Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, Syllables, Genders, Email Servers etc.
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 20:10 |
|---|
En réponse à Nik Taylor :
>Does this mean that they can use it where colloquial English uses
>"singular they" or he/she? I.e., an epicene way of referring to humans?
Indeed. I hear it all the time. Quite practical, although I still have
difficulties using it (since in French using a demonstrative as 3rd person
personal pronoun to refer to a person who be rather rude).
On a related note, In Dutch "kind": child and "baby" (yeah, they just
borrowed the word) are neuter, and people don't mind using "het" to refer
to a child or a baby. *That* is difficult to get used to (in my idea,
babies are quite animate, and thus when hearing "het" in a conversation
about a baby I don't automatically associate the pronoun with the baby. So
I try to understand by context what people are talking about, and when I
realise they were simply referring to the baby they usually changed the
conversation subject. Sigh...).
Christophe Grandsire.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.
Reply