3 ms·

I don't like the singular they. I find it far more annoying than the generic he or the construct of he or she. The generic he actually has an interesting hist

I don't like the singular they. I find it far more annoying than the generic he or the construct of he or she. The generic he actually has an interesting history. In Old English, the word wifman (-> woman) is a masculine noun and wif (-> wife) is neuter. This is because man though meaning basically "human" is a masculine noun so any compound of -man is also masculine. If one wants to specify a male man in Old English one either uses wer (counterpart to wif, survives in werewolf, which is why I joke that all werewolves are by definition male) or wapman which is the counterpart of wifman. This led to an interesting problem. If you are talking about a specific woman and have perfect gender agreement, then "he" has to be used to refer to "woman." That makes things hard to read and so Old English has a rule which is that you ignore the grammatical gender of the word when you refer to a specific person. If we applied this to modern English we'd have amazing constructs like: "I went to the store and the woman at the cash register told me that I needed to give her an extra $5." vs "Any woman thinking about getting married should make sure that he has some level of financial independence first." The first is specific while the second is generic. He in the second refers to "any woman" not her prospective spouse! Similarly "My wife says she isn't up to coming to the party this weekend" but "A wife today still finds it has to do a majority of the housework." I don't like mixing numbers though. If "they" is an acceptable singular why isn't "it's" an acceptable possessive?

nicky0 14y ago
Does it have a "rule" like that really? Isn't grammar just a description of the patterns we see in languages?
- einhverfr 14y ago
  As a clarification, it isn't clear that the rule is universally followed but at least from the areas of Old English literature I have read it is the clearly most common way to use gendered pronouns at least in prosaic contexts.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Rule in the descriptivist sense.
vacri 14y ago
Etymology aside, what's your suggestion for a workable replacement to "they"?
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Sure. One can avoid using gendered pronouns in generic contexts. As a writer, one doesn't have to use them at all if one doesn't want. Indeed "one" makes a fine indefinite pronoun when used properly. My own style is to use he as super-generic (i.e. bordering on the proverbial), "one" as personal, shared person perspective generic ("one" in this case doesn't differentiate between first and third person, and has some aspects of second person imperative thrown in), and "he or she" as highly descriptive generic. It works very well. I use "one" most often, "he or she" rarely, and "he" only occasionally. What I hate doing however is having to explain that by "man" I mean it in its original sense. That's why I prefer to say salesman over salesperson, etc. -man never carried with it gender assumptions. If it did, we wouldn't have the root in the word "woman." Now -wif did. Which is one reason why referring to an "alewife" as a female bartender is somewhat archaic.
  - vacri 14y ago
    What I hate doing however is having to explain that by "man" I mean it in its original sense That's because the meaning has changed, and also the sexism of the term is better understood. If you're American, do you also use the term 'negro' to refer to black people? It's a neutral and descriptive term in medical parlance, but it's a clear case of a word having more impact than its roots back in the day. So trying to shoehorn in an out-of-date definition is changing the modern meaning of the word, just the same as repurposing 'they'. In truth, I think you're just being stubborn about wanting to use sexist language, since you don't seem to have too much of a problem with using all the borrowed words and grammar we've gained since the 'alewife' days.

nicky0 14y ago

Does it have a "rule" like that really? Isn't grammar just a description of the patterns we see in languages?

einhverfr 14y ago
As a clarification, it isn't clear that the rule is universally followed but at least from the areas of Old English literature I have read it is the clearly most common way to use gendered pronouns at least in prosaic contexts.
einhverfr 14y ago
Rule in the descriptivist sense.

vacri 14y ago

Etymology aside, what's your suggestion for a workable replacement to "they"?

einhverfr 14y ago
Sure. One can avoid using gendered pronouns in generic contexts. As a writer, one doesn't have to use them at all if one doesn't want. Indeed "one" makes a fine indefinite pronoun when used properly. My own style is to use he as super-generic (i.e. bordering on the proverbial), "one" as personal, shared person perspective generic ("one" in this case doesn't differentiate between first and third person, and has some aspects of second person imperative thrown in), and "he or she" as highly descriptive generic. It works very well. I use "one" most often, "he or she" rarely, and "he" only occasionally. What I hate doing however is having to explain that by "man" I mean it in its original sense. That's why I prefer to say salesman over salesperson, etc. -man never carried with it gender assumptions. If it did, we wouldn't have the root in the word "woman." Now -wif did. Which is one reason why referring to an "alewife" as a female bartender is somewhat archaic.
- vacri 14y ago
  What I hate doing however is having to explain that by "man" I mean it in its original sense That's because the meaning has changed, and also the sexism of the term is better understood. If you're American, do you also use the term 'negro' to refer to black people? It's a neutral and descriptive term in medical parlance, but it's a clear case of a word having more impact than its roots back in the day. So trying to shoehorn in an out-of-date definition is changing the modern meaning of the word, just the same as repurposing 'they'. In truth, I think you're just being stubborn about wanting to use sexist language, since you don't seem to have too much of a problem with using all the borrowed words and grammar we've gained since the 'alewife' days.