Hi, Ardith Hinton!
I read your message from 16.03.2019 17:52

 AK>> It is difficult to fight with people when they have a bad habit. I
 AK>> remember a thing from Pygmalion, by Bernard Shaw:

 AK>>  -----Beginning of the citation-----
 AK>> HIGGINS.  How the devil do I know what's to become  of  you?  What
 AK>> does it matter what becomes of you?
 AK>> LIZA. You don't care. I know you don't care.  You wouldn't care if
 AK>> I was dead. I'm nothing to you -- not so much as them slippers.
 AK>> HIGGINS [thundering] THOSE slippers.
 AK>>  ----- The end of the citation -----

 AK>> I  still  cannot  see  the  logic  why  she  used  _them_  instead
 AK>> of _those_. It is not a kind of error a Russian could make.

 AH> No... it's the sort of error a lower-class native speaker who'd had
 AH> little or no formal education  would  have  made  at  the  time  of
 AH> writing.  Higgins conducted an experiment to  find  out  whether  a
 AH> young adult who was motivated to learn  would  be  able  to  change
 AH> habitual speech patterns.  Both he  &  his  student  seem  to  have
 AH> reverted to old habits when they were emotionally upset.... :-))

Well, _them_ is well known pronoun, who can we mix it up with _those_?. Can
I, for instance, say, "I gave _them_ _them_ books"? Not of
course. It is not a matter of education, IMHO. ;)

 AH> Those who are not native speakers of English tend to make different
 AH> errors.  People from Russia have difficulty with articles,  for the
 AH> same reason people from China have  difficulty  with  plurals:  the
 AH> rules are a bit different in their  language.  I  see  no  need  to
 AH> pluralize "broccoli", e.g.,  because it is plural already...  yet I
 AH> would say "a bunch of grapes".  When I visit the local greengrocery
 AH> I understand that from a Chinese POV it might be  more  appropriate
 AH> to say "one potato, two potato, three potato" (i.e. a counting game
 AH> used in my childhood).  From my  POV  as  an  advanced  student  of
 AH> English  it's  easier  to   sort   out   many   of   the   apparent
 AH> inconsistencies with a dictionary which explains what language  xxx
 AH> came from & how it was spelled in this language at the time.

But Eliza got her English with her mother's milk. We can admit that she had
an ignoble pronunciation, but mixing _them_ and _those_ is too much, IMHO.

 AH>>>> Its use in formal English has become more common with the  trend
 AH>>>> toward gender-neutral language,

 AH>> It has become more common in recent years,  but  not  because  the
 AH>> mood at the time of its resurgence  took  into  account  that  our
 AH>> ancestors knew things we might well pay attention  to.  Quite  the
 AH>> contrary...  Jerry Rubin,  e.g.,  made headlines when  he  advised
 AH>> other folks not to trust anybody over 30. I suppose they must have
 AH>> followed his advice because he doesn't make headlines now.

 AK>> I imagine what does a foreign student  think  when  he  hears  the
 AK>> sentence like the first sentence in last paragraph.  After reading
 AK>> it ten times I think I understood what you meant. ;=)

 AH> Good point.  Alexander has been with us for over a decade, he reads
 AH> widely,  and I know that if he doesn't understand what I'm babbling
 AH> about he'll say so...  but I don't mean to leave him & other  folks
 AH> behind in the dust.

Well, in reality, I like when you write something complicated and
nativenglishly. ;=) But when a person has nothing to say to the point he
usually starts carping at other person. ;)

Bye, Ardith!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2019

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