Gender neutral pronouns are just so much more convenient; I tend to use them even when I know someone’s gender. I do wish English had some common-use ones that were explicitly singular, though.
I do wish English had some common-use ones that were explicitly singular, though.
In the long run I predict that “they” will follow the same path as “you” - it’ll become increasingly more associated with the singular, until it’s the default interpretation. I also predict that both “they” and “you” will eventually require a pluraliser to convey the plural.
“Vos” (you, singular) in Rioplatense Spanish followed a similar path.
If that’s correct, eventually there’ll be explicitly singular second and third person pronouns.
my prediction is for th’all and y’all or just thal and yal in the long run
I think that “all” is evolving in this direction. It was already used as an explicit pluraliser for “you” (alongside “guys”, -s, and others); and now I’m seeing “they all” more and more across the internet, even in situations where the “all” clearly does not convey “every single one of them”.
Just keep in mind that this is anecdotal from my part, not backed up by hard data.
Still, maybe don’t. Not everyone agrees with the gender neutrality of “dude”. How many dudes have you slept with?
i think there is alot to be said about the influence of patriarchy on masculine words becomming applied to everyone. men being seen as the norm and all that…
Ahah, you changed it plural which genders it. It’s dudes and dudettes in that case.
Did you see that dude I slept with last night?
Totally different now that it’s a singular.
Yeah language sucks.
In my area “dude” is really gender neutral in most cases.
Regional dialects and all that.
Funnily enough so is “man” in a lot of cases.
For example: “Man I don’t know what’s going on anymore.” In this case “man” is less a reference to anyone in any specific way and more like an exasperation (like fuck, shit, hell, etc) and is a really common usage.
Edit: As an example of it’s gender-neutralness, “Fuck man, chill it’s just the wrong order.” In this case “man” is often used in a gender neutral way when referring to a specific person. Also man in this case can be swapped with “bro” and “dude”.
Regional dialects can get really weird in some cases, we use the same words but the meanings can be so different.
Language is a beautiful tangled knot that depending on which side you’re looking at it from it can change so much.
Totally agree. I think half the problem is that English is a stupid language at times. I have no problem with gender neutral terms but the plural nature of “they” makes my 54 yo brain hurt. I have the same issue with the word data. “The data are” sounds awkward to me.
You use singular they every single day or at most every single week and you have for your entire life and so did all of your English speaking ancestors including middle English.
'how far out is the pizza guy’s ‘they’re 15 minutes out’
‘my coworker was a pain in the ass today’ ‘what they’d do this time?’
‘i think my doctor is famous’ ‘oh what’s their name?’
They was singular before it was plural, and it’s singular use is still one of the most common pronouns in English.
Every example you provided was extremely unambiguous and without anything that might require distinction between singular and plural. Often language isn’t that simple. For example, “Fion had finally joined the party and they were happy about it.” Who does “they” refer to in that context? Yes, you can write/speak your way around it, but that adds extra difficulty that isn’t suited for casual speaking/writing. That is why people (who aren’t transphobes) don’t like it as a pronoun and would rather have a new word.
i think its mostly an issue with not being used to it. “you” is both singular and plural as well and we manage fine. “we” is plural but it does not distinguish between inclusive and exclusive “we”. arguably those cases are more rarely relevant, and honestly id prefer if all of them had solutions, but i think we can handle it once we are used to it, or solutions will develop.
btw not trying to be antagonistic here, just sharing my thoughts :3
No I totally agree. This really wasn’t a thing for my generation so it just feels weird. And I’m talking about the language aspect only. I’m totally cool with people being who they are.
I just wish there were better alternatives to convey the same meaning without these overloaded English terms. English is just an amalgamation of weird grammar and vocabulary from at least three major languages plus I’m old and change is hard.
I believe I read somewhere that the singular for “they” used to be “thy”, but that makes language sound terribly old. Doubt it’ll get picked up in the mainstream
‘Thy’ is the disused informal ‘your’. There’s ‘thou’/‘thee’ but that’s still second-person.
Interesting! Do you have any etymological sources that go into this more? I’d be curious to learn
Familiar rather than singular. You wouldn’t use thee and thou on someone of higher station, you’d use singular you and and singular your (QE2 used singular “we” in the same mold)
I would totally use xe/xer if doing so wouldn’t be hugely distracting from whatever topic I’m actually talking about, those words have a nice scifi vibe to them.
I tend to defer from using those when I can just use the person’s name or the ungendered pronouns. To me, when I see those besides someone’s name, it just means that they don’t want to be labeled as any gender.
Though, on that note. I honestly never really understood the purpose of people using zhey/zhem/zheir when they/them/their is already neutral.
I also make a point of saying y’all to include the 50% of humans without cocks.
Tom Scott has a page of reflections and corrections for that video from a few years ago. He’s a good ally but I think we all envy past Tom’s optimism.
I also appreciate the thoughtfulness he showed when he found out someone he had recently collaborated with had made transphobic comments in the past.
You’re never going to appease everyone, and I appreciate that he shared the thinking that led him to his decision. I just regret not finding out about the incident until like a week after I ordered her book.
I’m a couple years behind on his content, who was the person he collabed with?
Jill Bearup, a Youtuber and stage/film combat enthusiast. She echoed some shitty transphobe rhetoric in a blog post years ago and deleted them. Tom asked her about it after others made him aware and he gave a very reserved description of her reply that tells me she still holds views that he doesn’t agree with or want to be associated with.
ETA: After donating what he estimated would be the proceeds of that collaboration video to the Trevor Project, he ultimately decided to take the video down altogether.
Every time I read “he or she” I think “YOU COULD HAVE SAVED FIVE CHARACTERS!!”
length(“s/he”) == length(“they”)
It also just sounds awkward to say he/she
But when the World needed him most, he vanished.
Roses are red, violets are blue, singular they predates singular you.
