[Mailman-i18n] was vs. they

[Mikhail Sobolev]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2003 at 10:07:44AM -0700, Ben Gertzfield wrote:
> This is not technically correct English, but it's a very common usage. 
> 
> Since there is no gender-neutral way in English to refer to a person 
> whose gender is unknown (in this case, the owner of the email address) 
> the word "they" in a singular sense is often used for this purpose.
I think that the classical grammar suggests that "she" is the right
replacement.  While in the modern English, this "gender-neutral" "she"
tends to be replaced with "they".

Disclaimer. I am not a native speaker, that's what I was said by a
English teacher. :))

--
Misha
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-i18n/attachments/20030711/c7e64f62/attachment.bin