To me it’s quite unnatural to use singular they about someone whose gender I actually know.
“There’s someone at the door”
“what does he or she want?” -nobody
I don’t mind using they / them for non-binary people. It’s just that it takes a lot of mental energy to not embarrass myself by forgetting and using the gendered pronoun.
Of course they do, especially when the number of people is ambiguous or when they are speaking about someone titled as a profession such as “I went to the doctor and they said…”
It is all a manufactured situation used to push hate and attack the marginalised. Singular they has been around for a very long time and there were options before they was they, not to mention in all the other myriad languages in the world.
I’ve started yelling “NO PRONOUNS” and “USE HE/SHE BECAUSE HE/SHE IS NOT AN OBJECT” at my conservative relatives and acquaintances who complain about pronouns and gender-neutral anything.
No, Deborah, the non-binary person who helped you figure out your phone today is not the cause of societies’ downfall, nor are they responsible for high grocery prices.
They complain about pronouns, but use them constantly. Clearly they don’t truly know what a pronoun is. They complain about gender neutral stuff, but use neutral language all the time.
So I’ve been loudly pointing out every time they do.
I’ve been uninvited from a lot of future family gatherings. oh nooooooooooo
My English teacher back in highschool was very picky about using “they” like most people do. I can hear him say “you have to use FORMAL LANGUAGE” in my head still lol
If it’s an unknown person we were told to use “he or she” instead of “they” and “his or her” instead of “their” despite the fact that no one fucking talks that way when referring to an unknown individual.
Like even saying “everyone should bring their laptop to class” would be marked wrong because “everyone” is singular so the “correct” version is “everyone should bring his or her laptop to class” which imo is way more confusing
However, he was also fine with us using masculine singular pronouns when the gender of a person wasn’t known, which I guess is kind of the case in like Spanish and some other Latin languages but still, just really weird rules
no one fucking talks that way
What part of “formal language” did you not understand :P
I think it’s changed now but I think this is exactly it: for a long time, singular they has been held to be informal. It doesn’t matter how people normally talk, because rules of formality are not about that.
English lessons (or any lesson teaching you about your native language) are often expressly about teaching you a formal, standardised version of the language. Sometimes that’s for reasons of control and the imposition of a hierarchy, but there’s a practical element to it, as well. If you’re somewhere where different registers of a language are spoken, being able to write and speak the formal register (or the “prestige dialect”) unlocks opportunities and jobs.
Understanding of linguistic subtleties like “formal register” and “prestige dialect” is often lacking though so teachers often say that informal or regional dialect versions are wrong rather than merely not the preferred dialect you are learning in these lessons. I suppose there’s an argument that, in context, those two things are synonyms.
so the “correct” version is “everyone should bring his or her laptop to class” which imo is way more confusing
Only if you’re used to hearing it the wrong way.
‘Emails’[sic] probably sounds more ‘correct’ to you, even though it’s like ‘deers’ and ‘happies’.
it genuinely causes confusion though, someone told me “they” (a different person), were going to be there early and I was like “they’re all going to come early?!”
‘You’ has a similar ambiguity, being a plural word originally, but most people muddle through that.
I do think we should bring back thee/thy/thou as singular, but whatever.
This is one area where spanish is better. They have tu, vos, and usted (depending on formality) for singular you and they have ustedes and vosotros for you guys.
They usually only use it for unknown people though, which is why it sounds strange to them to use for a known person.
This contextual nuance is mostly lost or went over the heads of young learners today, for better or for worse. I like to think that’s why “they” was word of the year for a few dictionaries in the last decade or two, for the benefit of young and old alike.
And it goes back to at least Chaucer, so it’s been in recorded use for like six centuries. Most definitely not “new”.
You can find critics of its use that are almost as old as its use. Oddly, for some reason critics of its use don’t seem to show up… Until it started being used.
Poets and authors have been artistically butchering, changing, and shaping language for as long as language has existed. This is neither an argument for nor against any particular change. Just look at the nonsense that James Joyce did.
I have a non-binary partner and I respect their pronouns, but personally if I cared enough to change my pronouns I would be more comfortable with “it” to avoid any confusion when discussing a mixture of singular and plural nouns. Heck, if I was going to make my own language from scratch singular vs plural pronouns would be much more commonly used while gendered pronouns would be reserved for specific scenarios where gender is relevant.
They don’t now what they talkin bout
I wish my English teachers didn’t beat me up so hard (figuratively) as incorrect use of ‘they’ when it has a long history of usage in the singular.
I’m really curious as to how singular they started being taught as incorrect. I really don’t think it was originally intended to be transphobic.
Chinese language is gender neutral:
他 (tā) - he/she/
it, singular
(Edit: “it” is actually “它”, but its the same pronunciation)
他们 (tā mén) - they, pluralSo simple… there’s no fuss about pronouns lmfao
Imagine all the problems that would go away if the US just used a better language xD
Better than some languages like German, where even inanimate objects have gender. That would be nicer though.
It’s cute when someone with a first language like that carries it over to English. “The coffee maker… he is broken 😞” I’m so sad for him!
Never thought of that, but personalizing objects is kind of cute, I agree.
they have half a point in that its typically only applied to people when a gender is unknown or you are referring to a group. that falls apart pretty quick though because unknown gender is barely any different from someone choosing not to identify with one. also, half a point is no good in the first place.
I don’t think this would’ve happened though if there hadn’t been the societal impetus that aided adoption. The singular they may have been around since Chaucer or Shakespeare - ~30 years ago, people didn’t really use it. There was far more “he or she” going on, that’s now been more commonly replaced with a “they,” also because it’s shorter. English benefits from the fact that the neutral pronoun slots right in to the existing grammar. Other languages struggle with finding such a neutral replacement because it’s more often than not a new word and a slightly altered grammatical function. English is okay on the first problem and arguably okay to mostly okay on the second.
I think singular they was still used naturally and unconsciously even when it was taught to be incorrect. People don’t naturally say “he or she”
But for a linking word. It’s a comma splice.
Since both clauses are interdependent and incorrect on their own, the join here with merely a comma is entirely proper and not a comma slice
