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I think you'd have to be very young to think it's not novel. Natural language changes on this scale are usually very slow; singular and specific 'they' has only
by jlawson 5y ago
I think you'd have to be very young to think it's not novel. Natural language changes on this scale are usually very slow; singular and specific 'they' has only been getting pushed for a couple years (basically since Obergefell in 2015).
Note that this is separate from singular and nonspecific 'they' which is much older.
- bawolff 5y agoI don't really think novel just means "recent" but also has a connotation of non-standard or an idea that hasn't really caught on yet.
- jlawson 5y agoIt is non-standard and hasn't really caught on outside of your bubble. Most English speakers are much further from the direct influence of gender activists.
- bawolff 5y agoI mean, the APA styleguide says to use it https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/si... AP styleguide also says its acceptable. I don't know that it gets more standard than that when it comes to english. That it has even caught the attention of style guide authors at all is enough to move it past the "novel" stage in my mind. I'm not claiming its universal (after all, english has a ton of variants) just not novel at this point. Compare to something like "xe", which i would call novel as its pretty far outside the mainstream.