4 ms·

Completely unrelated, but as a non native speaker of English I was completely lost in the "their"s, not knowing who they refer to. Then I realized that JT may

Completely unrelated, but as a non native speaker of English I was completely lost in the "their"s, not knowing who they refer to. Then I realized that JT may prefer to be addressed this way, which is indeed the case according to their Twitter handle. It is a shame that better pronouns were not promoted in English to simplify the understanding of sentences where they both refer to a single person and a group.

rsynnott 3y ago
English is extremely stingy with pronouns in general; beyond singular vs plural they, there's also no proper plural you, no modern informal you (it was 'thou', but that's archaic), no exclusive vs inclusive we, and so on.
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  > no exclusive vs inclusive we Thank you for teaching me something - I did not know that this existed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity)
- mijoharas 3y ago
  > there's also no proper plural you I don't know what y'all are talking about.
  - knorker 3y ago
    All y'all use y'all?
    - jmartrican 3y ago
      I love y'all, both the word and y'all. Wish it was more widely used outside of the US South.
      - fsckboy 3y ago
        in my dialect of English we just say "you all" or "all of you"
  - superdeeda 3y ago
    > I don't know what y'all are talking about. "You" can refer to either one person or multiple people.
    - mijoharas 3y ago
      And y'all only refers to multiple people. I guess it's kinda a plural "you". ;)
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  “You guys” is the plural form of “you” for the majority of American English-speakers in colloquial contexts.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    Or "y'all", or "youse", or lots of other variants. But there's no standard, is the thing.
fwlr 3y ago
I noticed this when I was writing it and tried to use names rather than pronouns as much as possible. I actually use “their” all the time for everyone, I wasn’t aware that JT requests it in their Twitter profile. About fifteen years ago, when I first heard about gender-neutral pronouns, the objection at the time was “it’s harder to write and more confusing”. I started doing it as a challenge to see if it really was hard or not. In that fifteen years, you are in fact the first person to have ever noticed and said something (congratulations).
- BrandoElFollito 3y ago
  > In that fifteen years, you are in fact the first person to have ever noticed and said something (congratulations). This may be because I am French and we do not "reuse" pronouns (in the sense that "their" always refers to a group). I know however that "their" use in single form has a long history in English and I therefore try to use "their" like you most of the time when it helps to generalize. We have new constructs in French such as iel (il + elle = he + she) which is used by some and by others not (and forbidden (or very strongly discouraged, I do not remember) in national education). I do not know if this is good or bad, it has the advantage to address males and females as a group (it is otherwise "he" or "hes" (plural of "he")).

rsynnott 3y ago

English is extremely stingy with pronouns in general; beyond singular vs plural they, there's also no proper plural you, no modern informal you (it was 'thou', but that's archaic), no exclusive vs inclusive we, and so on.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago
> no exclusive vs inclusive we Thank you for teaching me something - I did not know that this existed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clusivity)
mijoharas 3y ago
> there's also no proper plural you I don't know what y'all are talking about.
- knorker 3y ago
  All y'all use y'all?
  - jmartrican 3y ago
    I love y'all, both the word and y'all. Wish it was more widely used outside of the US South.
    - fsckboy 3y ago
      in my dialect of English we just say "you all" or "all of you"
- superdeeda 3y ago
  > I don't know what y'all are talking about. "You" can refer to either one person or multiple people.
  - mijoharas 3y ago
    And y'all only refers to multiple people. I guess it's kinda a plural "you". ;)
School-Cotton 3y ago
“You guys” is the plural form of “you” for the majority of American English-speakers in colloquial contexts.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  Or "y'all", or "youse", or lots of other variants. But there's no standard, is the thing.

fwlr 3y ago

I noticed this when I was writing it and tried to use names rather than pronouns as much as possible. I actually use “their” all the time for everyone, I wasn’t aware that JT requests it in their Twitter profile. About fifteen years ago, when I first heard about gender-neutral pronouns, the objection at the time was “it’s harder to write and more confusing”. I started doing it as a challenge to see if it really was hard or not. In that fifteen years, you are in fact the first person to have ever noticed and said something (congratulations).

BrandoElFollito 3y ago
> In that fifteen years, you are in fact the first person to have ever noticed and said something (congratulations). This may be because I am French and we do not "reuse" pronouns (in the sense that "their" always refers to a group). I know however that "their" use in single form has a long history in English and I therefore try to use "their" like you most of the time when it helps to generalize. We have new constructs in French such as iel (il + elle = he + she) which is used by some and by others not (and forbidden (or very strongly discouraged, I do not remember) in national education). I do not know if this is good or bad, it has the advantage to address males and females as a group (it is otherwise "he" or "hes" (plural of "he")).