Ireland is stuck in a legal drama over an ex-teacher. #EnochBurke and his large family of religious fundamentalist headbangers are in a four-year battle with #WilsonsHospital school. The dispute began with the school's request that staff respect a pupil's request that when a pronoun is used, they be referred to by the prounoun "they".

#SingularThey is at least 651 years old, which may be a bit modern for the #BurkeFamily.

The #OED tells the story at https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/

En #Louisiane, on dirait qu'un #singularthey se propage parmi les #francophones. Par exemple, dans mes données:

«SON cousin, ÇA reste à Bâton-Rouge ... tous LEURS amis dit ...»

Je retrouve ça tous les temps en temps dans mes données, équivalent à «they/their» en anglais.

#linguistique #français
#françaislouisianais #variationlinguistique #changementlinguistique

I don't like reading texts where the #singularthey is used. IMO it should be used the pronoun #she to refer a #person of any gender.

#littleme #complaining #mindless #practices

#HyruleWarriorsAgeOfCalamity uses the singular “they”. “Help Zelda make their way to the Targeted Position” kind of thing. First #Nintendo game to do this?

And, hey, listen, even if it’s some sort of solution to a technical problem (maybe the developers can’t be sure if it’s one character or many, or who it is, or something like that), it’s still a great argument for gender-neutral language. It’s simpler!

#pronouns #SingularThey

Now seems like a good time to share this article. Singular ‘they’ has been around since 1375, but some browser developer thinks it's too ‘political’.

https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?tl=true

#Ladybird #LadybirdBrowser #SingularThey #OED #OxfordEnglishDictionary

One of the best masters dissertations I've ever had the pleasure of supervising is "Perception and production of singular They in British English" by Nadir Junco, now available online: https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/41355

"...reading time data indicates a significant demographic effect which has not been reported in previous studies..."

Check it out!!

#linguistics #sociolinguistics #queer #genderqueer #nonbinary #trans #pronouns #research #new #newresearch #singularthey #they