On Wednesday 26 November 2008 10:19:56 pm Roger Hicks wrote: > On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 16:04, Elliott Hird > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On 26 Nov 2008, at 22:41, Michael Norrish wrote: > >> I've never used Spivak by choice. English has perfectly good > >> gender-neutral third person singular pronouns: "they", "them" > >> etc. (Nor are these some kind of PC invention of the 20th > >> century; they occur used in this way in Shakespeare, the King > >> James bible and Jane Austen. I recommend the discussion on > >> Language Log (online), or the Merriam-Webster Usage Dictionary.) > > > > The First Speaker... speaks! > > > > Now can we get rid of Spivak? > > I second this motion. It worked for B.
Strongly tempting, but I still disagree. All politics and grammar aside, Spivak has become a distinctive part of Agoran culture. A lot of geeksquee(*), on my part at least, would be lost by its removal. (*) I just invented this word because I couldn't think of one to mean what I meant: the feeling of inordinate glee you get from an obscure reference, like that one time on Family Guy with the MC Escher rap video. (Extra special points if you get the rather subtle Hofstadter reference in that last comma-delimited clause.) Pavitra
