BS: Plural of you

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: 53
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 01:33 PM

yous.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,iggy folk
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 01:35 PM

Well 'y'all' would certainly not get my attention, but 'youse' would. I guess it would be the same if I heard another teacher use the word 'ain't' on a regular basis. That's not regional, it simply *is* bad grammar. At least I think it is, but I'm starting to get confused now.

iggy

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Chip2447
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 01:40 PM

Hey youse guys, all y'all need to lighten up a little, this aint like axing a question.
    I have to say that AX drives me bonkers.
    I dont think I have ever heard anyone use the word yous. Always the two of you, or you three, you guys.

Chip2447

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Mooh
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 01:40 PM

MudGuard...The teacher is at least 10, if not 15 or more years my junior.

chip a...Superior? I don't feel that way at all. This has to do the the appropriate use of language. Introducing it as a discussion topic has to do with gathering opinion from a very wide cross-section of society, hoping to receive input from an even wider geographic area. In the process I (and we) reveal our character to each other. I'm sorry if you read it as superiority. I am learning that I very much do not share my opinion with everyone on this matter, and I am getting some interesting education in return. Thanks be to Mudcat.

Thanks for your interest.

Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: treewind
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 01:53 PM

MMario, "thou" is an old form that is specifically singular.

The only specific plural of "you" I know of (and I have heard people use it that way in living memory) is "ye". It's very useful sometimes too, for making that distinction.

Now all we need is a word to distinguish
"we" (you and I) from
"we" (other persons(s) and I)
and similar for "our" and "us"

Anahata

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 02:00 PM

Perhap the "learned" correction stems from the "teach" watching American television. Lernt (learnt?)- as an American, I even have trouble spelling it, it is seldom used.
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says: "Learnt- Chiefly Brit. past and past part. of learn." As such, I changed it (and similar words) when I was editing for an American journal, but left it alone if the journal was international.
My learned friend- we are taught to use the pronunciation, learnéd. (See Webster's).

A sister-in-law who taught in Georgia emphasized "you" for formal or written speech, but you all for conversational, informal speech. These regional concessions must be made. She taught that "all you all" was redundant; you was singular and you all was pl.

Bagpuss, I spent a few weeks in the Edinburgh area. When I arrived, I was unfamiliar with the region, and approached a table (drinking establishment of course) to ask directions- with some trepidation, because I could only understand the odd word (including whissst!). They answered in good grammatical English. As I left they switched back. I hope that the dialect and vernacular of regions are not lost- they should be taught along with what, I think you call it, the "Queen's English." I have posted this in another similar discussion; if you saw it, forgive the repetition.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,Retired Teacher
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 02:13 PM

Here is the US at least, the kids learn to speak English from television, the grammar and the pronounciation as well--this creates an antiseptic sameness in children's language that can be quite disconcerting to those of us who began teaching when regional "accents" were widespread--

I recently visited a town in Massachussetts where I had worked, many years ago, only to find that the charming and distinctive "Boston" accent has nearly disappeared--and along with it, many delightful phrases and figures of speech--There was little to quarrel about, grammatically, but, the conversation was a little dull--

Teachers once spoke a rather overcorrected and somewhat artificial sort of English that we vigorously imposed on our pupils--who could blame us? They spoke a thousand variants of English, each with its own peculiar vernacular--but each also had its own brash style, and sadly, we seem to have lost that, as well--

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 02:14 PM

It's not a good idea for "standard English" to get too out of line with vernacular English. In practice some version of "yez" or "yous" or "y'all" and so forth is the normal way people talk to each other, because there's a gap in "standard English". Nothing to do with sloppy use of language, just natural logical language development, and nobody every gets confused about what it means when they come across a different variant.

There is lazy language and there are ways of talking which get in the way of communication (glottal stops and so forth - "wo' a lo' o' bo'ols" for example, for "what a lot of bottles"), and it's a good idea to try to help enable people to speak in a way that is easy to understand.

But people who fuss about expressions like "yous" or "ain't" are just making it harder for people to concentrate on encouraging people to avoid using language in ways that do interfere with communication and that can limit opportunities. That kind of niggling just provides an easy way to make such efforts appear futile and ridiculous.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: CapriUni
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 02:19 PM

From Art Thieme:

I have always come out on stage and said, "Howdy folks !" Quite often this got an almost instantasneous and judgmentally questioning, "HOWDY???" back from some member of the audience----as if I had just revealed myself to be some sort of less-than-educated urban hayseed.

"Howdy" is, of course, a contraction of the older "How do ye do?" Which, as followers of this thread will note, is specifically addressed to the second person plural... But as I've never heard "Howthee", I suspect it came into practice in the last 200 years or so, after "thee" was dropped from common speach. It's the same sort of contraction as Good-bye, which is a contraction of "God be wi'(th) ye."

So, unless that audience member also thinks "Good-bye" is bad grammar, she or he should not complain about "Howdy."

As for Quakers using Thee and thou for every (single) body, not just their social superiors, well, that's not bad grammar, that's using grammar properly to make a point -- the point being that Quakers (or more properly, Friends) hold as one of their central tenets of faith that there are no "social superiors"... that we are all equal members of a human family. Of course, this really gets up the nose of all those who base the value of their existance on being socially superior to others... That, also, was the point. ;-)

Grammar conscious Quakers will use "thou" for the nominative singular, "thee" for the objective singular, and "you" and "ye" for the plural of both, respectively...

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: InOBU
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 03:11 PM

Someone beat me to it. ye. Larry

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 03:17 PM

"Axe" as in "to ask" goes back at least to Middle English. Chaucer is full of people who axe each other questions. It is interesting to me that something once so common is now considered incorrect.

I say "ain't" all the time in informal situations. I would not use it in a formal situation; i.e., (egg?!) teaching a class or making a presentation.

Regional dialects make speech more interesting and fun. And it isn't just in English, either.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 03:29 PM

I suspect those eggs are probably the work of an over enthusiastic spellchecker that hasn't been checked.

"Ain't" is perfectly good English; just as good as "aren't" or "can't"; it's a bit odd the way that the compoanion contraction "amn't" has dropped out of use.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 03:45 PM

Adding thread creep to thread creep- Art Thieme reminded me that Minnie Pearl always came on stage with "How-DY!" at the Grand Old Opry. The audience (including the radio audience) hollered back "How-DY!," and was immediately ready and in a good mood for her routines.
Re Retired Teacher's comments, the complaint about speech being uniform in America was already being made around 1900. My grandather published a column about a traveling member of English nobility who bemoaned the lack of variety in the spoken American Language.

Retired teacher is correct about television. It has not only standardized the language but also spread incorrect usage, such as "co-vert" for cov-ert. Dictionaries have changed to incorporate the new majority pronunciation. The loss of affect and effect to "impact" may be laid at its feet as well.
There is an element of truth to "proactive," however. You immediately know that the speaker may be in favor of something, but will do nothing to implement it.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: chip a
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 04:24 PM

Mooh,
You said yokel and you question all her abilities based on the use of one word. Maybe I misunderstood you?
:-) Chip

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GutBucketeer
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 05:06 PM

When I was in third grade my teacher, Miss McKissik, taught us the proper use of you singular as you, and you plural as y'all which is a contraction of "you all". She was from Mississippi and explained very simply that yankees just didn't have the sense to speak correctly. We wrote it out and everything. Of course, if y'all is used inappropriately then it is a real sign of ignorance.

Gutbucketeer

So there!

Now what gets me is when people use lighted instead of lit such as "I lighted the lamp".

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 05:10 PM

well - depends on whether we are talking second person familiar or second person formal. Thee was familiar, thou formal, You (which some people argue was actually pronounced 'thou' - but when printing became common the less educated read the thorn as a 'y' and it became 'you' )

MMario touched on the answer to part of this discussion, and I'll give illustrations. There will be a test following the lecture.

What is being discussed here is "grammar," which is another word in linguistic circles for "manners." We all communicate, and whether we use Yous or You or Thou, we make ourselves understood. That is communications. How we do it, the words we choose ("grammar"), are simply a form of manners, (does one know the proper word to choose in which occasion? Is a subject or object or direct object involved, i.e. who/whom discussions?).

We're also seeing the effect of the printing press. The "Thou vs You" discussion comes from the removal by early printers of the "thorn" or Th combination. Th was simplified to Y. So "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe" should be pronounced THE Olde Coffee Shoppe because the Y is supposed to represent the TH sound. But we can read and we know what Y in most instances is supposed to sound like so we've corrupted this spoken bit of our language in preference to the written form.

I learned this the hard way, so pay attention, any of you who think your English is so superior to anyone else's that you must correct them. Back in my uppity undergraduate days when I must have thought I was god's gift to the English language I took a letter from a friend, corrected his English, and mailed it back. And promptly lost that friend. Someone told me years later why I'd never heard from him again--that he'd been devastated by this little act that I hadn't thought about in years. I hope you're all blushing as you read this--I am as I write it. It was unconscionable. I had a wonderful class in the mid-1990's on the History and Development of the English Langauge. I remember, at the beginning of the class, thinking how amusing it must sound when this professor, with a broad West Texas accent, taught Shakespeare (another of his specialties) with that accent. As we proceeded through the course, I realized how snobbish I'd been. And now I make a point to focus on what people are trying to say. We all use language differently, and post colonial theorists will tell you that captive cultures have wonderfully witty ways of "signifying" to get double meanings into their use of English (in this context) as the colonizer's language. Language serves lots of masters.

All of this said, before my master's in English and learning all of this great stuff, I didn't want my children to grow up with a Texas drawl, so I corrected them if they came home from school or play with some of these dipthongs peppering their speech. I'm from north of Seattle, and have Norwegian inflections in my English. I have realized that my children are bilingual. At home they speak English that to my ears is unaccented. But with their friends they have a few Texas terms that creep in. I now know better than to worry about it.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Mooh
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 06:45 PM

chip a...Perhaps I haven't made my point well, but the point is that in a professional capacity a rather unprofessional use of language (I thought, though there are obviously those who disagree) does not represent a teacher's abilities well. I characterized the expression as a yokel colloquialism, so what? I'm a yokel too, but I wouldn't use language in a such an unschooled way when the situation calls for a schooled manner of speech. Besides, my use of language here in Mudcatville is not the same as the situation I described in my original post. As I described, apparently the teacher uses the expression regularly with students, so I think I have some justification for my misgivings.

I'd rather "yous" wasn't used in the classroom, and the teacher's use of it in a meeting led me to discover that it is. If that's all it is, so be it. If it's an indicator of other things, I'm concerned.

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear, chip.

Thanks all for your input, this has been an interesting and enlightening chat.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Mrrzy
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 06:49 PM

I'm trying to use the Quaker thee when talking to just ONE of the twins, so they don't ask Both of us or just me? - and You for the plural, but I also like You/Y'All, since I live in the South and it's everywhere... but I don't say either thee or y'all in constrained circumstances.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 02 - 06:54 PM

If speaking to both, Mrz, how about "th'all"? Makes it clear that personal closeness is still implied. :>)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Mr Red
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 08:29 AM

Winston Churchill was there long since when he said.

"This is the kind of English, up with which we will not put."

Mind you I think is body language was a bit more colloqial.

V

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Declan
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 10:37 AM

While I don't get that upset about you,Yiz, Yous, Ye etc. there is one thing that I find quite irritating and that is where people use the Present Participle in situations where I would have thought the past participle was more appropriate.

For example many of the English people reading this post will probably think "That Declan needs his head examining", whereas I would think it more correct to say "That Declan needs his head examined".

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: katlaughing
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 11:15 AM

This is a good case for children learning manners, as SRS says, from their parents. If they know what is correct then the teacher's usage should not be a problem, though I wouldn't care for her use of it, either.

I've always used you guys until I had a wonderful professor from Africa point out to me that I was excluding all members of the same sex as myself, so I swtiched to you folks. Of course, all bets are off at Mudcat where some of us like to hone our skills at writing in the venacular!

There are always going to be elements in our children's lives which don't meet our standards. All we can do is teach them what we feel if proper and know that it usually sticks.:-)

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 11:27 AM

"Guy" can refer to women, just the same way "bird" can refer to men (viz PG Wodehouse books).

I suspect "you guys" may well be more common among women these days than among men.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 11:30 AM

Amos, is that the thee-all and end all?

We could always revert to the German "du" for the informal you and "sie" for the formal and plural. If we do that, we could also follow the German example and not call anyone du until we sit sit down and share a drink and agree to be informal. Of course, for those of us who don't drink, this could also create an issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: chip a
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 11:30 AM

I think that focusing on our differences causes.........differences! Of course we are all different and differences in our speech can be a celebration of that. When we think of another as somehow inferior because of this kind of difference, though, we set the stage for our own basest characteristics to come to the fore.
"Every time I go to town, the boys start kickin' my dog around" Well, it is a music forum!
Sorry, Mooh. It's me being overly defensive rather than you being superior.

:-)
Chip

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: InOBU
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 11:35 AM

Silly RIver! Right you are, the y without the bend on the end was a different sound then the y with the curl, it represted a thorn and was called, funny enough, a thorn. So ye would have been pronounced the in ye old tavern, but ye as the plural of you would have had the curl and been pronouced ye, ... cheers Larry

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,Kim C no cookie
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 12:12 PM

EBarnacle, it isn't even as simple as that.... "sie" can also mean "she" or "it" or "they" or "them." Then there's "Sie" with a capital S, which is you-formal.............

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 12:42 PM

When I moved to WVa from Phila( where we regularly said "youse or you guys", I was politely informed of the proper way to say the plural of you. I asked a few friends "What are youse doing this weekend?" They asked "What is youse?" I said "You and you are youse!" They said "No man, That's y'all" And actually "Y'all" really does flow off the tongue quite smoothly!

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Burke
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 12:47 PM

This being the US, land using first names immediately upon introduation, any revival of 2nd person singular, whether thee or du should be applied as the Quakers did (do?) to everyone.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 01:14 PM

Stilly--InOBU--a shortened local term for the Stillaguamish River.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 01:43 PM

When I worked at Boeing some years ago, the woman who worked at the next drawing table was from Texas, and she had quite a—what?—accent? Drawl? Anyway, she mentioned that one of her relatives had "three all way-ulls" in his back yard. It took some probing to learn that he had three oil wells in his back yard! She and I got to discussing regional accents and general use of language. Very enlightening. It's not necessarily ignorance or general lack of education.

She pointed out that comedians or actors trying to imitate a Southern accent usually get it all wrong. On the matter of "you all" (or "y'all"), she explained to me that it's not just a regionalism; it communicates something specific. "If I'm having a dinner party and I say 'why don't you come?' I mean 'you.' Just you. But if I say 'why don't y'all come?' I mean 'bring your family.'"

Makes perfect sense to me.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 01:46 PM

Good point, Kim C, I took German too long ago. Unfortunately, there are no simple solutions in life. There are, however, elegant ones. Why not start over with a new set of terms? That way the words would carry no his{make that her}story.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 02:33 PM

Plenty of people have tried the kind of thing EBarnacle suggests. Can't be done. Language doesn't work that way.

But people somehow always seem to invent new ways of dealing with the difficulties - in spite of the efforts of other people to stop them.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 04:00 PM

MMario et al: "thou" is singular; "ye" is plural.

Beyond that, methinks this thread proves little beyond the universal compulsion to fill up dialog boxes. Otherwise we could debate the relative merits of the French youx, the Hebrew youim, the Polynesian you-you, the Latin youii, the Pigeon you-fella, the Spanish youes, the German youen and the phonetic uu.

CC

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 04:19 PM

Charlie, we just haven't gotten that far, yet. We might, though. We are enjoying ourselves and shooting bull at each other, with no harm done to anyone. There's even a little real information built in.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: GUEST,Lyle
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 04:38 PM

Gosh, and here I've been wrong all these years when I say things like, "May I yous your pen?"

This is really a nonsense discussion. There is one and only one language that is pure and uniform - MATHEMATICS!!

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: CapriUni
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 05:15 PM

Okay, now that I'm thinking about it... (dangerous thing, thinking ;-)), which is correct:

Thou is
or
Thou are (or "art")?

Since "thou" is singular, my first thought is "thou is ___" is correct. But I've almost always heard it as "thou art ____" instead...

Just wondering...

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 05:31 PM

I am
Thou art
He she or it is
We are
You are
They are.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Snuffy
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 06:41 PM

I do
thou dost
he/she/it does
we/you/they do

I have
thou hast
he/she/it has
we/you/they have

etc etc

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 07:01 PM

When I was taking Grade 10 English the teacher overheard one of my classmates say youse guys. He very dramtically said "You use a hammer, you use a saw, you DON'T youse guys". It's stuck with me ever since.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 07:06 PM

But isn't doing precisely that the basis of the economic system under which we exist?

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: CapriUni
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 07:27 PM

Thanks, Snuffy and McGrath!

I've got it now, I think...

One thing about this dropping of "Thou/Thee" -- it sure does lead to fuzzier thinking about language.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: mmb
Date: 31 Oct 02 - 11:31 PM

Uh-oh! I feel a lecture coming on . . .

I thought I was NEVER going to reach the end of this thread!!! But I read every message, and mentally crossed out items I might have addressed when I saw they had been more than adequately dispatched.

Right up front, a disclaimer: I am not only a former teacher and principal, but am now a central office administrator, responsible for managing the state certification and subsequent professional development programs of some 900 Catholic-school teachers in Florida's Tampa Bay area. I am also in my 60's, and agree whole-heartedly that part of the issue under discussion is generational, part is regional, and part has to do with the expectations parents have of those with whom they share the responsibility (Dare I say "privilege"?) of educating their children.

Previous postings have touched upon formal vs informal speech, sensitivity to colloquialisms, and an ear for dialects. There have been several references to what might be called "a sense of the appropriate." Sociology was invoked to help explain the "creep" of what were formerly considered inflexible rules of grammar and syntax. And psychology goes a long way towards explaining the intensity (or lack thereof) when long-internalized rules appear to be de-valued in critical circumstances (such as the education of our children). The very fact that there are rules or conventions governing the use of language is as important to some as it is irritating to others, and the lack of consensus is - to me - the real crux of this thread, on both sides of The Pond. As an example, permit me a little thread-creep, please, into my own personal angst at two flagrant, pervasive, seemingly ubiquitous and irreversible corruptions of grammar and syntax in current popular American speech and writing.   (One is only marginally thread-creep, I think, because it jumped out at me as I read the very first posting in this thread, and I read all the way through to see if even one other person would address it. Unless it happened while I was writing this, I rest my case.)
   
But first: It seems that wherever one turns today it is impossible to avoid substitution of the plural "their" for the singular "his or her" when the antecedent is singular, e.g., "Who left their book on the table?" I haven't yet seen it in textbooks, but when I hear it defended as "gender-neutral language," or as "ink and space economical," it's like fingernails running down my mental chalkboard.   
   
The second strikes me as even more egregious because - to me, at least - it represents the failure of an entire generation of teachers to instill just a tidbit of critical judgement into deciding when to use "I" or "me" in association with another person. In fact, most Americans today automatically default to "I" in all situations, because all they remember is being told repeatedly to say "xxx and I" - with no context applied. What I, and my generation of teachers learned to teach was a simple test: Which would you substitute for "XXX and I/me," "We" or "Us"? If you would say "We," then the correct choice is "XXX and I." No one has trouble seeing the error of "Us did it," but don't realize that that is the reason why "Tom and me did it" is incorrect form. In like manner, if one can see clearly why it is not acceptable usage to say "The teacher addressed WE," why is it so difficult to transfer that judgement to the correct form: ". . . the teacher addressed my wife and ME?"

I think I need to avoid threads that set me into lecture mode. Happy what's-left-of-Hallowe'en, youse-all! M. : )

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Jon Bartlett
Date: 01 Nov 02 - 12:09 AM

Thanks, mmb, some good points. Who, by the by (an American ?novelist) wrote: "He heard a knock at the door. 'Whom is it?' he said, because he had been to college."

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 01 Nov 02 - 04:01 AM

It sure sounds like Garrison Keillor, Jon, but I suspect it's earlier than that...maybe James Thurber?

But I was going to make a nitpicking point that doesn't seem to have been made yet--possibly because it's wrong! I seem to recall reading somewhere that Quakers didn't use "thou" but instead used "thee" for both subject and object.   Am I just making that up, or is it true?

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: IanC
Date: 01 Nov 02 - 05:11 AM

Mark

You're making it up.

Anyway, Quakers use "You" now, like everybody else. Some, from meetings around Fritchley in Derbyshire, continued the usage into the 1970s and wore formal "old" quaker costumes too. In the early 70s, though, the few who were left rejioned the main body of the Society.

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: Declan
Date: 01 Nov 02 - 05:24 AM

mmb,

The use of the term they/their in the singular has been in use in many parts of Ireland for years. It isn't something that came from a desire for gender neutrality. I know a lot of blatantly sexist people who use this all the time. But it is a form I like because it does serve that purpose. I've heard people tie themselves up in knots in only a few short sentences because they've insisted in using He or she and his or her every time they (or should I say he or she) needed to use one of these pronouns. Its sometimes difficult to get a point across if this sort of verbosity is required.

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Nov 02 - 07:54 AM

"Their", in situations where strict grammar would indicate "his or her", seems to me a perfectly logical and convenient development of language.

I see it as analogous to the way that the formerly plural "you" has come to be accepted as the normal singular second person (resulting in a perceived need for a replacement plural second person, met by such terms as "yous" or "yez" or "y'all", and this remarkable thread.)

But I'm with you all the way, mmb, on the I - me issue, when it arises from a failed and misplaced attempt to sound correct. (Leaving aside the separate issue which arises when what is involved in using the "wrong" personal pronoun isn't that, but reflects a regional or dialect usage.)

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: HuwG
Date: 01 Nov 02 - 09:06 AM

mmn quoth thus:

"It seems that wherever one turns today it is impossible to avoid substitution of the plural "their" for the singular "his or her" when the antecedent is singular..."

There is a story of some magistrate in Britain, with apparently only a fuzzy grasp of grammar and political correctness, who said when passing sentence, "It is clear from the evidence that you felled your victim with a head-butt, and then kicked your victim in their testicles..."

Subject: RE: BS: Plural of you
From: annamill
Date: 01 Nov 02 - 09:17 AM

Gee. I always thought it was spelt "youse", but I grew up in New Jersey.

**BG**

Love, Annamill