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It may make sense to distinguish more than two usages: 1. Referring to an expression like "everyone" or "someone" (not a noun): "If everyone minded their own b

by bloak 3y ago

It may make sense to distinguish more than two usages: 1. Referring to an expression like "everyone" or "someone" (not a noun): "If everyone minded their own business". This usage goes to back to Middle English. 2. Referring to a noun that refers to a person who gender clearly cannot be known by the speaker: "This style guide will enlighten the reader in ways they never expected." This usage seems fairly traditional but I'm not sure if it goes back as far as the previous one. I rather suspect it doesn't, in which case it wasn't a good example in the passage quoted above. 3. Referring to a noun that refers to a person whose gender could be known but happens not to be known, at least not yet: "The burglar injured their hand breaking the window; we have sent blood samples to the lab for analysis." 4. Referring to a noun that refers to a person whose gender is known to the speaker but the speaker does not want to reveal the gender: "We have another witness; they saw you leaving the scene." (It takes practice to do this. I have on several occasions heard people accidentally reveal the gender when they didn't want to.) 5. Non-binary people: "Alex asked that they be given a promotion."

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
"They" has also long been used for individuals with known genders too. It might be considered informal, and the kind of thing that editors and style guides fuss over and "correct", but that's kind of how new words and usages enter a language. An example from thesaurus.com: > English speakers have been breaking new ground when it comes to they, resourcefully applying this to a specific and known singular, e.g., My best friend from high school is famous now—too bad we didn’t stay in touch after they moved to California.
- bloak 3y ago
  I can't tell from that example what rule the speaker might be following. Are they perhaps using "they" because the listener doesn't know the friend's gender? I came across another, different case in which a young native speaker of British English used "they" instead of "she": in talking about a hypothetical female person. I asked the speaker why they had used "they" instead of "she" (I can be annoying at times) and they helpfully explained that if they had used "she" then it would have sounded as if the person really existed. (They were talking about a sister they didn't have, or something like that.)
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    I think the rule is "it's okay to use they as a singular for individuals with known gender" and while that rule might not make it into styleguides (yet) I see it regularly in actual speech. "You two, stop fighting" "But they started it!"
    - bloak 3y ago
      "It's okay" isn't what I mean by a "rule": I'm talking about the kind of "rule" that tells me (or any other speaker) when to use "they". There certainly are people using "they" when they know the gender, but they don't use "they" in every case, as far as I can tell, so presumably they are following some kind of rule with conditions in it (because people don't, in practice, choose pronouns at random).
pjc50 3y ago
Yes. It's useful for the gender-not-specified case, and therefore has been taken up by nonbinary people. There used to be widespread usage of "he/she" or similar in documentation that was trying to edit out the old assumption of using "he" everywhere to refer to "the user". That was always a bit clunky, and "they" reads better. Almost everyone who used to use "neopronouns" has given up and settled for "they", as well.
yakubin 3y ago
6. Referring to a person whose gender may be known or not, but is completely irrelevant in a given context (most) and including it in the sentence would only introduce unnecessary noise, leaving the recipient puzzled over what relevance this piece of information has instead of focusing on the core message.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Or, historically, you defaulted to whatever the stereotypical gender role was with a preference for saying he in general (unless you were talking about a secretary or nurse).

by bloak 3y ago

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

"They" has also long been used for individuals with known genders too. It might be considered informal, and the kind of thing that editors and style guides fuss over and "correct", but that's kind of how new words and usages enter a language. An example from thesaurus.com: > English speakers have been breaking new ground when it comes to they, resourcefully applying this to a specific and known singular, e.g., My best friend from high school is famous now—too bad we didn’t stay in touch after they moved to California.

bloak 3y ago
I can't tell from that example what rule the speaker might be following. Are they perhaps using "they" because the listener doesn't know the friend's gender? I came across another, different case in which a young native speaker of British English used "they" instead of "she": in talking about a hypothetical female person. I asked the speaker why they had used "they" instead of "she" (I can be annoying at times) and they helpfully explained that if they had used "she" then it would have sounded as if the person really existed. (They were talking about a sister they didn't have, or something like that.)
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I think the rule is "it's okay to use they as a singular for individuals with known gender" and while that rule might not make it into styleguides (yet) I see it regularly in actual speech. "You two, stop fighting" "But they started it!"
  - bloak 3y ago
    "It's okay" isn't what I mean by a "rule": I'm talking about the kind of "rule" that tells me (or any other speaker) when to use "they". There certainly are people using "they" when they know the gender, but they don't use "they" in every case, as far as I can tell, so presumably they are following some kind of rule with conditions in it (because people don't, in practice, choose pronouns at random).

pjc50 3y ago

Yes. It's useful for the gender-not-specified case, and therefore has been taken up by nonbinary people. There used to be widespread usage of "he/she" or similar in documentation that was trying to edit out the old assumption of using "he" everywhere to refer to "the user". That was always a bit clunky, and "they" reads better. Almost everyone who used to use "neopronouns" has given up and settled for "they", as well.

yakubin 3y ago

6. Referring to a person whose gender may be known or not, but is completely irrelevant in a given context (most) and including it in the sentence would only introduce unnecessary noise, leaving the recipient puzzled over what relevance this piece of information has instead of focusing on the core message.

ghaff 3y ago
Or, historically, you defaulted to whatever the stereotypical gender role was with a preference for saying he in general (unless you were talking about a secretary or nurse).