I've been studying linguistics since I was 19 and i can't do the simplest things.
I just wrote a friend "noone can save themselves"-is this correct?
It looks really cock eyed...

No one can save themself.

I guess. :shrug:

It's just the kind of thing I'm supposed to know...

Not wanting to let a thread or a lame argument die-I once more want to protest the idiotic spelling of the word "friend" or "freind" they should be alternate spellings since there exists no sound rule in this confounded language to spell things that makes any blamed sense...
Or alternatively perhaps we should chuck any semblance of reason and spell it frqnd...

I've been studying linguistics since I was 19 and i can't do the simplest things.
I just wrote a friend "noone can save themselves"-is this correct?
It looks really cock eyed...

If I recall correctly, way back in the day, we were taught that should read "No one can save himself".

One surely must wonder what kids are being taught these days, though. :rolleyes:

The reflexive pronouns (which have the same forms as the intensive pronouns) indicate that the sentence subject also receives the action of the verb. (Students who cheat on this quiz are only hurting themselves. You paid yourself a million dollars? She encouraged herself to do well.) What this means is that whenever there is a reflexive pronoun in a sentence there must be a person to whom that pronoun can "reflect." In other words, the sentence "Please hand that book to myself" would be incorrect because there is no "I" in that sentence for the "myself" to reflect to (and we would use "me" instead of "myself"). A sentence such as "I gave that book to myself for Christmas" might be silly, but it would be correct.

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/pronouns1.htm

Now let the thing die before Flam comes and lectures me....

Too late.
If I recall, it should be written "No one can save oneself."
Neutered noun and all of that. That's the correct PC vessel, but the best way to write it is the way that NB wrote it. "No one can save himself." This is because there's no such thing, really, as a genderless person, and the masculine automatically dominates the feminine in English, despite what some people believe.

No-one.

Actually, Spab, "noone" and "no one" are acceptable. "No-one" is not a proper form. This relates back to the purpose of the unification of words via the slash.

But it's more attractive.

Not wanting to let a thread or a lame argument die-I once more want to protest the idiotic spelling of the word "friend" or "freind" they should be alternate spellings since there exists no sound rule in this confounded language to spell things that makes any blamed sense...
Or alternatively perhaps we should chuck any semblance of reason and spell it frqnd...
It is spelled "friend" because of the pronunciation breakdown. "Freind" would be pronounced "fre-Ind," since the current pronunciation is based on Germanic rules, as you should very well know young man.

It is spelled "friend" because of the pronunciation breakdown. "Freind" would be pronounced "fre-Ind," since the current pronunciation is based on Germanic rules, as you should very well know young man.

It's nice to have you back in my threads,Lad.In German it's freund because it sounds like freund-I didn't understand YOUR argument at all...