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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

#31

Post by cpeterso »

DennisP wrote: post #6

I've never liked this, but I have to admit that logically, a mismatch in number is no worse than the mismatch in gender we get by using "he," which has the disadvantage of being annoying to many people. And I don't think efforts to make up a new pronoun are likely to succeed. Singular "they" might well be the future. But if I could have my pick I'd go with "um."

> Singular "they" might well be the future.

As the article describes, singular they is also the past. Its usage has a long historical precedent over 650 years.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#32

Post by bradleyjg »

patrickfl wrote: post #7

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

There are at least three different usages of singular they. The newest is where a specific person for various possible reasons has asked to be referred to in that way. The oldest usage is where the referent is unknown or generic. E.g. "The technician sent by the company isn't here yet, they may have gotten stuck in a traffic." Finally, some people use singular they even where the referent is specified and that person hasn't expressed a preference for singular they. E.g. "President Obama is on vacation, they must be tired after dealing with ISIS all last week." I find this last usage jarring.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#33

Post by tosseraccount »

They be utterly pretentious. Germanic languages have gender.

Language change should be natural, not forced based on some nebulous social engineering goal.

Speakers of Old English considered each noun to have a grammatical gender.

If anyone has a serious citation for "he" was imposed by "meddling grammarians", please let us know.

Don't we already have a neutral pronoun: "it"?

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#34

Post by jpmattia »

dcole2929 wrote: post #29

Does this article really not give a single example of use of singular 'they' or did I just read too fast?

> or did I just read too fast?

I must have read too fast as well. The author would have done well to include several examples, and they doesn't include any examples. Almost makes me feel like they is pranking me, to be frank.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#36

Post by pvg »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #10
patrickfl wrote: post #7

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

"Alex has decided that they no longer want to be addressed by a gendered pronoun, and has requested that we all refer to them as 'they' and 'them' from now on." edit: I'd be interested in understanding why people find this very real scenario to be so downvote worthy. Is it because you find the idea of non-gendered pronouns upsetting, or because you think my example is unrealistic for some reason? Or something else en…

It's a contrived example since the typical use of the singular they is when the gender of the subject is unknown. You might be getting downvotes for complaining about downvotes.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#38

Post by corysama »

untog wrote: post #8
patrickfl wrote: post #7

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

"patrickfl didn't bother to read the article, as a result they were uninformed."

"...they was uninformed."

I'm not a fan. If we have to go somewhere, I'd rather go with 'it'.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#39

Post by clarkmoody »

bradleyjg wrote: post #13
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".

Don't forget "all y'all" when referring to more than a couple people.

"Y'all" is plural, "all y'all" is more plural.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#40

Post by baddox »

DennisP wrote: post #6

I've never liked this, but I have to admit that logically, a mismatch in number is no worse than the mismatch in gender we get by using "he," which has the disadvantage of being annoying to many people. And I don't think efforts to make up a new pronoun are likely to succeed. Singular "they" might well be the future. But if I could have my pick I'd go with "um."

The interesting thing is that the singular usage of "they" doesn't get used with singular verbs. It seems that the syntactic pluralness of "they" is too strong for it to simply get thrown in place of "he" or "she" without changing the verbs.

I would say "she is here" or "he is here," but not "they is here."

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