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> Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the g
by ukoki 5y ago
> Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown.
I can understand why 'they' is chosen as a way to introduce neutrality of gender but it pains me that this also introduces of ambiguity of plurality. We _really_ need a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. We're lucky that our first and second-person pronouns and our plural pronouns by fluke of language evolution just happen to already be gender neutral. It's just this last one -- third-person singular -- that is causing all this discussion, political fights, and newspaper column inches. It seems absurd to me when we could just call each other ze/zim (or whatever, the actual word doesn't really matter) and call it a day. If it turns out that the only way we can shut up about pronouns is to sacrifice 'they', then I guess that's an acceptable loss. But it does feel like all we need is a tiny tweak of the language to iron out this wrinkle by introducing something new (or taking one from another language, if that's more palatable).
- twic 5y agosingular: they plural: theys
- GordonS 5y agoSomewhat similar, here in Scotland we often say "youse" to mean "you and those with you", or "youse two" to mean "you two". A similar concept exists in Mandarin Chinese, where "ni3" means "you" and "ni3men" to mean "you and those with you", but there is also "ta1" as a gender-neutral, singular "they" (that is, he/she), and "ta1men" as a gender-neutral, plural "they".
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoThere are suggestions for neutral pronouns in English but in my experience they get even more resistance than they/them for being ridiculous/fake/made up/not real/etc. xyr/xym or ve/vem of zir/zem are all things I’ve seen ridiculed.
- humanrebar 5y agoAgreed. "Y'all" is being introduced into the language because singular/plural "you" is ambiguous. Regressing on the clarity of "they" is confusing.
- karmelapple 5y agoGet thon to Dinosaur Comics, which has discussed this before: https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2079 https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2079
- jhgb 5y ago> We're lucky that our first and second-person pronouns and our plural pronouns by fluke of language evolution just happen to already be gender neutral. Is it "a fluke"? You generally know a lot about the first and second person in a conversation. You know yourself and you see who you're talking to. There's no need for more precision for the first or second person. When trying to point to a specific individual other than one of the two interlocutors, however, finer distinctions help. That doesn't seem like "a fluke" to me. That actually seems to make quite a lot of sense.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoIt's a greater shame that we lost the distinction between singular and plural "you" when we gave up on "thou." In the south they use "y'all" and in the west we're starting to use "you guys" to try to compensate. If the two types of "they" begin to cause frequent clashes, I imagine we'll see some new term pop up to add some specificity.
- kemayo 5y agoIt's worth bearing in mind that singular-they is almost as old as plural-they in usage. I think it's more likely we can settle into an existing valid usage (that spent a while being argued against by style guides in the 19th century) than gain acceptance on something completely new. Wikipedia's summary is fine here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- guerrilla 5y ago> I can understand why 'they' is chosen as a way to introduce neutrality of gender but it pains me that this also introduces of ambiguity of plurality. Me too, deeply, but I've solved this: What we need to do is update plural they/them/theirs to theys/thems/theirses.