Small Talk: Dinner at Red Lobster

[shapeshifter]

Continuing discussion from S07.E04: Ants On A Log And A Cheating Winker:

On 3/8/2024 at 10:25 PM, shura said:

Ha, I was just thinking that soon enough we will only have two pronouns, they and they’s (the second one is possessive).  Then we will see a sentence “George and Mary were talking, and they told them they’s car needs gas” and pronouns will become obsolete.

1 hour ago, ProudMary said:

We wouldn't need "they's," as "their" already exists. It would work perfectly in the sentence you provided.

I agree. But then there's the issue of using pronouns when nouns or Proper Nouns (names) are required for clarity of understanding.

So changing

• “George and Mary were talking, and they told them they’s car needs gas”

To:

• George and Mary were talking, and they told them their car needs gas”

— is still unclear. Whose car? 

Some word choices are not related to current trends.

I recall when writing in high school and my first attempt at college (1960s-1972) using the pronouns "their" and "they" for non-gender specific text, or just whenever. It was just convenient and acceptable to all teachers.

MS Word added grammar check in 1992, which seems to have created a couple of generations who are still convinced that it is ungrammatical to end a sentence with a preposition.
Merriam-Webster debunked that notion this past week on Instagram. 

 

The Dr. Spock (Benjamin 👶 not 🖖) edition of his Baby and Childcare book I had near to the time when Sheldon and Missy were born (1979) used the pronoun "she" exclusively when referring to babies. 
I brought this up yesterday when my daughter, son-in-law, and I were wondering why my 80-year-old cousin might have referred to a picture of the newest grandson as "she."
There are many other possible, non-gender or non-grammatical reasons for my cousin's mistake, but we collectively decided to ignore it for now so as not to embarrass anyone.

 

A version or spin-off of this show featuring a future award winning novelist or columnist instead of a Nobel prize winning physicist could have fun with this stuff.

[shura]

2 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Continuing discussion from S07.E04: Ants On A Log And A Cheating Winker:

On 3/8/2024 at 10:25 PM, shura said:

Ha, I was just thinking that soon enough we will only have two pronouns, they and they’s (the second one is possessive).  Then we will see a sentence “George and Mary were talking, and they told them they’s car needs gas” and pronouns will become obsolete.

3 hours ago, ProudMary said:

We wouldn't need "they's," as "their" already exists. It would work perfectly in the sentence you provided.

I agree. But then there's the issue of using pronouns when nouns or Proper Nouns (names) are required for clarity of understanding.

So changing

• “George and Mary were talking, and they told them they’s car needs gas”

To:

• George and Mary were talking, and they told them their car needs gas”

— is still unclear. Whose car?

There was another line in my post where I quoted someone actually using “l’s” for “my”.  That’s the only reason I went with “they’s” instead of “their” - it is preposterous but, unfortunately, not impossible.

[Yeah No]

5 hours ago, shura said:

There was another line in my post where I quoted someone actually using “l’s” for “my”.  That’s the only reason I went with “they’s” instead of “their” - it is preposterous but, unfortunately, not impossible.

I've heard "I's" used more in the past few years than in my entire life.  That's how fast this kind of preposterous crap gets spread around these days.  Unfortunately I watch some "guilty pleasure" reality TV and hear it a lot on there, and not from the people you'd expect to hear if from, either.  I'm hearing this and more from college graduates that work in the corporate world.  Most of them are in their 30's and younger.  That's why I'm so peeved about this.  You can forgive uneducated  people but college graduates in good careers?  I know I must sound like an old crank that needs to get a real problem, but I see this in the bigger picture of it becoming a real problem if it keeps going in this direction.

My husband has a GED.  He is not college educated, and no one in his family is either, but he only found out about 10 years ago that he's a dyslexic.  He just turned 68.  In spite of all that his grammar, spelling and usage are impeccable.  I credit the amazing NYC school system in the '60s and '70s for that as well as the world we lived in back then where young people didn't get together online and perpetuate each others' mistakes, myths and misperceptions.  It's like they live in an echo chamber and don't learn from the very sources that could teach them something. 

[possibilities]

In the example about George and Mary and the car, the limited number of pronouns is really not that big of a deal. What if Mary and Brenda were the ones in the sentence? People would still find a way to make it clear whose car it is, despite there being two females in the situation, and thus only one gendered pronoun in play.

[shura]

3 hours ago, possibilities said:

In the example about George and Mary and the car, the limited number of pronouns is really not that big of a deal. What if Mary and Brenda were the ones in the sentence? People would still find a way to make it clear whose car it is, despite there being two females in the situation, and thus only one gendered pronoun in play.

Yes, of course.  That way would be to forgo using pronouns and use names instead.  And if having to forgo pronouns becomes something we have to do more and more often, up to almost always in the extreme case, then why have them at all?  Language will become more primitive if that happens, and more cumbersome at the same time.  With Mary and Brenda, the same sentence “she told her that her car needs gas” describes four scenarios that have to be distinguished, but with Mary and George and “they” we already have six scenarios because “their” can refer to Mary’s, George’s and also to the car that is actually theirs, the one they both use.

No, it’s not that big a deal. People will adapt. If people discussed things like this four hundred years ago, they would probably go “it is outrageous that people are using ‘you’ instead of the proper ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and ‘ye’. What is the world coming to? How are we going to communicate? I blame the [whatever they would have for the internet back then]”. 🙂

[Tom Holmberg]

I was all set to watch YS on 3/21 and its March Madness basketball instead! (Which was running on about 8 different channels).

[Guest]

Our comedy channel has got reruns of Young Sheldon and they've just started with the pilot episode and oh my!!  The children were babies!  All three of them and I have to give props to Iain Armitage, from that very first episode he was amazing in the role.  A very talented little boy! 

I often wonder if children should really even be professional actors, given what we know can happen once the fame fades though.  I truly hope that Iain and Raegan (Missy) beat the odds!

Edited April 23 by Mona Lisa

[shapeshifter]

11 hours ago, Mona Lisa said:

Our comedy channel has got reruns of Young Sheldon and they've just started with the pilot episode and oh my!!  The children were babies!  All three of them and I have to give props to Iain Armitage, from that very first episode he was amazing in the role.  A very talented little boy! 

I often wonder if children should really even be professional actors, given what we know can happen once the fame fades though.  I truly hope that Iain and Raegan (Missy) beat the odds!

As AI improves, maybe they will pay child actors “royalties” for the use of their original work to generate new episodes.

Of course, in this utopian future,  nothing will go wrong. 😑 

Edited April 24 by shapeshifter