5 ms·

All of those uses have been common in standard American English for decades if not longer. Singular they is nothing new at all.

by ptmcc 5y ago

dataflow 5y ago
> Singular they is nothing new at all. As if I claimed it was?
- emodendroket 5y ago
  That is the implication of calling it a trend.
  - pezezin 5y ago
    Let me clarify what I wanted to say with "recent trend": Singular they to refer to a hypothetical or unspecified person is very normal, any fluent speaker of English, native or not, uses it frequently. But singular they to refer to an specific person is not so common. I have never anybody who speaks like that, and I have met many people in my life. Maybe it has been used for decades in some dialects, but I only started to notice it this year, with all the push for non-gendered, non-binary language and the like. In my book, that's a trend.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      For usages like "Robert likes to clean their house" I could see this, but in an example like this with "my friend" I don't find it to be particularly modish.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    No. Not only does "trend" not imply "new" (X rising from 10 at t = 0 to 11, 12, 13, 14, ... year-by-year is obviously a trend and clearly doesn't imply X was ever 0??) but I in fact quite explicitly said that the recent trend is "people pushing for everyone to use it more". Notice I did not say "anew", I did not say "for the first time", I said more. You're putting words in my mouth by reading it as "new". In fact the entire point of the comment was to point out that it is not new but that there has been a trend of it becoming more prevalent.
WalterBright 5y ago
Common? I've never heard any of them.
- hoseja 5y ago
  We have always been at war with Eastasia.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  You've never heard someone use "they" in reference to a singular person?! Sometimes you don't even know who the person referenced, so how do you refer to them? "I don't know who's in charge but they could learn a thing or two" "Someone is making a bunch of noise and they had better stop it" "My friend told me his coworker was hurt. I hope they're ok" Would you really use he or she instead of they in all of these situations? Like just pull a gender out of a hat?
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    Presumably they've only heard the variant "My friend told me his coworker was hurt. I hope he or she is ok". /sarcasm
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > You've never heard someone use "they" in reference to a singular person?! Not until the last couple years. I often heard "man" or "him" used in a gender neutral manner, and whether it was neutral or not came from the context. "Guy" usually referred to males, but sometimes was gender neutral, again from the context. In the late 70s there was a move to things like "postman => postal worker", "chairman => chairwoman or chairperson", "bowman => archer", "stewardess => flight attendant", etc. But never "they" as singular. Sometimes one saw "his or hers", "he or she", etc., but rarely as it is kinda clunky to use.

All of those uses have been common in standard American English for decades if not longer. Singular they is nothing new at all.

by ptmcc 5y ago

All of those uses have been common in standard American English for decades if not longer. Singular they is nothing new at all.

dataflow 5y ago

> Singular they is nothing new at all. As if I claimed it was?

emodendroket 5y ago
That is the implication of calling it a trend.
- pezezin 5y ago
  Let me clarify what I wanted to say with "recent trend": Singular they to refer to a hypothetical or unspecified person is very normal, any fluent speaker of English, native or not, uses it frequently. But singular they to refer to an specific person is not so common. I have never anybody who speaks like that, and I have met many people in my life. Maybe it has been used for decades in some dialects, but I only started to notice it this year, with all the push for non-gendered, non-binary language and the like. In my book, that's a trend.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    For usages like "Robert likes to clean their house" I could see this, but in an example like this with "my friend" I don't find it to be particularly modish.
- dataflow 5y ago
  No. Not only does "trend" not imply "new" (X rising from 10 at t = 0 to 11, 12, 13, 14, ... year-by-year is obviously a trend and clearly doesn't imply X was ever 0??) but I in fact quite explicitly said that the recent trend is "people pushing for everyone to use it more". Notice I did not say "anew", I did not say "for the first time", I said more. You're putting words in my mouth by reading it as "new". In fact the entire point of the comment was to point out that it is not new but that there has been a trend of it becoming more prevalent.

WalterBright 5y ago

Common? I've never heard any of them.

hoseja 5y ago
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
BoorishBears 5y ago
You've never heard someone use "they" in reference to a singular person?! Sometimes you don't even know who the person referenced, so how do you refer to them? "I don't know who's in charge but they could learn a thing or two" "Someone is making a bunch of noise and they had better stop it" "My friend told me his coworker was hurt. I hope they're ok" Would you really use he or she instead of they in all of these situations? Like just pull a gender out of a hat?
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  Presumably they've only heard the variant "My friend told me his coworker was hurt. I hope he or she is ok". /sarcasm
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > You've never heard someone use "they" in reference to a singular person?! Not until the last couple years. I often heard "man" or "him" used in a gender neutral manner, and whether it was neutral or not came from the context. "Guy" usually referred to males, but sometimes was gender neutral, again from the context. In the late 70s there was a move to things like "postman => postal worker", "chairman => chairwoman or chairperson", "bowman => archer", "stewardess => flight attendant", etc. But never "they" as singular. Sometimes one saw "his or hers", "he or she", etc., but rarely as it is kinda clunky to use.