too damn easy when tired 
> and/or distracted to mess that up. Something like "ker" which was used 
> in C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series as a kind of general honorific would be 
> a whole hell of a lot less a) embarassing, b) insulting to people that 
> are offended easy, and c) likely to be misused. So, yeah, I would vote 
> for some set of gender neutral words too.
> 

I never get called sir when I call customer support, but if I show up in
a store I get either sir or ma'am split about 50/50. You create a
general honorific, and you ruin half the fun I have of actually shopping
in stores instead of online!

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> Actually, where it bugs me is in customer service. You never use he/she, 
> but you use sir, mam, miss, mrs, etc., and its too damn easy when tired 
> and/or distracted to mess that up.

  I like Finnish in this regard: There are no gender-specific pronouns,
and while some words equivalent to "sir/madam/etc" exist, they are not
in common usage. Instead, if you want to address someone politely, you
use the polite version of "you", which is still gender-neutral. (The polite
"you" in Finnish is the plural second-person pronoun. I think this is
something common to many languages, including Finnish.)

  Of course this doesn't mean that there's no possibility for messing up
in any context. For example addressing someone by name in third-person in
a very formal context (especially writing) often requires using the
equivalent for "Mr", "Mrs" or "Miss" in Finnish (it has all three).
However, mistakes with these are less frequent because they are seldom
used (especially in spoken language). They are only used in very formal
situations, which are often different from just being polite.

  The need to use "Mr", "Mrs" or "Miss" in spoken Finnish is greatly
reduced by the fact that addressing people by name is uncommon, and not
really part of the culture. Addressing by name, and especially attaching
those honorifics, usually implies formalism.

  This is sometimes actually a tiny problem for Finnish people when they
go to other countries. For example, in the US it's very common to address
people by their name. If I'm not mistaken, it's considered more or less
polite there to address someone by name, and they use the other person's
name rather often when talking with them. Not mentioning the other person's
name even once might be perceived as being rude.

  Finnish people are not accustomed to address people by their name, and
they may sometimes give a slightly rude image of themselves when they go
to the US or other countries where this is different.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sat, 9 Feb 2008 20:49:09 -0700, Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:

>in C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series 

I liked that, ker.

Regards
	Stephen

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