> I have a hard time believing that you never used or heard of English's ubiquitous gender-neutral pronoun.
Does it help my case if I confess English isn't my first language :D ?
> You use "they" all the time in your comment history for genderless entities like Apple and TechCrunch (didn't want to scroll further). Some could say this is the plural pronoun, like when people pluralize "Radiohead {is->are} a good band", but since you do use "is" in these contexts, you are indeed quite familiar with the singular "they".
I do indeed use `they` in the plural form when referring to genderless entities. When I write (or say) 'They are a tech company' I am picturing a group of people and this picture stands up for the Apple concept in that context. So far it has always been the meaning behind my usage of the word. And more problematic is the fact that I understand the usage of `they` to always be the plural pronoun even when it's not appropriate.
From your example: `Radiohead is a good band` means to me we are talking of the band in general and `Radiohead are a good band` means we are talking about the people in it. Now it gets funnier when talking about the Rolling Stones.
> And if you consume any English at all (as you certainly do on HN and Reddit), you see it daily.
> you are indeed quite familiar with the singular "they"
I'd chalk it up to `monkey see, monkey do`. I rarely see the words `they is` but those examples:
"I swear more when I'm talking to a boy, because I'm not afraid of shocking them". From an interview.[1]
"No mother should be forced to testify against their child".
I understand the first example (`them`) to be about boys in general, not about the `a boy` from the first part of the sentence. Now the second one I would assume `their` is used because a mother can have more than one child. But I would equally find normal to use the singular `her child` and think it means the same but with a more personal nuance (the woman we are talking about maybe ? not women in general).
Here's the Reddit discussion I mentioned, I certainly couldn't have started it to make a point in this HN thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/deadcells/comments/9x3f3z/who_is_th... and https://www.reddit.com/r/deadcells/comments/9x3f3z/who_is_th...
After reading that I hit up Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Prescription_of_... and that example "Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Would they please collect it?" got me ashamed because I had to admit to myself that until now I understood that kind of statement to be derogatory. It also made a lot of things much clearer.
> It might seem like I'm making a big deal about nothing, but more and more often I'm starting to see a certain reality revisionism that makes me feel like I'm being gaslit by the people around me.
Well, I certainly can understand that. But I assure you there are no deceiving intentions on my end. `Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.`
People learn language in an organic way. Misinterpretations happens all the time (see that recent Trump-Macron army thing).
It was certainly eye-opening for me to read that yesterday and funny to see this topic mentioned again today.
I have another example, I recently learned that `to couch travel` means to travel in a bus. I talked about it with a friend of mine and he clearly remembers learning that in our English lesson 20 years ago (we were in the same class).