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'They' enters the English language as a singular pronoun

Please try to stay within a country mile of the topic of the thread, which is the addition to a dictionary of "they" as a singular pronoun.

Thank you/he/him/she/her/they/them.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha
 
As a Finn - with no claim to particular excellence in English - I would say that "they" in this context does sound very confusing to a non-native speaker. Why not just a coin a new, neutral pronoun? The Swedes are increasingly going with "hen" in addition to han and hon. Surely a word could just be invented?
 
As a Finn - with no claim to particular excellence in English - I would say that "they" in this context does sound very confusing to a non-native speaker. Why not just a coin a new, neutral pronoun? The Swedes are increasingly going with "hen" in addition to han and hon. Surely a word could just be invented?

There are fewer Swedes than there are people following Paris Hilton on Twitter. There are over a billion English speakers, propagating a new pronoun would be a difficult task just from the numbers alone, nevermind all the other reasons already mentioned in this thread.
 
There are fewer Swedes than there are people following Paris Hilton on Twitter. There are over a billion English speakers, propagating a new pronoun would be a difficult task just from the numbers alone, nevermind all the other reasons already mentioned in this thread.


Swedish is a germanic language, so if Sweden can do it...?
 
As a Finn - with no claim to particular excellence in English - I would say that "they" in this context does sound very confusing to a non-native speaker.
Interesting. In what way is it confusing?

Why not just a coin a new, neutral pronoun? The Swedes are increasingly going with "hen" in addition to han and hon. Surely a word could just be invented?
Natural languages don't really work that way. Outside of new technical jargons, invented words don't tend to stick. Much more common is for a word to emerge from some actual linguistic need.

In fact, that's what this decision by Merriam-Webster seems to signal: a linguistic need for a gender-neutral pronoun. The need is met by expanding the existing usage of "they", which had already gotten quite close this new usage at least a century ago. Some people are arguing that there's a linguistic need to invent and keep track of indivdualized pronouns for each individual. But outside of specialized fields of inquiry where the technical jargon matters, I don't think these inventions are going to stick with the general public.

There's not enough hours in the day for me to memorize or care about individualized pronouns. If that's a problem, I'll just call everyone "they".
 
Interesting. In what way is it confusing?

What would you think - it already has a very specific meaning and used as a gender neutral pronoun at least for a foreign speaker it really sounds weird and, well, wrong.

Anyway, happy are the languages that don't need such a gender neutral pronoun in the first place. I have always wondered about the need to distinguish the sex, and then not having a third alternative pronoun for unknown or unclear sex. Finnish doesn't make assumptions about unknown people or even the Christian god. Everyone is referred to as "hän". Though sometimes it would be handy to be able to separate a female and male person. For example "Tom and Jill are friends. He is an engineer and she a teacher." etc. In Finnish we would have to repeat the names.
 
What would you think - it already has a very specific meaning and used as a gender neutral pronoun at least for a foreign speaker it really sounds weird and, well, wrong.
Only until you get used to it. And once you start looking into the word and its usage, the use of "they" gets rather less specific than you might at first think.
 
Oh please someone point out that Chinese doesn't differentiate plural from singular!

Oddly Chinese only really differentiates plural from singular when it comes to people. The character that's added to "I" to produce "we" even has as the character for person as a component. 我 = I and 我们 = we, 人 = person and "们" is the character for plurals. Note the difference between 们 and 门 (both are pronounced "men"), the former is the latter with the component 人 added to the left side.

For other things if you want to differentiate between plural and singular you just explicitly say how many of them there are. Those several car, very many chair, two bottle of water, etc. And when it's not important your just don't.

Something else that's maybe a little interesting is that in spoken Chinese there's no difference between he, she and it, but in written Chinese there is. 他 = he/him 她 = she/her 它= it. All are pronounced identically "ta". To make any plural just add 们。 So in spoken Chinese there's no difference, but in written Chinese even "they" takes three forms: 他们 她们 它们 , all pronounced "tamen".
 
"they can apply and receive a ticket" seems much more streamlined. It has everything that's needed and nothing that's not.

Just from the perspective of natural language evolution, "he or she" was never going to last.
 
"they can apply and receive a ticket" seems much more streamlined. It has everything that's needed and nothing that's not.

Just from the perspective of natural language evolution, "he or she" was never going to last.


As well as delivering a nice little bitch slap to all those prissy High School AP English teachers.
 
"they can apply and receive a ticket" seems much more streamlined. It has everything that's needed and nothing that's not.

Just from the perspective of natural language evolution, "he or she" was never going to last.

I prefer unnatural language use.
 
Some things stick, others don't.

Kilroy was here. (written)
Far Out, Man. (spoken)

And then there's new meanings to old words.

Ghost.
 
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