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Pronouns (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 1 year ago (66 children)

My boomer parents will die on the hill that it sounds "wrong" to use "they" to refer to a singular entity. And whenever they bring that up, I always remind them that the word "they" has been used in that way for AGES.

Example: "Whose umbrella is this? Did they already leave?"

It doesn't seem to make a difference.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (32 children)

It was beaten into me in school that this is incorrect. “They” is to be used as a plural pronoun only. It’s commonly used in the singular, but it’s wrong according to the English teachers I had. In referring to a person, you must choose either he or she under those grammar rules.

With that said, maybe it’s time for me to move into the future and accept that the meaning of the word has changed. I am confident those English teachers weren’t concerned about actual gender issues. Now, I think those issues are more important than the technical grammatical issues of English.

I’ve offended people in a social setting by insisting that this is the correct usage, when truly it was just me being autistic and informal rather than political.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Perhaps it was the English teachers who were wrong.

Correct or not, people have been using it like that for a while.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Fascinating! I didn’t know there was an article about this.

This use of singular they had emerged by the 14th century, about a century after the plural they.

That’s more than official enough for me!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Singular they has been criticised since the mid-18th century by prescriptive commentators who consider it an error.

Hey, it's prescriptivists again, ruining everyone's day
Look what's actually recent (if three centuries count as recent, but definitely more recent than seven centuries ago)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

My child dresses itself.

"Ma, I'm a boy!"

I adore how callous that sentence sounds.

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