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The only thing I dislike about gender-neutral pronouns in English is how they make the traditional "they" ambiguous and a bit confusing. I would've much preferr

The only thing I dislike about gender-neutral pronouns in English is how they make the traditional "they" ambiguous and a bit confusing. I would've much preferred using another set of pronouns for this but I understand that adaption of such a thing is next to impossible.

madeofpalk 5y ago
> pronouns in English is how they make the traditional How is this different from any other word? There are the odd times where it might be awkward or ambiguous to use, but I think those are the exceptions. When it happens, just reword your sentence.
garblegarble 5y ago
>the traditional "they" ambiguous and a bit confusing How traditional are you talking about, because the singular they has been in use since the 14th century - according to wikipedia that's only 100 years after "they" as plural https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- bloak 5y ago
  The Wikipedia article seems to cover this quite well, but I'll say it here anyway: there are several kinds of singular "they". Using "they" to refer to a word like "someone" or "anyone", as in "If everyone minded their own business", is totally normal and has been for a very long time. Using "they" to refer to a hypothetical or unknown person described by an ordinary noun, as in "The user must prove their identity", is common enough nowadays but I get the impression that it wasn't so common 50 or 100 years ago. Using "they" to refer to a known person, as in "My cousin lent me their copy", is very modern and likely to confuse some people.
  - garblegarble 5y ago
    And worth noting for anyone who didn't read the original pull request, the case here is documentation switching references to an unknown person from "he/her" to "their" (a change which I think actually makes it easier to read).
pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
I am somewhat sympathetic to thy viewpoint, but I think that ship has sailed.
dspillett 5y ago
> I would've much preferred using another set of pronouns The difficulty there is that while natural language is flexible and ever-changing, it usually doesn't deform into a new consistent state very fast. New generally accepted pronouns might develop over time, or existing ones will change their use and meaning (like the originally plural "they" becoming accepted as a singular too from C14 onwards, and waxing & waning in that use in general use since) but if you try to create them less organically you'll find a lot of friction. As with any new standard there will be competing standards, including the status quo, and there will be people who vehemently hate each one.
bloak 5y ago
> they make the traditional "they" ambiguous and a bit confusing I'd say you're technically right. I have occasionally read to the end of a sentence and thought, "Wait, that doesn't make sense", gone back and found the reason it didn't make sense is because I interpreted "they" as referring to a singular person when the author meant it to refer to a different plural antecedent and presumably hadn't realised that it would be ambiguous for some readers. (Or perhaps the other way around.) It doesn't happen very often, though. I agree that it doesn't seem likely that people will adopt one of the neopronouns, particularly since there's not even a clear favourite amongst the various proposals.
tzs 5y ago
Essentially gender serves as a simple hash for pronoun assignment. Take his sentence, where <X> is a pronoun: When John and Mary went on a road trip <X> paid for the gas. With gendered pronouns, John (probably) hashes to "he" and Mary (probably) to "she". That's a decent system for simpler times and situations, but it still quickly runs up into limitations. If it is Alice and Mary on the road trip instead of John and Mary, there is no <X> that works. I think what we need is a set of position based pronouns. I'll just call them P1, P2, P3, and so on. P1 refers to the first noun in the sentence, P2 the second, and so on. In the first sentence, <X> would be P1 if John paid for the gas and P2 if Mary paid for it. But that too runs into problems. Pronouns are often used to refer to nouns in prior sentences. The road trip sentence might be followed by "They picked up hitchhiker Bob who was her old neighbor", with "her" referring to Mary from the prior sentence. I think that to make positional pronouns work, they need to count back from the position of usage rather than forward from the position of the thing the reference. So if you have two sentences with John and Mary named in the first and Bob in the second, P1 refers to John if it occurs between John and Mary, to Mary if it occurs between Mary and Bob, and to Bob if it occurs later. That would certainly be odd at first, because the same pronoun could be used more than once in a sentence and mean different people each time: John overthrew when P1 tossed the ball to Mary but P1 was still able to catch it. P1 is John in part of that sentence and Mary in part of it. In more complicated sentences this could get very confusing very fast. Imagine reading along and somewhere near the end of long paragraph you hit a P12 and had to them skim backward counting nouns. Or worse, if someone dropped a P12 in conversation. So I think what I'd actually advocate for is the forward counting position based pronouns, but they only work within a sentence.

madeofpalk 5y ago

> pronouns in English is how they make the traditional How is this different from any other word? There are the odd times where it might be awkward or ambiguous to use, but I think those are the exceptions. When it happens, just reword your sentence.

garblegarble 5y ago

>the traditional "they" ambiguous and a bit confusing How traditional are you talking about, because the singular they has been in use since the 14th century - according to wikipedia that's only 100 years after "they" as plural https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

bloak 5y ago
The Wikipedia article seems to cover this quite well, but I'll say it here anyway: there are several kinds of singular "they". Using "they" to refer to a word like "someone" or "anyone", as in "If everyone minded their own business", is totally normal and has been for a very long time. Using "they" to refer to a hypothetical or unknown person described by an ordinary noun, as in "The user must prove their identity", is common enough nowadays but I get the impression that it wasn't so common 50 or 100 years ago. Using "they" to refer to a known person, as in "My cousin lent me their copy", is very modern and likely to confuse some people.
- garblegarble 5y ago
  And worth noting for anyone who didn't read the original pull request, the case here is documentation switching references to an unknown person from "he/her" to "their" (a change which I think actually makes it easier to read).

pwdisswordfish8 5y ago

I am somewhat sympathetic to thy viewpoint, but I think that ship has sailed.

dspillett 5y ago

> I would've much preferred using another set of pronouns The difficulty there is that while natural language is flexible and ever-changing, it usually doesn't deform into a new consistent state very fast. New generally accepted pronouns might develop over time, or existing ones will change their use and meaning (like the originally plural "they" becoming accepted as a singular too from C14 onwards, and waxing & waning in that use in general use since) but if you try to create them less organically you'll find a lot of friction. As with any new standard there will be competing standards, including the status quo, and there will be people who vehemently hate each one.

bloak 5y ago

> they make the traditional "they" ambiguous and a bit confusing I'd say you're technically right. I have occasionally read to the end of a sentence and thought, "Wait, that doesn't make sense", gone back and found the reason it didn't make sense is because I interpreted "they" as referring to a singular person when the author meant it to refer to a different plural antecedent and presumably hadn't realised that it would be ambiguous for some readers. (Or perhaps the other way around.) It doesn't happen very often, though. I agree that it doesn't seem likely that people will adopt one of the neopronouns, particularly since there's not even a clear favourite amongst the various proposals.

tzs 5y ago

Essentially gender serves as a simple hash for pronoun assignment. Take his sentence, where <X> is a pronoun: When John and Mary went on a road trip <X> paid for the gas. With gendered pronouns, John (probably) hashes to "he" and Mary (probably) to "she". That's a decent system for simpler times and situations, but it still quickly runs up into limitations. If it is Alice and Mary on the road trip instead of John and Mary, there is no <X> that works. I think what we need is a set of position based pronouns. I'll just call them P1, P2, P3, and so on. P1 refers to the first noun in the sentence, P2 the second, and so on. In the first sentence, <X> would be P1 if John paid for the gas and P2 if Mary paid for it. But that too runs into problems. Pronouns are often used to refer to nouns in prior sentences. The road trip sentence might be followed by "They picked up hitchhiker Bob who was her old neighbor", with "her" referring to Mary from the prior sentence. I think that to make positional pronouns work, they need to count back from the position of usage rather than forward from the position of the thing the reference. So if you have two sentences with John and Mary named in the first and Bob in the second, P1 refers to John if it occurs between John and Mary, to Mary if it occurs between Mary and Bob, and to Bob if it occurs later. That would certainly be odd at first, because the same pronoun could be used more than once in a sentence and mean different people each time: John overthrew when P1 tossed the ball to Mary but P1 was still able to catch it. P1 is John in part of that sentence and Mary in part of it. In more complicated sentences this could get very confusing very fast. Imagine reading along and somewhere near the end of long paragraph you hit a P12 and had to them skim backward counting nouns. Or worse, if someone dropped a P12 in conversation. So I think what I'd actually advocate for is the forward counting position based pronouns, but they only work within a sentence.