python vs c#

[Alex Martelli]

Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
   ...
> pedant I had real trouble with. It reads "Some village in Texas is 
> missing their idiot", and the reason for my perplexity was, while I feel

Aha, I have my pet anti-peeve on that one issue, _singular "their"_ (and
"they", but we can argue that one once the easier possessive case is
more accepted;-).  I may have read and appreciated too much 18th-century
and earlier English...;-) -- anyway,
<http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html> expresses my own
feelings in the matter pretty well (lots of useful links from that page,
too).

> this week, I'm much more prepared to let people break the rules when I
> think that they realize they *are* breaking the rules. I have less 
> patience with those who either don't know (sad) or don't care 
> (inexcusable) about the rules.

And what about those of us who are convinced that (some of) the rules
are _wrong_ -- that '''18th-century grammarians started making arbitrary
judgements as to what is "good English" and "bad English", based on a
kind of pseudo-"logic" deduced from the Latin language, that has nothing
whatever to do with English''', and that such _bloopers_ as the ban
against "singular their" (and other even more blatant cases, such as the
ban against "splitting ifinitives" and against ending a sentence with a
preposition...) should be fought against...?


> > called (with an expensive Latin term) "constructio ad sensum", i.e. you
> > conjugate the verb in accordance with what the word represents, rather than
> > with what it grammatically is. 
> > 
> Ultimately, language is intended to serve the purpose of communication,
> and we shouldn't be too upset to see it mangled as long as it serves 
> that purpose. But when I hear politicians speak in sentences that don;t
> even make sense (and hear rooms full of people applauding them, making
> it obvious that no critical thought intervenes), *then I start to get my
> dander up. There'll be a special room in hell for people who don;t 
> understand that language is *the* critical component of thought.

I have no disagreement whatsoever with this.  But the "rules of
language" (mostly, a kind of guidelines...;-) that one should cherish
for proper communication may often have little to do with grammar per
se.  Passive forms are grammatically correct, for example, but more
often than not they make expression of ideas needlessly contorted -- we
see a lot of those in technical and scientific writing, where we're
often shy about choosing a _subject_ for our sentences... and often
strive to avoid a singular "they"!-).  Politicians (not necessarily the
kind that run for elections) love the obfuscation passives often bring,
of course.  "Singular 'they' is widely considered incorrect", for
example, craftily avoids naming a subject _because any subject would
point out the thesis' weakness_ -- by saying "Pedants widely consider
..." one would reveal one's colors, by saying "Native speakers of
English widely consider ..." one would express a direct lie that's
easily shown up as such.

Admittedly, the role of language is often to communicate _with
ambiguity_ -- this may be sad, or even morally repugnant, but it's a
fact... language evolved as a survival trait of human beings, and pretty
often being able to communicate with ambiguity, so as to trick somebody
and yet later be able to defend the claim that all you said was
perfectly true, is obviously adaptive.  Creative ambiguity has often
been the only way some treatise or contract could be "sold" to the
voters or stockholders of both nations or firms, enabling the
politicians or executives of each side to interpret the words that were
being signed in such a way as to mollify their constituency...

So, in fighting to express ourselves clearly and directly, we _are_
indeed fighting against the grain of a substantial portion of language's
biological purpose (helped, fortunately, by _another_ portion of it;-).
In this fight, good rules help (particularly, they help a good writer
who's able to pick the one case in a hundred where even a good rule is
best broken in the advantage of clarity and directness), but bad rules
hinder even more...


Alex