X-Received: by 10.66.72.3 with SMTP id z3mr2531971pau.40.1357687151370; Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:19:11 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.50.34.167 with SMTP id a7mr4270393igj.5.1357687151330; Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:19:11 -0800 (PST) Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!newsfeed.news.ucla.edu!usenet.stanford.edu!ld4no4235531pbb.0!news-out.google.com!6ni95569pbd.1!nntp.google.com!f6no6662808pbd.1!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2013 15:19:10 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <__OdnU7WI-raB3HNnZ2dnUVZ_sidnZ2d@earthlink.com> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=69.28.149.29; posting-account=CP-lKQoAAAAGtB5diOuGlDQk0jIwmH0T NNTP-Posting-Host: 69.28.149.29 References: <396e3ff0-2a44-4d8b-917c-3b9205a567a6@googlegroups.com> <__OdnU7WI-raB3HNnZ2dnUVZ_sidnZ2d@earthlink.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <63ee87d3-059b-41c4-b2d5-b73f6a021800@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: java software naming question From: Lew Injection-Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2013 23:19:11 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:21226 Patricia Shanahan wrote: > Also, I distinctly remember being taught in school not to use "they" for > gender-neutral singular. > > Native speakers of a language learn its real rules as infants. For > example, consider the subject-verb-object order of a typical English > declarative sentence. I didn't need to be taught it in school. I did > have to learn that Latin has a different default order. > > Rules native speakers only learn in school are very fragile. If schools > stopped teaching people not to use "they" for gender-neutral singular it > would become the norm in at most a generation. It already is the norm in spoken English, and has been ensconced in classic literature for dozens of generations. Wikipedia quotes a source that it has been in use since the 1300s. Examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Generic_they -- Lew