[Koha-devel] Gender-neutral pronouns
Chris Cormack
chrisc at catalyst.net.nz
Wed Apr 19 21:20:33 CEST 2017
Of course we won't fail patches, thanks for the strawman. We can easily fix them instead. In fact I volunteer to do that.
You're welcome to fix grammar too, send some patches.
And of course you can vote -1 you just did. I certainly noticed it.
Chris
On 20 April 2017 7:16:22 AM NZST, Philippe Blouin <philippe.blouin at inlibro.com> wrote:
>My mistake, I hadn't read the original bugzilla. :-(
>
>Well, can I -1 this or only +1 are politically acceptable? Since this
>is politic, really. Could you amend the ticket to also rewrite all the
>
>comments to some acceptable level of English, to start with? Syntax,
>grammar, conjugation...
>
>Call me obtuse, but 'they' can be quite offputting in the middle of a
>sentence. I've read some short novels with that usage (used as an
>androgynous pronoun). To someone whose first language is not English,
>that can be quite disconcerting on first and second read.
>
>The ticket also refers to someone having written "it" for a person in
>some comment. Well, that's the type of things that occurs in a
>software
>partly written by French (I'm not pointing), Indians and Finns... You
>want to set a rule forcing them to use proper English, you'll fail
>their
>patches because of it, in the name of inclusivity??? That's
>productive...
>
>Frankly, a much better "rule" should have been to write all comments
>using the _female_ form. Clear and concise. But I don't believe that
>was the aim of the ticket...
>
>Philippe Blouin,
>Responsable du développement informatique
>
>Tél. : (888) 604-2627
>philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
>
>inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com <http://www.inLibro.com>
>On 04/19/2017 02:18 PM, Jonathan Druart wrote:
>> The patches only affect code comments so no translation needed.
>>
>> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 at 15:12 Philippe Blouin
>> <philippe.blouin at inlibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inlibro.com>>
>wrote:
>>
>> How many of "these" are there to change? Not that the work
>itself
>> will be massive, but putting a 'they' in the middle of a sentence
>> does not make it easy to translate intuitively, I would think.
>If
>> it's a consideration (it is for non-English users, at least).
>>
>>
>> Philippe Blouin,
>> Responsable du développement informatique
>>
>> Tél. : (888) 604-2627
>> philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
>>
>> inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com
>> <http://www.inLibro.com>
>> On 04/19/2017 01:16 PM, Jonathan Druart wrote:
>>> The next step would be to provide a check to our QA tests to
>make
>>> sure we will not introduce future occurrences.
>>> I am pretty sure they will not be caught manually by QAers.
>>>
>>> On Wed, 19 Apr 2017 at 13:56 Eric Phetteplace
>>> <ephetteplace at cca.edu <mailto:ephetteplace at cca.edu>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Paul,
>>>
>>> English has a singular "they". It doesn't suggest androgyny,
>>> either, from the definitions I've seen. For instance, Oxford
>>> English Dictionary:
>>>
>>> 2. In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun of
>>> undetermined gender: he or she.
>>>
>>> The first usage example OED provides is from 1375. I don't
>>> think replacing "he" with "she" addresses the problem, it's
>>> still assuming a default gender. It's not too much tricker
>to
>>> search code for he/him & replace with they/them but that's
>>> also just an implementation issue, not a policy one.
>>>
>>>
>>> It sounds like people are otherwise supportive but I'm not
>>> sure what the next step should be.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Eric Phetteplace
>>> Systems Librarian
>>> California College of the Arts
>>> libraries.cca.edu <http://libraries.cca.edu> | vault.cca.edu
>>> <http://vault.cca.edu>
>>> 510.594.3660
>>> 2>/dev/null
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 8:42 AM, Paul A
>>> <paul.a at navalmarinearchive.com
>>> <mailto:paul.a at navalmarinearchive.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2017-04-18 08:25 PM, Eric Phetteplace wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi list,
>>>
>>> I opened bug
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> Before*:*
>>>
>>> "Kid growing and become a juvenile, he should pay "
>>>
>>> After:
>>>
>>> "Kid growing and become a juvenile, they should pay "
>>>
>>> Political correctness has never been my strong point
>>> (although I try to understand it), but I'm proficient in
>>> grammatical rigour. [1]
>>>
>>> "Kid" is a singular noun, "a" is a singular article --
>>> "they" is a plural pronoun. Perhaps replace "they" with
>>> "[s]he"? or "Kids growing and becoming juveniles, they
>>> should pay"?
>>>
>>> From a code maintenance p.o.v., it's easier to find and
>>> replace 'he' with '[s]he' if really this becomes a
>>> priority for Koha.
>>>
>>> Best -- Paul
>>>
>>> [1] I am aware of the so-called "singular third person
>>> epicene 'they'", but academically object to it -- it
>>> often suggests androgyny rather than gender neutrality.
>>>
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>>
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--
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