“It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again”
Grammar Nazi? Jawohl!
Look, as Scott observes, language changes over time, and these developments are, in the long view, morally neutral. I’d personally prefer a neologism or three—for example, “shem” as one unisex pronoun—that at least keeps subject and object in agreement with respect to number, but that’s just me. I’m not going to jump on someone if they go all nonbinary on me in conversation, but I reserve the right to roll my eyes (which is apparently known as “microaggression” in some campus circles these days. Rand shrugs. Oops!).
Speaking merely of English, for I remain, unfortunately, a monoglot, the language exists in a state of tension between those who resist, and others who would aggressively further change. If the one camp has its way, English stagnates; if the latter party has its way absent some kind of cultural braking mechanism, English devolves into argot and, increasingly, into mutually incomprehensible dialects. So I range myself with the first camp, and while I’m aware that we can’t stop or even impede these things, we’re performing a useful function by slowing them down. Hell, I’m still waging rearguard actions on the lie/lay and “decimate” battlefields, even though these battles are lost.
Anyway, the issue I really wanted to raise was weed at the state-freakin’ fair.
churlishly,
Look, as Scott observes, language changes over time, and these developments are, in the long view, morally neutral. I’d personally prefer a neologism or three—for example, “shem” as one unisex pronoun—that at least keeps subject and object in agreement with respect to number, but that’s just me. I’m not going to jump on someone if they go all nonbinary on me in conversation, but I reserve the right to roll my eyes (which is apparently known as “microaggression” in some campus circles these days. Rand shrugs. Oops!).
Speaking merely of English, for I remain, unfortunately, a monoglot, the language exists in a state of tension between those who resist, and others who would aggressively further change. If the one camp has its way, English stagnates; if the latter party has its way absent some kind of cultural braking mechanism, English devolves into argot and, increasingly, into mutually incomprehensible dialects. So I range myself with the first camp, and while I’m aware that we can’t stop or even impede these things, we’re performing a useful function by slowing them down. Hell, I’m still waging rearguard actions on the lie/lay and “decimate” battlefields, even though these battles are lost.
Anyway, the issue I really wanted to raise was weed at the state-freakin’ fair.
churlishly,