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Theirself or Themself?
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#12"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
By what authority is this the technically correct word? Some dictionary or grammar book? Where did they get their authority to determine this? Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive approach. Do a corpus study and then you'll have some basis to make a claim about what is and isn't standard usage.
>Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive approach.
This is tangentially related: the English language is a bit unusual in how flexible it is to change along with common usage. Other languages can have their usage dictated by the government; Germany, France, and Japan have all had noted language reforms that in some cases radically changed the language. That is not to say, however, that all their citizens automatically start following these reforms perfectly because lifelong habits are hard to break.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#13"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
I downvoted this comment because I don't think it brings anything to the discussion. I'm pretty sure it's obvious to every HN reader (and the post author themself) that "he" is the "correct" gender-unknown pronoun, along with "himself". The submitted post is interesting because a lot of us prefer they/them for the gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun[0], and it raises an interesting corner case. I had to think…
I don't think it's necessarily obvious or common knowledge today as it would have been maybe a decade or so ago. I also don't take for granted that the author of the post knows this since he doesn't mention this current correct usage at all, even to say that it seems undesirable or unsuitable.
The above notwithstanding, i certainly don't disagree that informal English has morphed towards usage of 'they' as the general gender neutral pronoun in all cases, as I myself just had to go back and correct "they don't" to "he doesn't" in the paragraph above when referring to the writer, even though his gender is clear from his name.
However I personally have no issue with 'himself' being the correct pronoun in the singular gender neutral reflexive for formal English.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#14"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
By what authority is this the technically correct word? Some dictionary or grammar book? Where did they get their authority to determine this? Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive approach. Do a corpus study and then you'll have some basis to make a claim about what is and isn't standard usage.
Saying I can only make a claim if I have done a certain study is somewhat absurd, especially when you are, with that suggestion, claiming to be the authority on how to determine what is correct.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#15"themself" follows the same pattern as "himself", "herself", "ourself", etc. As a commenter pointed out, "them" is frequently used as a singular object pronoun: If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate them. corpus.byu.edu/coca/ returns 95,000 hits for "themselves" vs only 43 for "theirselves".
This is, however, formally incorrect.
"If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate him."
would be formally correct
edit: and your corpus search correctly shows that the plural 'themselves' is correct over 'theirselves' while having nothing to do with the discussion at hand about the singular
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#16Does it really matter?
That's the beauty of interacting with real people rather than a computer. You can make small mistakes, and even bigger ones and people will understand you. Hell I should know I live in Spain, and my Spanish grammar is crap.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#17"themself" follows the same pattern as "himself", "herself", "ourself", etc. As a commenter pointed out, "them" is frequently used as a singular object pronoun: If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate them. corpus.byu.edu/coca/ returns 95,000 hits for "themselves" vs only 43 for "theirselves".
This is, however, formally incorrect. "If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate him." would be formally correct edit: and your corpus search correctly shows that the plural 'themselves' is correct over 'theirselves' while having nothing to do with the discussion at hand about the singular
What are you consulting to find that the correct replacement for 'them' in formal writing is 'him' here? There isn't any College of the English Language to make authoritative prescriptive statements, and the Chicago Manual of Style at least has been against the use of 'him' here for several editions.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#18Writer here.
The author is a programmer. An expert in formal languages. Formal languages have to be logically consistent. Not English.
"Themselves" is correct, even if it's inconsistent, because it's what most people say and understand. That's the point of a natural language. Not to be neat and orderly, but to be understood.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#19"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
It used to be technically correct.
Today, it is technically incorrect, because society today acknowledges that women are full, living, breathing human beings and may in fact be referred to as such in polite conversation.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is, however, formally incorrect. "If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate him." would be formally correct edit: and your corpus search correctly shows that the plural 'themselves' is correct over 'theirselves' while having nothing to do with the discussion at hand about the singular
What are you consulting to find that the correct replacement for 'them' in formal writing is 'him' here? There isn't any College of the English Language to make authoritative prescriptive statements, and the Chicago Manual of Style at least has been against the use of 'him' here for several editions.
I am not claiming that 'him' is a replacement for 'them'
'them' is plural and flatly incorrect when used as a singular pronoun.
edit: Again, 'them' is formally incorrect but informally acceptable in the singular usage.