--responding to @needs native check--
adopted, changed (tried to match Japanese as it's from Tanaka Corpus), believe OK now.
would like comment though. Is it clumsy?
I think the association: "A person...they" is a bit curious...
This is how English works. Get over it.
@Shiawase: No, it sounds fine. (I would probably say "people view things differently", and then sacredceltic couldn't complain.)
>This is how English works. Get over it.
Please remain polite...
>and then sacredceltic couldn't complain
I wasn't "complaining", just merely making a comment on the inconsistency of the subject's number in this sentence.
It's not an inconsistency. It's a compromise between being politically correct and being concise.
>It's not an inconsistency. It's a compromise between being politically correct and being concise.
One can always use "one"...
> One can always use "one"...
Too poetic. This isn't French.
Or too politically correct or logical?
No. Just too poetic.
...and too concise, probably...
Why make it simple when one can make it difficult?
How is using "they" difficult? It's by far the easiest solution.
a person + they / one + one...
It is at the same time more concise more elegant and more consistent
> It is at the same time more concise more elegant and more consistent
to a francophone
As I understand, you want to reform the English language. This is probably not the best place for that.
Thank you for your comments.
This is how I speak English. I can make no apology for that.
I instinctively opt for the use of "they" as a neutral singular pronoun. It is better in my opinion than the she/he preferred by some academics or various other constructions. Until this thread erupted it didn't even register with me that I'd used it here.
It is a fairly common usage now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Nor is it new.
Shakespeare and Thackeray both used it.
The use of "one" is in a different register. As I didn't attend public school (The private and expensive schools in the UK) I don't speak that way. More often than not it would be considered pretentious or called "snobby". It is too correct.
>I can make no apology for that.
Nobody is requesting that. I'm just curious...
It's interesting this concept of ways of speaking being too correct...It's a kind of contraption to avoid speaking like the elite, as if it was wrong to speak correctly...
So in fact, we end up with a complex double political correctedness: avoid hurting genders+avoid using the languahe of the elite...
A typical English social issue, actually.
I say: Off with their heads! Then you can reclaim their vocabulary...
As a passing comment, I think to get the same register as the "one views..." in the Japanese you would need to talk like the cat in 吾輩猫である。At best the Japanese sentence is plain neutral; I can think of at least three higher registers that could be used and I'm sure there's more.
>to avoid speaking like the elite, as if it was wrong to speak correctly.
I don't think it's unique to England. *Everywhere* people are expected to talk like the others in the community. To do otherwise marks you out as a stranger. Judgements will be made about about you based on your speech patterns and accent.
At an extreme, I am sure the French used in the back streets of Marseilles is very different to the French spoken in the academies of Paris. To speak like a rich educated Parisian in the back alleys of Marseilles will mark you out as ripe for mugging I'd suggest.
(They tried beheading with the last Charles. It wasn't very successful, especially for the Irish as Cromwell killed off about 25% of the population. I have no desire to claim the vocabulary of the British elite; I have my own linguistic heritage, from Wilde, Shaw, Beckett, Yeats, Behan, McDonagh, Flann O'Brien, Joyce, Linehan, Doyle..... )
I think what is unique with England is the continuation of a very exclusive elite that still rules, and even gets elected, while at the same time most of the population wants to use a different language from theirs, in order to emphasise their contempt toward this same elite...It's very paradoxical and very unique.
The French never went as far as to avoid common words that make the very fabric of the language just because they would be associated with the elite. They favoured beheading that elite...
The best French is actually not spoken in Paris and the Académie Française is composed of writers from everywhere, including overseas territories and other French speaking countries. So there is no such association of Paris with an elitist language. Actually, the way most Parisians speak French is pretty rough. Of course, you would be able to spot social backgrounds and education on the way it is spoken, but not as much as in England, though. The social divide is not as wide in France.
But England is not the worst. I remember reading that when the Japanese emperor first addressed the population of Japan on the radio to announce the capitulation in 1945, the vast majority of people could not understand what he was saying. That would probably be the acme of social linguistic divide...
I think it's pretty amazing how this discussion has now matched the theme of the sentence being discussed. Coincidence?
>I think it's pretty amazing how this discussion has now matched the theme of the sentence being discussed. Coincidence?
At least we didn't stray off-topic.
@CK
Thanks. With a little more thought I could sidestep issues such as these and save a lot of energy.
>I'm fairly certain that most, if not all, native English speakers know that "they" is used as a gender-neutral pronoun in cases like this. Even in Japan, I think all high school students have been exposed to this usage.
And I'm fairly certain that most japanese learners but also probably many natives themselves ignore the reason for this pirouette. Shiawase revealed here an aspect of "secret social English" that foreigners could not discover by themselves. It's particularly interesting to see that Usians inherited this english social issue although their social organisation is so different...
>With a little more thought I could sidestep issues such as these and save a lot of energy.
As long as people get useful information and background on phrases, I think the ernergy is worth spending.
> Shiawase revealed here an aspect of "secret social English" that foreigners could not discover by themselves.
There's no secret social English.
What I keep trying to say is that the English constructions you seem to like as examples are not the vernacular. They are used by a small proportion of people in particular settings.
It's not even a conscious decision, it's not class war, it's just the way people speak.
It's about the appropriateness of a type of language in a given setting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJa7VzfWJQg
and peoples expectations.
> I think the ernergy is worth spending.
I wonder. I feel equal parts depression and exasperation about it all. In the end I'm not sure it achieves anything at all.
> the English constructions you seem to like
I don't like them particularly. I am just interested in what lies behind the forms and appearences. Here, we see that a convoluted and seemingly inconsistent expression originates from an avoidance to resemble a certain class of individuals. I think this is fascinating and most people, especially foreigners, have no idea of this. I merely point it out...
>I wonder. I feel equal parts depression and exasperation about it all. In the end I'm not sure it achieves anything at all.
Of course, because this is your language, you don't see the point in explaining this because you know it. But Tatoeba is mainly for learners. And I think it is very interesting to them to learn why phrases are the way they are, especially when they reveal social aspects of a society...
The social etymology of sentences is not less interesting than the etymology of words...
I loved your intellectual scaffolders!
This, O my brothers, is the fun part about descriptivism: taking non-linguists who talk funny at their word.
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