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[Python-Dev] Vagaries of "their" in English (was Re: Support the /usr/bin/python2 symlink upstream)

Jack Diederich jackdied at gmail.com
Sat Mar 5 07:25:18 CET 2011 
On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
>> That's how I felt 20 years ago. But since then I've come to appreciate
>> they as a much better alternative to either "he or she" or "he". Just
>> get used to it.
>
> If anyone wants to further explore this question, the Stack Exchange
> on English usage is a decent place to start:
> http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/192/is-it-correct-to-use-their-instead-of-his-or-her
>
> What it boils down to is that "their" is the least bad of all of the
> available options.

No wonder that thread went to 100+ replies.

Can we cut English some slack here?  Unlike most other languages we
don't assign nouns, like rocks and sofas, a gender.  Personally I'd be
happier if everyone switched to using "she," instead of revolting
against the old default of using "he" by using the ear jarring "he or
she," or the dissonant "their."  For an amusing take on how a well
intentioned attempt to make the written law more pleasingly "correct"
see this post[1] (the ambiguous pronouns resulted in an ambiguous
statute).

English is highly mutable so I expect this will all shake out in a
generation or two.  Or maybe not - we still don't have a common word
that means a positive answer to a negative question despite centuries
of want.

-Jack

[1] http://volokh.com/2011/03/04/the-strange-glitch-in-the-rhode-island-rules-of-evidence/
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