I love it for ingraining some of the fundamentals through repetition. But my friend who is an intermediate Spanish learner finds it completely useless. Still some things about it annoy me, like it didn’t teach orthography well. I had to stop and pick up my Hebrew alphabet from Wikipedia. I tend to think people overestimate the difficulty of learning a new orthography (just ask them how long they think it would take to learn morse code) when the difficulties tend to spring from other sources (exception: logogrammatic languages) But I don’t think you can learn orthography from immersion. That’s not even how it’s taught to native speakers.
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If I recall, in old English, that is “were”. As in were-wolf.
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I didn’t just say everybody does it, though, I said in these cases I’ve never even seen anyone complain. It’s the honest truth. I used a singular “they” and a singular “them” in my post. Did they actually irk you at all? Is there something you think I should have used instead?
Were is really a noun for a male person – there were weremen and wifmen. Since it’s out of favor you could always reintroduce it as a pronoun, but then if you brought it back to make “man” gender neutral again, it would fix a lot of other words.
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Our house style is adapted from Guardian Style. That means such oddities as ‘ie’ instead of ‘i.e.’, and a strong dislike of the Oxford comma (which I happen to like).
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That would be true if physics were a human creation subject to our whims.
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Chenille, I suspect that what is going on grammatically in the sentences you suggested is that you aren’t actually using “they” as a singular, but rather making “anyone” or “everyone” into a plural once it puts on the pronoun “they.”
Try this sentence:
Everyone likes to be appreciated.
This is correct, no? We see here that “everyone” is singular, and takes the singular verb form.
And these:
I take everyone to dinner at Redds. They likes the biscuits.
You see the problem? That should be
I take everyone to dinner at Redds. They like the biscuits.
Why? Because this everyone, which has become they, has also become plural. I suspect that at some level you recognized this, and that this caused you to conceal this fact in your sentence. Let me fix that for you:
“In fact, just about any time anyone writes a sentence about a non-specified person, they use “they” as the corresponding pronoun.”
Does that sound okay to you with the plural verb form “use,” or do you still believe that you are using “they” as a singular and you should say “they uses?”
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But English has never worked like that. Standard pronouns always take the same verb form regardless of number, like the extremely common singular “you are”. So there’s nothing in your sentence to imply it has become plural, any more than I think you are a collective by using that pronoun.
On the other hand, the weird number change you’re describing where “someone” or “anyone” can become plural is something I don’t recognize in common English at all. So maybe someone are inventing new rules to conceal the obvious point, but I don’t think it’s me.
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I never understand why some people find doing just this to be so offensive. I mean, really. Isn’t this just common courtesy?
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Is it really that hard to treat others with respect with regards to how they wish to be addressed?
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There are lots of things that are “time honored” that we don’t do anymore. Language is not static, but constantly evolves to addressed new social structures that we as human society create. Get over it.
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English has only partially inflected conjugations. The only subjects that require distinct verb forms, in the case of most verbs, are third person singular subjects. I go, you go, he goes, we go, you go, they go.
Any subject that is third person singular will take the third person singular verb form. The fact that the word “they” does not take this form indicates it is not third person singular but one of the other choices. It is third person plural.
The intended use of “they” as a third person singular pronoun makes it a non-standard pronoun. Although we may understand it as singular, grammatically it remains plural. With its plural verb form, it introduces confusion into the language when used to refer to a single individual.
No, you’re still making up rules; the second person singular was never “you art”. Unless you’re arguing that “you” is always plural, in which case you don’t mind using plural pronouns for singular subjects and so using “they” for one person shouldn’t be a problem, you just don’t like calling that singular.
Either way, very plainly “they are” is completely understandable and even entirely standard for at least some singular subjects like “someone” and “anyone”. But since that was my point from the beginning, and it seems you are going out of your way to declare your preferences as rules instead of acknowledging it, there’s no probably no point in reiterating another time.
So here’s how this will go: I will keep using singular “they are” as has been part of English for centuries, and people will keep understanding it. And if you like, you can make up reasons why it must somehow be non-standard anyway; just know it already sounds like sentences-can’t-end-in-prepositions type grammatical ignorance, with a dash of not wanting to accept how many non-binary people would like to be treated.
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Surely thou jestest. As you ought to know, the word “you” always takes the plural verb form because the counterpart of “you” (“thou”) that took the singular verb form is no longer in use. This decay of pronouns is part of the story of how English’s conjugations became less inflected. Similar things have happened in other languages, for example Portuguese and Spanish. In modern English, there is only one form, for most verbs, that requires a different inflection, and it is third person singular. It wasn’t always that way but it is now.
If you could think of any case besides “they,” in which a word you believe to be the third person singular does not take the third person singular verb form, I’d be interested to hear about it. You won’t, though.
I’m certainly not capable of, or interested in, stopping you from using whatever words you wish, with whomever you wish. I also would use whatever pronouns a person in front of me would wish me to use, be it “they,” “ze,” or “cosa,” out of kindness and consideration for their comfort. I do so in the other languages I speak, and I can do so in English. If the person in question wishes me to use the plural pronoun “they,” I will do so, and adopt the necessary circumlocutions to fit this non-standard usage. When I go back to writing, however, I will return to standard English.
If our culture ever changes sufficiently that a non-binary third person singular pronoun is sufficiently necessary that it becomes standardized, I do not believe it will be “they.” My vote is for “se.”
I have a group of friends who use “they” for everyone, regardless of gender. Once I understood how it was being used – I initially thought they were implying someone was more genderqueer than I suspected – it’s never been confusing. The referent of a pronoun is usually pretty clear in english.
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Why do you feel that? Why should the use of a non-gendered pronoun cease to be appropriate?
And appropriate for whom? Surely you too are a Descriptivist, not a Prescriptivist.
We are Henry the VIII, we are. Not so common any more, but since you demanded it, that’s all the examples of subject pronouns used for individuals that are possible:
- the royal “we are”, obscure and with some plural implications, but never “we am” in any case;
- the formal “you are”, also probably originally with plural implications like French vous, now so standard “art” no longer exists but never “you art” even when it did;
- and “they are”, as is routinely used without argument for an unspecified person like someone or anyone, but somehow argued that it would have to become non-attested “they is” if the person has a name. Despite what posts like ChickieD’s above point out, that it is already very common for people with non-binary genders.
Where did this “standard” come from, and why do so many people seem to defend it so ardently, when it ignores how English is spoken in practice? I really don’t understand the choice of that hill any more than I do the weird “standard” preposition rule. But your posts haven’t been explaining that to me, and mine apparently not much to you, and we have gone back and forth too many times so should probably leave it there.
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There are lots of things that are “time honored” that we don’t do anymore.
But the use of the non-gendered “he” is not one of them. It’s in common usage throughout the English-speaking world.
I don’t take your point.
That just because we have a history of doing something doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Just because something is common usage, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t or can’t change.
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Precisely what changes are you advocating, and, importantly, why?
Why not use more gender neutral language so that the default human being isn’t always imagined to be a man? Men only make up half the population and aren’t the only ones who participate in society. Why shouldn’t our language reflect that? Given that many argue that language itself helps to structure the reality we live in, shouldn’t we do all we can to have a mode of speaking and writing that better reflects the world we want, a more egalitarian one that doesn’t diminish the contributions of half the world’s population.
To turn your question around, what are you so resistant to language that is more gender neutral? It can’t be just because it’s “time-honored.” Does using something more gender neutral really so offensive to you that you have to create an account here just to tell us all how wrong we are to try and create more inclusive language.
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