4 ms·
For me it's the simple issue about knowing which gender pronoun to use. It seems rude to call someone's child "it."
by nostromo 13y ago
For me it's the simple issue about knowing which gender pronoun to use. It seems rude to call someone's child "it."
- neeee 13y agoI think "they" is preferred over "it", and not rude at all.
- chipsy 13y agoWhen pronoun is unknown, "they" is the common choice. At queer conferences it is becoming the practice to include preferred pronouns on your name tag.
- moocowduckquack 13y agoI demand to be formally addressed as the Wizard of Speed and Time.
- nostromo 13y agoReally? That sounds worse to me... "How old are they?" "When did you have them?" "Are they a boy or a girl?" "They are adorable." I would probably just drop the pronoun completely. "How old?" "When did you give birth?" "Boy or girl?" "So adorable!"
- rdouble 13y agoIf you say "how old is they?" or "they is adorable" it will sound cooler, like you're speaking some sort of patois.
- nostromo 13y agoI just read this fun Wikipedia article for language nerds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
- Dewie 13y agoThat's pretty cool. The verb conjugation for "to be" seems to be actually useful in this context. It sounds a little wrong to me, but that's just a matter of habit, and it would probably flow better in written English than writing he/she.
- Dylan16807 13y ago>"How old are they?" "When did you have them?" "Are they a boy or a girl?" "They are adorable." Those sentences sound completely normal and grammatical to me.
- ars 13y ago> Those sentences sound completely normal and grammatical to me. Only if you are talking about more than one person. If you are talking about a single person those sentences sound bizarre.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago'They' is fine as a singular, for instance the person that you have just replied to, they say that you are completely wrong, and I agree with them. See? Look up the "epicene they".
- meepmorp 13y agoYou're in dangerous territory if you ask boy or girl - people often assume their child's gender is as obvious to you as it is to them. I've gotten some unexpected hostility from strangers this way.
- theaeolist 13y ago"How old is your child?" "How old is the little one?"
- Ziomislaw 13y agowell, it is highly dependant on the language, some require distinction between sexes, and using a gender neutral term is sometimes offensive.