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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

#61

Post by wces »

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."

South Asian languages routinely employ plurals to refer to/call a person with added respect. Even when speaking English many South Asians won't find anything amiss when he/she is replaced by they.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#63

Post by JoshTriplett »

jpmattia wrote: post #34
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.

> 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.

"Singular they" still normally pairs with plural forms of other words, not singular forms: "I talked with a person today. They were interested in grammar.". (Rather than "They was interested", which sounds completely wrong.)

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#64

Post by JoshTriplett »

wces wrote: post #61
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."

South Asian languages routinely employ plurals to refer to/call a person with added respect. Even when speaking English many South Asians won't find anything amiss when he/she is replaced by they.

> South Asian languages routinely employ plurals to refer to/call a person with added respect.

Sounds almost like a third-person equivalent of the first-person use of "royal we".

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#65

Post by dang »

g4k wrote: post #35
untog wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This may be right, but it does not sound right.

It doesn't sound right because the username includes "patrick", which implies a "he". Singular "they" doesn't replace "he" or "she" when gender is known.

It sounds a bit more natural if you say "That user didn't read the article, so they were uninformed."

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#66

Post by davesque »

I've always used this intentionally in spite of being fully aware that it's "ungrammatical." Saying that singular they is ungrammatical is rather like saying that irregular verbs are ungrammatical or uncountable nouns are ungrammatical. It doesn't matter because there are already a significant number of irregularities in English and having one more isn't going to cause any problems and, relatively speaking, isn't going to make English any less systematic.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#67

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

Tell CMOS then. You are in the same state after all.

They said (tee hee hee) this: A. I’m afraid your gender-neutral pronoun (at least in the sense you need) does not exist in our lexicon. I agree that the plural pronoun with a singular noun seems inadequate; I would suggest that you recast the sentence altogether or at least make “mind” plural for agreement: their minds. Other writers alternate between using “his” and “her” in such constructions in order to give equal status to each pronoun. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Pr...

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#68

Post by mhurron »

jnevill wrote: post #16
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.

Very nice, singular and plural they.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#69

Post by spdionis »

When I was taught italian grammar I was told explicitly that if the gender of the subject is unknown the masculine one should be used by default as a rule. Sounds totally alright to me.

Now I'm wondering how many people would be offended by this.

Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year

#70

Post by progval »

baddox wrote: post #40
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."

One of the things I find weird in English is you do that too “you”: “you are” even when talking to a single person; whereas in French (for instance) there are two different pronouns for the singular and plural use of “you” (“tu” and “vous”), with different forms forms for the verbs.

So using plural form of verbs with singular “they” does not seem that surprising to me.

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