People of the Internet: we can fix the English language • Hacker News Board

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#11

Post by jrmg » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 2:05 PM UTC

'They' is perfectly acceptable, and has been for hundreds of years.

From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they :

The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts. This gives you the option of using the plural pronouns where you think they sound best, and of using the singular pronouns (as he, she, he or she, and their inflected forms) where you think they sound best.

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#12

Post by devmach » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 2:27 PM UTC

No we can't : English isn't the mother tongue of all the People of the Internet/World !. If you want your customers, the people who pays your salary, speak perfect English please stick with UK-Market and stop cry.

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#13

Post by jfruh » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 2:36 PM UTC

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #3

nickolai wrote: post #2

>If you spend a lot of time writing copy for the web or answering support emails, you know what I’m talking about. When you start a sentence, you can feel the nausea coming on from a mile away: there’s no gender neutral third person singular pronoun. Technically, there is such a thing. "it" is a gender neutral third person singular pronoun[1] and even more amusingly it is not part of the proposed "replacement" list.…

I like the Mandarin Chinese approach: he, she and it: ta his, hers, and its: ta de they and their: ta men and ta men de Clean, simple and consistent (although the ambiguity is another problem).

My college girlfriend's dad's first language was Chinese and he would often refer to either her or her brother as "it." "Tell it to come down for dinner!"

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#14

Post by vasc » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 3:21 PM UTC

In Latin based languages there are no gender neutral pronouns, traditionally the masculine pronoun should be used in gender neutral contexts. I've also noticed lately that there is a trend to use the feminine pronoun, specially in fields (like computer science) where the agent is likely to be a man.

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#15

Post by recursive » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 3:50 PM UTC

drblast wrote: post #9

sixbrx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't understand the reluctance to use it. It's as versatile as "some" in logic/mathematics. And its already common usage: "If a person walks into a bar, and they order a drink..." - sounds fine to me. Maybe there are cases where it sounds strange?

I was talking to a group of friends about this and he thought it was weird too. Is that confusing? That's about how it sounds to me when anyone uses a plural pronoun in place of a singular one. I know it's common usage but it's not a particularly good solution.

Surely it's no worse than this:

I was talking to a group of friends about this and thon thought it was weird too.

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#16

Post by rsanchez1 » Thu, Dec 15, 2011, 6:22 PM UTC

saturn wrote: post #8

The author claims using "they" is common, but grammatically incorrect - then recommends some arbitrary (and currently unknown and incorrect) set of replacement words to be adopted and thus become correct by weight of numbers. Why not just continue using "they" until it is widely accepted enough to be correct? Frankly, I don't think we're too far off that. The supposedly erroneous example he quoted read fine to me.

My thought exactly. We should all just agree that using "they" in that context is grammatically correct, and just call it a day.

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#17

Post by sixbrx » Fri, Dec 16, 2011, 3:44 AM UTC

drblast wrote: post #9

sixbrx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don't understand the reluctance to use it. It's as versatile as "some" in logic/mathematics. And its already common usage: "If a person walks into a bar, and they order a drink..." - sounds fine to me. Maybe there are cases where it sounds strange?

I was talking to a group of friends about this and he thought it was weird too. Is that confusing? That's about how it sounds to me when anyone uses a plural pronoun in place of a singular one. I know it's common usage but it's not a particularly good solution.

Well "he" is never plural but "they" is sometimes singular (like the logical "some").

Does the sentence: "I was talking to someone about this and they thought so and so." really sound weird to you? It doesn't to me. Also I wouldn't call it a "solution" because it wasn't just invented to solve this problem, it's just already common usage.

Re: People of the Internet: we can fix the English language

#18

Post by markbernard » Tue, Dec 20, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

saturn wrote: post #8

The author claims using "they" is common, but grammatically incorrect - then recommends some arbitrary (and currently unknown and incorrect) set of replacement words to be adopted and thus become correct by weight of numbers. Why not just continue using "they" until it is widely accepted enough to be correct? Frankly, I don't think we're too far off that. The supposedly erroneous example he quoted read fine to me.

I agree. Especially since all the proposed ones he linked to were horible. For a word to be accepted it has to flow and none of those do.