One of the advantages of Spanish over English is that the problem that singular 'they' is trying to solve doesn't even exist. Gotta love that always-on gender alignment feature :)
Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
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Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#92I'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 goi…
I find myself doing the same, despite increasing preference for "she" by academicians and journalists.
See the top post in another HN thread for my criticism, copied below. When "she" becomes the default, I find myself veering off from the topic at hand to consider gender politics and try to infer the author's intention. Does OP see makers as "us" and managers as "them"? Is OP using "she" because /they/ believe managers are disproportionately male and so chooses a pronoun to prevent further exclusion? An ideal grammar solution should not require the author to disclose his politics, either by omission or commission, just to communicate effectively.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10658187
"Manager time" is a small allocation. Since the manager's heap only uses blocks this size, she can do this all day without any problems or fragmentation.
"Maker time" is a large contiguous block. If the heap is empty, you can allocate them without any problem. But stick one manager-sized block in the middle and now you've split your heap such that the total time available is large enough, but it's not contiguous. Classic heap fragmentation[2].
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In Old English, thou was the singular second person pronoun and ye the plural, but would be used when talking to someone of higher status. From what I understand, the ye evolved into you while thou mostly disappeared, so now we all get to be plural. I’m not sure about third person pronouns though. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T–V_distinction
> In Old English, thou was the singular second person pronoun
Not just Old English; it survived in active, everyday use well into Modern English.
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#94I've noticed that economists and other academics like to use "she" in the same cases as the singular "they" - a common-gender third-person pronoun, the "he or she". Yes, it intentionally uses the feminine third-person, but I guess it makes a point about inclusion this way.
It's a political statement.
Usage of the male pronoun is historic just like the usage of the plural pronoun. The choice to go agains hundreds of years of usage is very political.
Personally I prefer the plural when you do not know or do not wish to highlight the gender. It jibes more with my personal sense of right.
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#95I'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."
I would say that it is no worse only in the context of "grammatical correctness." In practice, assuming that a subject is one gender or another ends up favoring half the population over the other half, while using the surrounding context to make a usually-plural pronoun singular favors no group over another. I also really like "um" too, though :)
By saying "they" is no worse I didn't mean to imply it's no better. Perhaps my bit on "he" annoying people understates the issue though.
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#96Does this article really not give a single example of use of singular 'they' or did I just read too fast?
The article (blog post) links to an earlier blog post by the same author which contains previous discussion and plenty of examples of the singular they: https://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/247504
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#97I've noticed that economists and other academics like to use "she" in the same cases as the singular "they" - a common-gender third-person pronoun, the "he or she". Yes, it intentionally uses the feminine third-person, but I guess it makes a point about inclusion this way.
It's a political statement. Usage of the male pronoun is historic just like the usage of the plural pronoun. The choice to go agains hundreds of years of usage is very political. Personally I prefer the plural when you do not know or do not wish to highlight the gender. It jibes more with my personal sense of right.
I was taught that "he" is gender-neutral as/when needed, and in true Humpty-Dumpty fashion that's what I use.
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#98My native language doesn't have gendered pronouns, and it is surprisingly difficult to learn to fluently and effortlessly use 'he' (or 'she') in English in situations when there is no need to specify the gender, or when the gender is not known ("After the user clicks the button, he/she receives ..."). My brain is just not wired that way, I feel like I am forced to create information when there is none, and potentiall…
I don't think anyone would dispute that gendered pronouns make learning a language harder. Here in the US most kids will learn a rudimentary amount of a foreign language in school, at which point they realize just how lucky they are that most nouns in their native language use gender-neutral pronouns (I distinctly remember wondering just what made tables female when we were required to say la mesa). There's even a famous Mark Twain essay where he laments at length the chaos of German's genders: https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#99I've used this since the 90s, so -
oh God, I'm a pronoun hipster. ;-(
Re: Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year
#100I've noticed that economists and other academics like to use "she" in the same cases as the singular "they" - a common-gender third-person pronoun, the "he or she". Yes, it intentionally uses the feminine third-person, but I guess it makes a point about inclusion this way.
> Yes, it intentionally uses the feminine third-person, but I guess it makes a point about inclusion this way.
I end up feeling suspicious of an author that uses she about ~75% of the time since it seems they remember to use it more often when referring to people in a customer/student/etc role or with an example question/mistake, yet more often use he or avoid pronouns when referring to an expert or people with titles.
Meanwhile, they works perfectly fine, if it confuses someone that is their problem and if I said her problem there it would be because I was sexist for one reason and his for another. :)