BTW, what do people here feel about the use of we to denote a group of people which includes myself even though I didn’t personally take part in the action? I don’t do that very often (it reminds me of the days when I was a football (soccer) fan and it was customary to say us and you (pl.) to mean ‘the team I support’ and ‘the team you support’); OTOH I once saw a documentary where the presenter consistently used us and them to mean ‘Homo sapiens sapiens’ and ‘H. sapiens neanderthalensis’ when speaking about events taking place several tens of millennia ago, which kind of jarred me.¹ And I’ve seen a comment in a feminist blog when a female commenter scolded a male commenter because he had said “men” instead of “us”.
¹ Maybe because, as an European, I likely do have a non-negligible fraction of Neanderthal DNA.
BTW, what do people here feel about the use of we to denote a group of people which includes myself even though I didn’t personally take part in the action? I don’t do that very often (it reminds me of the days when I was a football (soccer) fan and it was customary to say us and you (pl.) to mean ‘the team I support’ and ‘the team you support’); OTOH I once saw a documentary where the presenter consistently used us and them to mean ‘Homo sapiens sapiens’ and ‘H. sapiens neanderthalensis’ when speaking about events taking place several tens of millennia ago, which kind of jarred me.¹ And I’ve seen a comment in a feminist blog when a female commenter scolded a male commenter because he had said “men” instead of “us”.
¹ Maybe because, as an European, I likely do have a non-negligible fraction of Neanderthal DNA.
It can be jarring when, as in the parent, you attribute to ‘us’ attitudes you don’t agree with.