ALT TEXT:
- Panel 1: A person with the text “Singular ‘they’” written on them smiling with open arms.
- Panel 2: “Singular ‘They’” beaten up by others who said, “Singular they is ungrammatical. It’s too confusing,” “How can anyone use plural pronouns for singular,” and “Every pronoun should only have one purpose.”
- Panel 3: “You” hiding from the mob who was beating “Singular ‘They’”
- Panel 4: “German ‘Sie’” hiding with even more fear next to “You”
I have normally used “they, their and them” when referring to a singular person for about twenty years because I thought that “he/she” and “his/hers” looked ridiculous in emails.
For example; “Next time the engineer feels like he/she needs to overhaul the code…” versus “Next time the engineer feels like they need to overhaul the code…”. Clean and simple.
Example of current use:
Bob - “Hey Jo, Frank thinks we should tweak widget X.”
Me - “Yeah well, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.”
I don’t think that sounds weird.
I honestly have never understood why people take the effort to write he/she instead of singular they? Like it’s 2 words instead of 1, why bother? Even in academic articles which typically have word count limits lol
I just don’t get it, even before being aware of pronouns and such I used singular they all the time, e.g. “That’s what they did” (referring to one person) or “They’re thinking that aren’t they?”
Yeah, but you’re using it to mean “I don’t know which pronoun to use.” This is a different meaning than what’s being describes here.
What’s being described here is a person who decided that they don’t want to be referred to as he or she, and has chosen to make themselves plural instead of using the singular nongendered pronoun already present in English.
Since that is a grammatical error, and this is the internet, I am obligated to ridicule this person, regardless of how well their meaning is conveyed.
/s, by the way.
“instead of using the singular nongendered pronoun already present in English.”
Lmao. That shoulda given away the /s right there.
But uh, I think the pronoun you’re talking about there is “they.” 😜
Actually, I was referring to ‘it.’
People don’t like using it for people, because it’s traditionally only really used for objects (“It’s a chair!” ) or creatures where the gender isn’t identifiable or doesn’t matter (“It’s a bear!”) , but that’s the exact use case here.
A nonbinary person is a creature whose gender is either not identifiable or doesn’t matter.
People just decided that it meant nonbinary people were objects, when in reality we use it for objects because they were the only truly nonbinary concepts we had.
It’s because there isn’t actually confusion about this. This is transphobes making up something to be angry and confused about in order to rope in the ignorant to harass trans people. It’s not acceptable to say “trans people are bad, we should ostracize them” currently. So transphobes find something that could be confusing (nonbinary people using they/them) and convince ignorant people (people who don’t know much about trans people and/or have no opinion) that it’s confusing and wrong and people should “correct” them. Then you get ignorant people saying things like “they isn’t singular” or “I can’t get used to they/them and don’t like using it.” This creates a continuous debate on if trans people deserve to self-identify and generates constant micro-aggressions (or just full aggressions) against their entire community.
It’s really just a way for transphobes to create a hostile environment for trans people over literally nothing.
Welcome to outrage politics. People decide to bring a common language feature back or into the mainstream and so the outrage gang has to get outraged
As somebody whose primary language is Dutch, the lack of an explicit plural “you” is one of the worst things.
If I’m talking to somebody, I can’t nicely refer to a group they are part of, because “you” means they themself specifically, “y’all” makes me feel like engineer TF2, and “you people” sounds condescending.
So, to explain the German „sie/Sie“, it can be used as one of the following:
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formal version of both singular and plural you: used whenever you have or want to maintain a distance from someone, or with persons who demand respect/authority. Generally speaking, whenever you would say Mr/Mrs/Ms it’s „Sie“, if you’re on first name terms it’s „Du“. Fun fact: addressing an LEO, judge, etc. informally („Du“) is considered an insult, insulting someone is a misdemeanour (not kidding) in Germany, and you will usually be fined on the spot for doing so.
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Used to reference a woman/girl who has been mentioned before: What about Sally, is she coming today?
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Same as above but for inanimate objects or animals that are gendered female: Have you seen my camera, I have misplaced her. Look at the cat, she’s so cute. (In this case it’s a cat of either female or unknown gender, if you were talking about a male cat specifically, you’d use the male version of „cat“…)
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Same as above, but for all groups of people, animals, objects, regardless of gender, like plural they: Look at the guys/nuns/politicians/cats/helicopters, they’re drunk as fuck!
Great language, isn’t it.
Fun fact correction: if you happen to be Dieter Bohlen you are legally allowed to informally address everyone, including cops, and won’t be fined.
So if I can prove I’ve been duzing everyone my whole life, I can legally duz everyone?
Yeah, that’s just the modern way of talking.
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What’s funny about those “grammar purist” people is singular “they” has been accepted common use in English for centuries, even older than singular “you”. For some reason society got it in our collective heads in the fairly recent past that it was improper grammar, though, and that’s what teachers often teach. I’m still not over my 5th grade teacher marking me down a point on an essay because I used singular “they”. You’re still wrong, Mrs. B.
Bring back thy/thine
You’re confusing two different usages. Singular they to refer to an unknown or undetermined person has centuries-old usage, yes. Using it to refer to a known single person is an invention of the last few years.
The only “issue” with singular they, and really its just more a clarification hiccup, is when you have a group that includes a person using they/them pronouns, it’s a little clunky specifying you mean the individual rather than the full group and vice versa.
Yeah, but that’s also an issue with “you”. I’d say make a new pronoun but that’s a whole other set of pains (e.g. I don’t like xe/xem because it looks bad, doesn’t fit with standard english. ze/zem is better or even something like ke or ge).
Hell, I’d be all for moving to an official constructed language for international communication but that’s a whole other other set of problems (who makes it, what should it be based on and how do we make it fair, how to get people to use it).
Basically there’s no good solution to language problems because prescriptivism doesn’t work and all languages suck in some ways.
