Himself, herself..them...?

[Metamorfose]

Taken from another forum:

'A person who thinks too much of___________, is never admired by others.'

a)yourself

b)herself

c)myself

d)himself

e)itself

Which one should I pick out from the options given? I thought about himself but a fellow teacher told me herself, so which one sounds better?

And..is themselves proper in such a sentence? (I'm asking this because of the -selves ending.)

José

[fluffyhamster]

Even before I'd finished reading the gapfill, I was expecting to see 'themselves' in the range of possible answers.

'Him or herself' is another option.

'Themself' seems ungrammatical and is surely almost completely unattested - it's certainly pretty much a non-word to me when I run it by my intuition.

[lolwhites]

Metamorfose, does your colleague have a problem relating to woman bu any chance?

I expect the question writer wants himself (which is still considered the neutral/default by many) but in this enlightened age I'd go for themselves.

[Andrew Patterson]

I have seen a few "accademic" tracts that insisted on using "her" for all teachers. Mind you most such papers seem to be also peppered with pomposities like "educative" and "societal" and seemed to have another agenda.

[Metamorfose]

...And the fellow teacher is a woman

I guess her herself choice would be on the grounds that Romance languages tend to use a feminine gender for the word person...

Uma pessoa, una persona, une personne...

Another thing...

What do you say about itself? I know that some people refer to babies with it but is this itself an option?

José

[lolwhites]

I doubt anyone's ever referred to their own baby as it though

In any case, I'd never use it or itself to refer to a person. A person who thinks too much of itself is plain wrong. Does your colleague say why she thinks it should be herself?

[stromfi]

If we use "themselves" in the original sentence, shouldn't we change the subject and the verbs?
"People who think too much of themselves, are never admired by others." rahter than "A person who thinks to much of themselves, is never admired by others."
Latter sounds awkward to me, though I understand that the age we live in calls for it. Still ....

[JuanTwoThree]

It's just a slightly more complex variety of:

Nobody understands, do they? Has everybody got their books? etc


I thought that for the vast majority it had been settled years ago that forms of "they" were the everyday and commonsense solution to this conundrum, backed up by usage on a massive scale. Though it's true that there are frightful old head-in-the-sand (or elsewhere) fogeys who always insist on "he" or "he or she", or forms of them.

"He or She" rather than "They" might be better at some registers though.


Pragmatically in an all male or all female environment wouldn't it be reasonable to say "If anybody wants more soup, he/she only has to ask"?

In an exam you'd have to go for "himself" in the original posting because it was written by some old buffer and you want to pass the exam.

I'd like to know what that comma is doing there. The answer, born out by the options given, being that whoever wrote the question obviously didn't know what he/she/they was/were doing.

[tigertiger]

"He or She" rather than "They" might be better at some registers though.

In UK I have been pulled up for using for 'they'. I was told to use 'he or she'. This seems cumbersome, but I have been told to use 'he or she' in industry and in writing for the civil service. In college we were told to use 'he or she'; or we could alternate the use of 'he' with the use fo 'she' thus giving no favour to either gender.

This is more about PC than Gr.

[lolwhites]

I'd be interested to know who's pulled you up for saying "they", as I thought it was pretty much the standard these days.

An abbreviation of he or she or it was proposed, h'or sh'it but never caught on for some reason.

[Tara B]

Stromfi wrote:

If we use "themselves" in the original sentence, shouldn't we change the subject and the verbs?
"People who think too much of themselves, are never admired by others." rahter than "A person who thinks to much of themselves, is never admired by others."

That is the solution I was taught for academic writing. Anything else you do is chauvenist, feminist, cumbersome or otherwise weird.

I hope it was a trick question.

[Stephen Jones]

I don't think we can use 'themselves' with 'somebody'; I don't find anything strange about 'themself' and suspect it will rapidly come into fashion.

Using 'himself' is fine, unless you are bothered what a load of ignorant feminazis think. Using the masculine pronoun as the default is a common grammatical custom in many languages. After all the French say 'il pleut' not 'elle pleut'.

[JuanTwoThree]

"Please don't go in there, somebody has shot him or herself"

.......themself"

.......themselves"

....... himself"

None are very pleasing, come to think of it.

"Somebody has committed suicide with a gun" wouln't necessarily occur to one in the heat of the moment.

[lolwhites]

With respect, Stephen, I think that himself may well have been the default until recently, but it's not just the "feminazis" (I prefer the term misandrist myself) who find it strange these days.

I'm not saying it's sexist to say "himself", but anyone who uses it in the UK these days is probably showing their age

[Stephen Jones]

I would normally use 'they' as the gender neutral third person pronoun.

Everybody should bring their own book.
Everybody should help themselves.
Somebody isn't using their brain.

but the original example poses a problem. It's pretty pointless to suggest recasting after you've started the sentence off, and I still maintain that the masculine is the unmarked form in English.

themself is between 300 and 900 times less common than 'themselves' depending on whether you take Google or the BNC as your source.