7 ms·
Theirself or Themself?
- merrua 13y ago"Themself" or "thine self" or "thyself" or "theirself" all sound ok. But theirself looks incorrect written down. I would use Themself if I was writing.
- gr3yh47 13y ago"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- theorique 13y agoYes, it sounds better. The rest of these words sound ... not quite "barbaric", but definitely uneducated and ignorant. I'd definitely recommend avoiding them if you are writing something professional.
- 70forty 13y agoBy what authority is this the technically correct word? Some dictionary or grammar book? Where did they get their authority to determine this? Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive approach. Do a corpus study and then you'll have some basis to make a claim about what is and isn't standard usage.
- kjhughes 13y agoThankfully professional lexicographers balance both emerging and traditional usage norms in their recommendations.
- joshuapants 13y ago>Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive approach. This is tangentially related: the English language is a bit unusual in how flexible it is to change along with common usage. Other languages can have their usage dictated by the government; Germany, France, and Japan have all had noted language reforms that in some cases radically changed the language. That is not to say, however, that all their citizens automatically start following these reforms perfectly because lifelong habits are hard to break.
- 70forty 13y agoDo you know some examples of this for French, German or Japanese? I know about the French Academy, for example. I would have assumed their influence didn't extend much beyond orthographic/spelling conventions.
- gr3yh47 13y agoSaying I can only make a claim if I have done a certain study is somewhat absurd, especially when you are, with that suggestion, claiming to be the authority on how to determine what is correct.
- normloman 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description ^^^ Read it for your own good.
- gr3yh47 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_written_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_written_English ^^^ Read it for your own good
- normloman 13y agoAnd I'm sure if you asked editors at big publishing houses or english teachers, most would tell you to prefer "themselves." Themself is a new construction that hasn't caught on. Purveyors of "standard" English have to err on the side of conservatism.
- 70forty 13y agoI gave you a method for determining standard usage.
- losvedir 13y agoI downvoted this comment because I don't think it brings anything to the discussion. I'm pretty sure it's obvious to every HN reader (and the post author themself) that "he" is the "correct" gender-unknown pronoun, along with "himself". The submitted post is interesting because a lot of us prefer they/them for the gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun[0], and it raises an interesting corner case. I had to think about it for a bit, but I think "themself" sounds most natural to me. [0] Why default to "he" when gender is unknown? Is correct number but incorrect gender better than "they", which is incorrect number but correct gender? "They" is natural to almost all native English speakers and has been used in that capacity in writing since at least Chaucer. edit: Hm, now I wish I hadn't downvoted. Sorry about that. I suppose it's helpful for non-native HN speakers to know the "correct" word for academic writing, as much as it irritates me that that is what's considered correct.
- gr3yh47 13y agoI don't think it's necessarily obvious or common knowledge today as it would have been maybe a decade or so ago. I also don't take for granted that the author of the post knows this since he doesn't mention this current correct usage at all, even to say that it seems undesirable or unsuitable. The above notwithstanding, i certainly don't disagree that informal English has morphed towards usage of 'they' as the general gender neutral pronoun in all cases, as I myself just had to go back and correct "they don't" to "he doesn't" in the paragraph above when referring to the writer, even though his gender is clear from his name. However I personally have no issue with 'himself' being the correct pronoun in the singular gender neutral reflexive for formal English.
- DArcMattr 13y agoI got a lot of pushback from my thesis advisor when I was going with the gender-neutral approach. This was over 10 years ago, and not much has changed since then by the looks of it.
- spellboots 13y agoIt used to be technically correct. Today, it is technically incorrect, because society today acknowledges that women are full, living, breathing human beings and may in fact be referred to as such in polite conversation.
- autodidakto 13y agoWhat is this "women" creature that so many men speak so passionately of?
- omonra 13y agoCES booth babes are apparently predominantly 'women'.
- gr3yh47 13y agoWhen you know you're referring to a woman, sure. But when the gender is unclear, it shouldn't be a feminism issue. This entire argument has always seemed ridiculous to me, and I mean really, go look at the Spanish language...
- logfromblammo 13y agoThe best kind of correct. Thanks to feminist grammarians, "herself" is also correct. Or else you'll have to check your privilege, or some equally horrible fate. Though this suggests that the default gender for unknown animate third person pronouns should remain consistent throughout your entire written work. The writer should probably just pick his own gender unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. One such reason could be the conditional probability for the subject being male or female, depending on what you already know about him. Engineer? Him. Elementary schoolteacher? Her. Someone got a mammogram? Her. Someone got a Darwin award? Him. If the conditional probability is 50% either way, you just pick your own gender, as above.
- 70forty 13y ago"themself" follows the same pattern as "himself", "herself", "ourself", etc. As a commenter pointed out, "them" is frequently used as a singular object pronoun: If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate them. corpus.byu.edu/coca/ returns 95,000 hits for "themselves" vs only 43 for "theirselves".
- gr3yh47 13y agoThis is, however, formally incorrect. "If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate him." would be formally correct edit: and your corpus search correctly shows that the plural 'themselves' is correct over 'theirselves' while having nothing to do with the discussion at hand about the singular
- Symmetry 13y agoWhat are you consulting to find that the correct replacement for 'them' in formal writing is 'him' here? There isn't any College of the English Language to make authoritative prescriptive statements, and the Chicago Manual of Style at least has been against the use of 'him' here for several editions.
- gr3yh47 13y agoI am not claiming that 'him' is a replacement for 'them' 'them' is plural and flatly incorrect when used as a singular pronoun. edit: Again, 'them' is formally incorrect but informally acceptable in the singular usage.
- 70forty 13y ago'them' is plural and flatly incorrect when used as a singular pronoun. Why? How do you know this?
- BjoernKW 13y agoIf you absolutely have to use one of those it would have to be 'themself'. 'their' clearly is wrong in that place because it's possessive pronoun. The reason why 'their' can be used in the same position in the sentence is that it's used as a modifier to the object, i.e. the position in the sentence is the same but the syntax tree is different.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- collyw 13y agoDoes it really matter? That's the beauty of interacting with real people rather than a computer. You can make small mistakes, and even bigger ones and people will understand you. Hell I should know I live in Spain, and my Spanish grammar is crap.
- blueblob 13y agoPeople are working on getting computers to understand small mistakes as well. There is more than one type of grammar in computer science. A generative grammar which might be used for responses can be different than a grammar that is used for recognition. The one used for recognition should understand mistakes, but the one used for responses should not.
- gr3yh47 13y agoamong other reasons, having rules matters precisely to ENABLE the making of small mistakes while still preserving the whole idea being communicated. without the rules, the language has no meaning whatsoever.
- normloman 13y agoWriter here. The author is a programmer. An expert in formal languages. Formal languages have to be logically consistent. Not English. "Themselves" is correct, even if it's inconsistent, because it's what most people say and understand. That's the point of a natural language. Not to be neat and orderly, but to be understood.
- gr3yh47 13y ago"Themselves" is correct because it is plural. What of the singular?
- normloman 13y agoYou're not getting it. It's not correct because it's plural. It's correct because most people agree that it's correct. If every english speaker on earth simultaneously decided that "xivuewq" was the correct reflexive form, that's what we would use. Now in my experience, even when people use the singular "they," most people use "themselves" as the reflexive in that context. A few might use "themself," but they are in the minority. Best to use the widely accepted "themselves" in formal writing, then.
- gr3yh47 13y agoActually, you're not getting it. While the use of 'them' and 'themselves' is increasingly acceptable informally, it still violates basic rules of plurality that most people agree upon, and is thus formally incorrect.