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Right, that is why I said "more" gendered. I don't think many would argue that it wasn't at least somewhat gendered already. (I'm sure there is someone that w
by taeric 3y ago
Right, that is why I said "more" gendered. I don't think many would argue that it wasn't at least somewhat gendered already. (I'm sure there is someone that would, of course.)
I thought I had heard some push for words other than "captain" and such, but I can't find anything coherent behind that.
None of this changes the rest of what I said, though? English is one of the few languages where I can change a "she" to a "he" or "they" and the rest of the words don't have to change for the sentence to remain coherent. Right?
- ghaff 3y agoWell, singular "they" is historically ungrammatical but most people find that it's a reasonable choice to be gender-neutral for people.
- taeric 3y agoI'm curious on what made it ungrammatical? I'm assuming you mean "they" used to not be singular? That somewhat surprises me, as I've never been distracted by talking about someone with the pronoun "they." Indeed, google tells me that singular "they" traces back to at least 1375? (https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they... is a full article on it. Amusing and interesting history of the word.)
- ghaff 3y agoYes, there is precedent for singular "they" which is one of the justifications for why it's a convenient hack for generically referring to an individual person. But I can assure you that had I done so in school growing up I would have been corrected and told to use he unless the individual in question was clearly a woman. (Or, presumably, had some female-associated role like a nurse.) And where I work now, it's probably only been in our style guide for five years or so. Prior to that we'd have used some other workaround.