Re: [PATCH] Update English pronoun usage to comply with GNU Kind Communication Guidelines

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

Mikko Rantalainen skreiv 27.09.2020 14:40:
> > So, IMHO, this patch in an improvement to the documentation.
> Your patch included lots of grammatical errors and touched lots of
> places where gender-specific pronouns were not used. If you think this
> kind of change is important to you, you must be the one using extra time
> to come up with high quality patches.

I’m sorry if this wasn’t clear, but I am *not* the patch author. I’m 
just a normal gettext user.


> The patch you suggested requires reader to accept "singular they" which
> is not commonly used anywhere

It actually is. It’s very much on the uprise. So much that it’s been 
chosen as the ‘Word of The Year’ in 2019 by Merriam Webster:
https://time.com/5746516/merriam-webster-word-of-the-year-2019/
And ‘Word of the Decade’ by The American Dialect Society:
https://www.americandialect.org/2019-word-of-the-year-is-my-pronouns-word-of-the-decade-is-singular-they


> and is considered an error by many, especially in formal writing.

It’s also been (to a more or less degree) accepted by major style 
guides, e.g., the APA Style Guide 
https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they.


> If you want to avoid gender specific
> pronouns, you have to use "he or she" (or "she or he") everywhere or
> always use real prular forms or passive form for everything.

While ‘he or she’ is less gender-specific, it is a bit clumsy, and it’s 
actually *not* gender-neutral; i.e., it excludes non-binary gettext users.


> If you*feel*  that the English*language*  must be fixed, submitting patches to
> random software projects is not the way forward.

Hm, that’s a rather strange assumption about me and my intentions. While 
I do have many grievances about the English language (the non-existence 
of ‘singular they’ not being one of them, as this has been present in 
English for at about 600 years), it would never *occur* to me that I 
could try to fix them by submitting patches to random software projects. :)


--
Karl Ove Hufthammer