By it's proper name of 'Sea King', I imagine...

-RP

Originally posted by TTN
Totally agree but I do love "The Old Grey Lady"::O

Doing my French degree at university I always had trouble remember genders. A French guy in our flat told me it was easy - to them the object seemed to take on feminine or masculine characteristics, according to its grammatical gender.

"So how can a bike be un velo or une bicyclette, or a car be un auto or une voiture?"

"Don't be difficult!"

Even worse in German and Russian. Like Latin they have neuter as well.

Shack, Same Same, :ok:

Of course ships and aircraft are "she". Lovely to look at, expensive to maintain, and if you don't treat them properly, they will make you suffer.. Love every one of them.

The latest piece of PC lunacy I've encountered comes from the CAA.

Once upon a time, references were often to 'he' or 'him', with some explanatory text explaining that this also included females. That was a bit condescending, in my view, so I preferred to use 'he/she' or 'him/her'.

But that isn't good enough for the PC idiots now - who are insisting that the plural word 'they' should be used even when referring to a single person... What UTTER bolleaux is that? Presumably to keep he/she/it/don't know/don't care or some LGB GT (or whatever they call themselves these days) from being able to claim discrimination?

If the Navy wants to keep its tradition, then fine. But calling an aircraft 'she' is a bit weird - in my day it was usually 'the jet' or 'the bomber' or just 'it'. The 558 Klingons presumably refer to 'Delta Lady' after the Joe Cocker song - because no-one can surely think that a Vulcan is in any way female? 'Our' Delta Lady is particularly nauseating, especially when used by someone who hadn't contributed any funding for the aircraft's return to flight.

What next - will the 'wimmin' (Private Eye ibid) be demanding that 'The Old Man of Hoy' is renamed? Or that the 'Isle of Man' is sexist....?

:rolleyes:

Aren't/weren't Royal Navy aircraft carriers referred to as "mother"?

What kept you?
A hint: the post which raised your blood pressure was light-hearted, banter even.
Show it your jazz hands!

I agree broadly with Beagle: Vulcan crew chiefs always referred to "my bomber"; aircrew usually said "it".

There's only one thing worse than people sitting around looking for something to be angry about and that's people sitting around looking for something to be tedious about.

And while I'm about it: prOOne you are surely the archdeacon of condescension.

A last glass of New Zealand's finest calls.

Don't the Russians and, I think, the Germans use the masculine when referring to ships?

Does it really matter by what sex an object is referred to? Most were terms of endearment (or otherwise) and were never intended to get to this stage of (dare I say), political (?) stupidity!

Bill

In German it's easiest to talk about things in plurals as all plurals are feminine, as are all words ending with -ung, -heit and -keit.

In Russian, a ship is "he" indeed, but a sub is "she". As for a more general term, like "vessel" used by civvies, it is "it".

Slightly adrift :) And the other day that idiot Vine was doing a piece about milkmen. Oops he said, we must call them milkpersons - and he was serious. FCS, has he not heard of the milklady or the milkmaid? That was the first time I had tuned in to the cretin for months - not again.

The Spams, of course, took this nonsense to the extreme. The 'fighter box' became the 'fighter container' and going 'head to head' became 'locker to locker' (as in that vile Spam expression 'snot locker' for nose). Some even used 'cranium' rather than 'head'...

Was that so they didn't upset ze 'box heads'? No, it was allegedly because those words upset some wimmin.

So we told them that a word they frequently used was causing offence to our young ladies. Being Spams, they didn't realise that this was, of course, a UK wind-up. "Very sorry, what word is it that you don't want us to use?"....

"Bush!".

:E

Agree with you concerning the Jeremy Whine programme, jindabyne!

"Richard Cranium" was always a useful description to have at the ready. As in "d***head".

I recommend a (NSFW!) listen to Dos Gringos' "Last Song on the CD" which certainly gives a fighter pilot's view of USAF PC terminology. And "I'm a pilot" and "2's blind" because they are both uncomfortably close to the truth

What worries me Mr pr00ne is what way up side down we'll be in come 2059? Will we be fighting for men's rights to serve in every Branch of the Armed Forces? or something? Perhaps Humans' to be given equal rights to Robots!

Roll on the Future...?

FB