zlacker

The words siblings, parents and children all existed when Dahl wrote these books, yet he chose to use brothers and sisters, mom and dad, and boys and girls. He specifically used these words, because he's the author and wanted to convey a specific meaning.

>>kQq9oH+(OP)
I wasn’t trying to make a value judgement about replacing the existing words in Dahl’s already-written books. The parent comment wanted an explanation to _why_ someone might select ‘siblings’ over ‘brothers and sisters’ and I answered with my understanding.

I do now attempt to use the single-word non-gendered collective nouns in speech myself for the reasons I gave, and I think it’s a good idea to do so.

To discuss the edits to Dahl’s work: I would argue that for these ‘Xs and Ys’ examples he was probably just using the popular idioms of the time rather than choosing them to convey a specific meaning as you say. That would certainly be what I would’ve done, without much consideration, 20 years ago!

But that’s obviously not the case for all the edits that are reportedly being made.

The edits in aggregate do make me uneasy. I’m not sure how I’d feel if they were more limited.

>>jrmg+K1
> I do now attempt to use the single-word non-gendered collective nouns in speech myself for the reasons I gave

I hate to be the guy that cries “1984,” but do we really have to completely neuter our language to avoid every imagined offense? Are there people out there who’s egos are so fragile that they can’t handle “gentlemen” coming after “ladies?”