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Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

illinois.edu

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Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#11

Post by jnevill »

untothebreach wrote: post #3

> turning either to invented pronouns like xe and zie This made me pause...aren't all pronouns (and for that matter, words in general) "invented?" Are they (see what I did there...) just making a distinction between words that are adapted or modified from other words, and ones that aren't?

Perhaps "Newly invented pronouns" would have been more clear. The distinction being Singular "They" has been around for a long time, and "Xe" can't be pronounced by the human mouth and confuses the older folk. Or something...

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#13

Post by bradleyjg »

ryangittins wrote: post #9

I've had enough of this discussion! The new gender-neutral singular pronoun is thou ! That's right, thou was the answer we were looking for.

I think thou is second person ("you"), not third ("he" and "she"). We are in need of a second person plural though--at least outside of the South where they have "y'all" and NJ where they have "youse guys".

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#15

Post by Strilanc »

Using the post's title on hacker news is probably misleading. It sounds more official out of context, whereas in the post the "award" is just a tongue-in-cheek framing device:

> -Truth in advertising: The Web of Language Distinguished Usage Panel, charged each year with picking the Word of the Year, consists entirely of me.

The comments keep up the joke:

> Kudos to the Distinguished Usage Panel! "They" chose wisely and well.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#16

Post by jnevill »

patrickfl wrote: post #7

Scanned the article, can someone give me a solid example of how this is used in a sentence?

patrickfl wished to be referred to with the gender-neutral, and more recently invented pronoun "xe", but no one could figure out how to pronounce it so they referred to them as they when they were using the third-person to refer to them.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#18

Post by portmanteaufu »

patrickfl wrote: post #7

Scanned the article, can someone give me a solid example of how this is used in a sentence?

"If the user needs further assistance, they will need to open a support ticket."

The leading clause of the sentence makes it clear that we're talking about an individual but does not indicate their (!) gender. You can use it anywhere that one might also use 'he or she'.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#19

Post by dimitar »

I've noticed that economists and other academics like to use "she" in the same cases as the singular "they" - a common-gender third-person pronoun, the "he or she". Yes, it intentionally uses the feminine third-person, but I guess it makes a point about inclusion this way.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#20

Post by volaski »

patrickfl wrote: post #7

Scanned the article, can someone give me a solid example of how this is used in a sentence?

You see it in notifications from social apps. "Jenny has started following you. Follow them back", etc. Because a lot of apps don't ask people to enter their gender they just resort to "them" instead of "him" or "her". It's really as annoying as people just using "her" everywhere just to be safe.
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