Timeline for Can a ship or a car be a "he"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 30, 2016 at 2:32 | history | edited | Alan Carmack | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 150 characters in body
|
| Jun 29, 2016 at 14:37 | comment | added | stangdon | Cars aren't normally called "he" or "she", so I'm not sure why cars are even entering into this discussion... | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:48 | vote | accept | Victor B. | ||
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:47 | comment | added | Victor B. | @AlanCarmack: Alan, you have found the right link! Bullseye! Thanks ever so much for your interest in this question, the time spent, and the effort you've made to help me. Great answer! | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:42 | history | edited | Alan Carmack | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 4 characters in body
|
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:32 | comment | added | Victor B. | Alan, you're absolutely right pointing out that it's not a traditional usage I'm asking about. A woman saying how much she loves "her", meaning her car or yacht called, say, Falcon, to me personally, sounds a tad strange. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:32 | history | edited | Alan Carmack | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 285 characters in body
|
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:26 | history | edited | Alan Carmack | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 285 characters in body
|
| Jun 28, 2016 at 14:14 | history | edited | Alan Carmack | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 389 characters in body
|
| Jun 28, 2016 at 12:27 | comment | added | Victor B. | @ColinFine: My question wasn't spun out of a thin air. I came across a book by prominent Russian linguist G.Veichman written in 1990, (Novelties in The English Grammar is my translation of the title), where I read that the rule of personification of vehicles may be added regarding a female owner talking about her car. That's all I could find and this is where my question comes from. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 11:48 | comment | added | Colin Fine | Alan: how do you think languages change? And there's plenty of scope for playing with language. If you want to personify a ship (or anything else) by referring to it as "he", good on you. Maybe it's a game, that your listeners will appreciate. But if you're trying to get information across, rather than have fun, it might work better to stick to established usage. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:55 | comment | added | Victor B. | Added to the question: What about a man-o’-war or a merchantman? Being ships, are they also referred as "she"? | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:43 | comment | added | Alan Carmack | What would confuse me is everybody in the world not using any language usage that had the potential to confuse anybody, @ColinFine And therefore no one ever thought out of the box. What a dull, miserable world, but one with no potential language confusion. oh joy. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:37 | comment | added | Colin Fine | You might well be right, if the boat's name were salient in the conversation. If I'm talking about my boat Alfred and you don't know its name, then a "he" dropped into the conversation is likely to confuse you. And pedants generally don't understand any more or less than anybody else, they just choose to pretend that they don't understand. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:35 | comment | added | tum_ | I vaguely remember reading somewhere that women sometimes refer to their cars as 'he'. However, I might be mistaken and this could have referred to my native language rather than English. Anyway, here is another discussion worth reading (as well as a few other links that can be found there), but there is no answer to the OP's question there either. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:35 | comment | added | Victor B. | Any particular reasons to downvote the question? | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:27 | comment | added | Alan Carmack | If a woman, named her yacht ALFRED and painted the name ALFRED on the boat and referred to it as he, I don't see how that risks bring misunderstood regarding language usage, except culture pedants who might think it improper because it goes against "the rules of established usage", @ColinFine. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:24 | comment | added | Colin Fine | There's no law about almost anything in language. But if you use language in non-standard ways, you risk being misunderstood. If you use personal pronouns to refer to inanimates, you are likely to confuse your readers, except for well-established uses like "she" for ships and countries. | |
| Jun 28, 2016 at 10:22 | history | answered | Alan Carmack | CC BY-SA 3.0 |