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My point is that, in English, it's possible to leave someone's gender entirely unstated, whereas in Spanish someone is either "el amigo" or "la amiga" with no o
by msla 3y ago
My point is that, in English, it's possible to leave someone's gender entirely unstated, whereas in Spanish someone is either "el amigo" or "la amiga" with no other options.
Also, if you don't know Spanish, I'm not going to teach it to you.
- stavros 3y agoIt's only possible if you use neologisms like "they said", whereas in Spanish you can go entire sentences without referring to the gender.
- msla 3y agoSingular they goes back to the 1300s. Whatever it is, it is not neologistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- stavros 3y agoI don't know, the sentence "by 2020 most style guides accepted the singular they as a personal pronoun" doesn't scream "it's been used like this for centuries" to me.
- arp242 3y agoThis is one of those things that's both true and false at the same time. It's true it goes back to 1300, but it had also fallen out off fashion and was considered "wrong" later on. Languages change, and don't do so in a linear straight-forward way. From our perspective, it's very much a neologism (although it's been a few decades, and arguably already passed the neologism stage).