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From: marcus@pyuxt.UUCP (M. G. Hand)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: "Their" as a substitute for his/her
Message-ID: <237@pyuxt.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Jan-85 14:54:51 EST
Article-I.D.: pyuxt.237
Posted: Wed Jan  9 14:54:51 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 11-Jan-85 23:19:23 EST
References: <19800@arizona.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 10

Consider such languages as french where the 2nd person singular pronouns are
considered far too personal for all but the closest of friends
and familiars.  One uses "vous" almost exclusively in preference to "tu".

While not strictly comparable to the he/she problem, it does indicate that
English is not alone in using plurals to refer to singular entities in
regular written and spoken language.
-- 

		Marcus Hand	{ihnp4!}pyuxt!marcus