The "u" in non-american english

[Final-Fan]

sc94597 said:

Final-Fan said:
^ I think the thing is that I accept that verbs get conjugated but something within rebels at the idea of random objects having random gender.

Well gender doesn't always mean Male and Female. Old English had 3 genders. It is just a distinction that nobody knows for sure where it came from. It something that is  older than Indo-European languages, yet it is only really found in them. There was probably some form of reason for them, but as of right now it isn't known for sure.

People call them male, female and neuter/neutral (?).  Is it really unassociated with biological gender?  
As for historical reasons for it, for all we know it was originally objects females worked with mostly, or men, or either.  But I'm completely making that up.   

Rath said:

tedsteriscool said:
"Somebody lost their purse." <--Wrong
"Somebody lost her purse." <-- Correct

Are you sure about that one?
I mean I didn't think it was technically incorrect to use it as the indefinite singular.

It's definitely wrong according to the nitpickers AFAIK.  

sc94597 said:

jefforange89 said:
We don't add a u.
You guys remove it.

I never really addressed this with a direct answer, despite how many posts I wrote. Back then, it was probably the case of both being acceptable. That means, nobody added AND nobody removed. They were both correct, and still are correct.

IIRC (and I may not) this is actually one of the spelling "reforms" Webster inserted into his dictionary back in 1828.

We may have him to thank for dropping those Os, as well as a lot of the S-->Z replacements (-ise/-ize) and stuff like dropping a lot of double-Ls as in "traveler".  Who knows, maybe analog/analogue is his fault too.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences