Age and gender confusion at the Olympics

[Joel S. Berson]

Yes, Larry, for the first sentence I quoted, and for the prior
context of the article, which does put one into the *women's*
gymnastic team with several "she"s or "her"s.  But I was mentally
delayed by the *second* sentence, where "He" is the first word -- and
I did not immediately think of  or pronounce the name of God or the
Chinese female gymnast, but rather the more frequent masculine pronoun.

Joel

At 8/15/2008 07:57 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 7:35 PM -0400 8/15/08, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>A Boston Globe story today on the "issue" of the age of some Chinese
>>women gymnasts has the following in a mid-article paragraph:
>>
>>"If the age reported by Xinhua was correct, that would have meant He
>>was too young to be on the Chinese team that beat the United States
>>Wednesday and clinched China's first women's team Olympic gold in
>>gymnastics.  He is also a favorite for gold in Monday's uneven bars final."
>>
>>The second sentence above fazed me for a few seconds -- I had to
>>re-read and mentally re-pronounce it.
>>
>>Joel
>Especially if you hear it out loud.  When you read it on the
>page/screen, you realize it must be either about God (who can be any
>age or gender) or some female Chinese gymnast named He.  But there is
>a certain "Who's on First" flavor about it, I have to concede.
>
>LH
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org