Geoffrey Heard wrote:
>
>> But "his-her", their, and the like need to be avoided in singular 
>> context. When that kind of context comes up the use of "his" to refer 
>> to all of society is appropriate and should be used. Citizens of the 
>> female sex (not gender) should accept the usage as referring to them 
>> in the same way that "homo" generally refers to the human species as 
>> a whole.  Would you declare that homicide applies only to the killing 
>> of a man? But what about homosexual?  Does that apply only to two 
>> males? Do we need a new word "ladycide"?
>
> Goodness, Doug, you need to inspect the legs of your hobby horse -- 
> they are decidedly shaky. So no use of the plural to indicate a 
> singular? What about "you"? Is that singular or plural . . . or both, 
> setting a nice precedent for using "their" to refer to his/her when it 
> could be either or it stating the general case?
>
> In fact, the use of "his" and "man" to mean all people in English 
> refers to a period when the English paid women no respect at all -- 
> they were simply chattels. A woman and her property belonged to the 
> husband, women could not inherit, the lord of the manor had first 
> rights over every virgin, etc., etc.
>
> I see it as good that the remnants of this sorry period of English 
> civilization are no longer commemorated daily in speech -- our society 
> has moved on (well, mostly) and our speech is/should be matching this 
> movement.
>
> "homo" is used colloquially to refer to male homosexuals; it refers to 
> all human kind when used in the scientific term "homo sapiens", which, 
> of course, did not exist in English until the day it was introduced, 
> and in special terms like "homicide".

Not to mention that there are two Latin/Greek terms underlying the homo- 
prefix, the term for male and the term for same. Homosexual has nothing 
to do with male, but means "same-sex". Changing it is as bizarre as 
trying to change the "man" in "manuscript", where it refers to "hand".

So let's all start speaking Finnish, where there is only one distinction 
in third person pronouns, animate/inanimate (although popular usage is 
scrapping the animate version)!

John (about to travel, so going offline for a few days)

-- 
John Brownie, [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
On furlough in Finland from:
Summer Institute of Linguistics      | Mussau-Emira language, Mussau Is.
Ukarumpa, Eastern Highlands Province | New Ireland Province
Papua New Guinea                     | Papua New Guinea