I think the string "%1 has changed their status to %2" in the chat window is a bad choice. I know it's difficult to come up with something gender neutral, but "their" means more than one person.
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] New: text fix in chat window On December 05, 2003 09:42 pm, George Staikos wrote: > I think the string "%1 has changed their status to %2" in the chat window > is a bad choice. I know it's difficult to come up with something gender > neutral, but "their" means more than one person. Actually their is a perfectly acceptable way to refer to a gener-neutral person in English. It doesn't necessarily mean more than one person.
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] New: text fix in chat window Although, if everyone wants to avoid colloquialisms and go by what I call "old lady english", you could easily change this to %1's status has changed to %2
yeah, "their" can mean one person something else i noticed to do with this however is with the msn User Info dialog box - it says "This user has me on his contact list" - not necessarily a he.
Subject: Re: text fix in chat window On Saturday 06 December 2003 00:31, you wrote: > ------- yeah, "their" can mean one person > something else i noticed to do with this however is with the msn User Info > dialog box - it says "This user has me on his contact list" - not > necessarily a he. Webster's tells me that their is the genitive plural of the definite article. Plural means > 1. Do you have a counter-reference?
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On Saturday 06 December 2003 5:36 am, George Staikos wrote: > > ------- yeah, "their" can mean one person > > something else i noticed to do with this however is with the msn User > > Info dialog box - it says "This user has me on his contact list" - not > > necessarily a he. > > Webster's tells me that their is the genitive plural of the definite > article. Plural means > 1. Do you have a counter-reference? Technically, plural is used for all other cases than 1. But anyway: OED: 3. Often used in relation to a singular n. or pronoun denoting a person, after each, every, either, neither, no one, every one, etc. Also so used instead of 'his or her', when the gender is inclusive or uncertain. Cf. THEY pron. 2, THEM pron. 2; NOBODY 1b, SOMEBODY. (Not favoured by grammarians.) Maybe it's not favoured by grammarians, but I'm unaware of an alternative word. Alternative grammatic constructions are, of course, possible in most (all?) cases. lilac
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On December 06, 2003 02:43 am, Richard Smith wrote: > Maybe it's not favoured by grammarians, but I'm unaware of an alternative > word. Alternative grammatic constructions are, of course, possible in most > (all?) cases. Hence "old lady English" :P Grammarians really irk me, because they really are no authority. Language (especially English) is dynamic, constantly growing and changing, it's not like Mathematics where you can define it's rules in a book. Heck, Oxford adds 1,800 new words to the dictionary every 3 months, with changes that rapid how can anyone claim to be able to define hard and fast rules around it. "Proper English" is whatever native English speakers speak in their day-to-day lives. Reading "proper english" from 200 years ago is nearly like reading another language. And people will say the same when they read our literature 200 years from now. And so on until the end of time. However, to avoid controversy after the string freeze we can just use my possessive form of the notice as above.
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] New: text fix in chat window On Fri, December 05 2003 20:42, George Staikos wrote: > I think the string "%1 has changed their status to %2" in the chat window > is a bad choice. I know it's difficult to come up with something gender > neutral, but "their" means more than one person. No it doesn't. Not in English in this context. It is very commonly used and recognizable besides, and about the only alternative you have is "he or she". Though I think there is not a single thing wrong with or even slightly unclear about the current phrase, you could use 'The status of %1 has changed to %2' in addition to Jason's example. But both of these insinuate that the user's status changed without their knowledge, whereas the existing statement insinuates more that it was their own choice (which it is even if they've set their program to do it automatically, because *they* made that setting) due to the possessive form. Ooh lookie, I just used 'they' 4 times to refer to a singular person, including one coincidencially in emphasis. See how common it is? I'd suggest looking up 'they' in kdict. My copy is broken currently.
Argls, dictionary.com is broken too. m-w.com is broken too! But hyperdictionary.com works :) Webster's 1913 Dictionary Definition: \They\ ([th][=a]), pron. pl.; poss. {Theirs}; obj. {Them}. [Icel. [thorn]eir they, properly nom. pl. masc. of s[=a], s[=u], [thorn]at, a demonstrative pronoun, akin to the English definite article, AS. s[=e], se['o], [eth][ae]t, nom. pl. [eth][=a]. See {That}.] The plural of he, she, or it. They is never used adjectively, but always as a pronoun proper, and sometimes refers to persons without an antecedent expressed. Jolif and glad they went unto here [their] rest And casten hem [them] full early for to sail. --Chaucer. They of Italy salute you. --Heb. xiii. 24. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness. --Matt. v. 6. Note: They is used indefinitely, as our ancestors used man, and as the French use on; as, they say (French on dit), that is, it is said by persons not specified.
Subject: Re: text fix in chat window On Saturday 06 December 2003 14:22, you wrote: > hyperdictionary.com works :) > > Webster's 1913 Dictionary Definition: > > \They\ ([th][=a]), pron. pl.; poss. {Theirs}; obj. {Them}. Where did "they" come into this discussion?
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On Sat, December 06 2003 14:37, George Staikos wrote: > > \They\ ([th][=a]), pron. pl.; poss. {Theirs}; obj. {Them}. > > Where did "they" come into this discussion? 'Their' is simply the possesive version of 'they'.
Subject: Re: text fix in chat window On Saturday 06 December 2003 16:19, you wrote: > > > \They\ ([th][=a]), pron. pl.; poss. {Theirs}; obj. {Them}. > > > > Where did "they" come into this discussion? > > 'Their' is simply the possesive version of 'they'. That's great, but that's not what we were talking about. The way it's written now looks like it was done by a four year old, honestly. Oh well.
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On Sat, December 06 2003 16:31, George Staikos wrote: > That's great, but that's not what we were talking about. Um, yes it is. 'Their' was the word you were complaining about, and the definition for 'their' was what I looked up and pasted verbatim. I didn't go through the trouble for nothing. > The way it's written now looks like it was done by a four year old, > honestly. Oh well. To me it looks like perfectly acceptable English, and I'm a very good speaker of the language, if I do say so myself (and if my near-perfect scores in my English classes throughout my life mean anything). On top of that, I think from memory that the message is *exactly the same* in one (or more) of the official clients that I used to run on Windows.
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On Saturday 06 December 2003 22:55, Casey Allen Shobe wrote: > To me it looks like perfectly acceptable English, and I'm a very good > speaker of the language, if I do say so myself (and if my near-perfect > scores in my English classes throughout my life mean anything). Perhaps it's an American vs. British English thing? You are American, George is Canadian, which AFAIK use British spelling. In that case the fix belongs in the en_GB i18n module though.
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On Sun, December 07 2003 09:27, Richard Smith wrote: > I'm a native British English speaker. And it does seem a little wrong to > me. When I see 'Rob has changed their status to Offline' it sounds like I > should know which collection of people Rob fiddled with the status of. If > it was 'this user', it would be fine, though. The only problem with 'this user' is groupchats, where you need very much to know who changed their status. I would have no problem whatsoever though with 'this user' being used in place of the username in single-user chats, where showing the username on status messages is just silly and redundant. > You could alternatively go for the short and snappy 'Rob changed status to > Offline' (I think I've seen other clients display this). Wow, sometimes when the most simple answer is staring you right in the face, you can't even see it. There isn't really a need for a possessive pronoun in that case...the only possible unclarity would be a user thinking "Did Rob change my status?" but I think the likelihood of that happening is extraordinarily low. > As a bonus, this is quicker to read and uses less screen real-estate. Yep. > Or how about 'Rob is now offline'? Honestly, I've always thought it a bit overtechnical to tell the user specifically that they changed their status. I like this example. > (though maybe the message 'Rob is now Do Not Disturb' might be confusing - > can we display 'Rob is now busy (do not disturb)' instead? Certainly the text of the away status could be adjusted to fit better - for maximal friendliness I'd like to see something more like 'Rob does not wish to be disturbed now.', instead of the current method of just plastering in %2 at the end. (CC'ing back to the original bug report - can we keep the discussion there so it doesn't get lost?)
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On December 06, 2003 08:03 pm, Martijn Klingens wrote: > Perhaps it's an American vs. British English thing? You are American, > George is Canadian, which AFAIK use British spelling. > > In that case the fix belongs in the en_GB i18n module though. You forget that I am also Canadian :P And their is spelled the same in both American and Canadian English.
Subject: Re: [Kopete-devel] text fix in chat window On Sunday 07 December 2003 15:31, Casey Allen Shobe wrote: > > Or how about 'Rob is now offline'? > > Honestly, I've always thought it a bit overtechnical to tell the user > specifically that they changed their status. I like this example. I like that too. > > (though maybe the message 'Rob is now Do Not Disturb' might be confusing > > - can we display 'Rob is now busy (do not disturb)' instead? > > Certainly the text of the away status could be adjusted to fit better - for > maximal friendliness I'd like to see something more like 'Rob does not wish > to be disturbed now.', instead of the current method of just plastering in > %2 at the end. The current KopeteOnlineStatus doesn't support that, but it should be fairly easy to do once we can change i18n strings again. Perhaps someone can attach a patch to apply after 3.2 to this report?
I'll work on this...shouldn't be too hard.
*** Bug 74667 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Escalating
CVS commit by mklingens: Get rid of the use of 'their' in the strings. I hoped to be able to backport this by reusing the string from the passive popup, but that one uses an exclamation mark, which is not usable in the chat window. Alas, no backport, the change will only be in the next version. We may or may not decide to use customly phrased sentences per online status in the future, but this should be enough to close the bug report. CCMAIL: 69700-done@bugs.kde.org M +4 -4 chatview.cpp 1.123 --- kdenetwork/kopete/kopete/chatwindow/chatview.cpp #1.122:1.123 @@ -738,5 +738,5 @@ void ChatView::slotContactNameChanged( c { if( KopetePrefs::prefs()->showEvents() ) - sendInternalMessage( i18n( "%1 has changed their nickname to %2" ). + sendInternalMessage( i18n( "%1 is now known as %2" ). #if QT_VERSION < 0x030200 arg( oldName ).arg( newName ) @@ -897,5 +897,5 @@ void ChatView::slotContactStatusChanged( // Separate notification for the 'self' contact if ( newStatus.status() != KopeteOnlineStatus::Connecting ) - sendInternalMessage( i18n( "You have changed your status to %1." ).arg( newStatus.description() ) ); + sendInternalMessage( i18n( "You are now marked as %1." ).arg( newStatus.description() ) ); } else if ( !contact->account() || !contact->account()->suppressStatusNotification() ) @@ -904,5 +904,5 @@ void ChatView::slotContactStatusChanged( if( contact->metaContact() ) { - sendInternalMessage( i18n( "%2 has changed their status to %1." ) + sendInternalMessage( i18n( "%2 is now %1." ) #if QT_VERSION < 0x030200 .arg( newStatus.description() ).arg( contact->metaContact()->displayName() ) @@ -914,5 +914,5 @@ void ChatView::slotContactStatusChanged( else { - sendInternalMessage( i18n( "%2 has changed their status to %1." ) + sendInternalMessage( i18n( "%2 is now %1." ) #if QT_VERSION < 0x030200 .arg( newStatus.description() ).arg( contact->displayName() )