qbertThey/Them
I remember as a kid the teachers were desperately trying to make “he or she” a thing and told us the singular “they” would never be acceptable.
I’m personally glad that movement failed.
I learned English at school and the first time I encountered singular they was when my teacher explained it to us. Sometimes non native speakers are less prescriptive than native speakers
No, it’s just been a thing forever, and will always be thing. Those teachers, if they ever existed which I doubt, were just dumb fucks from Dumbfuckistan.
Tea hers didn’t know vapid influencers would exist.
jordanlundAlways liked this one:
But this one is good too…
Not complaining or calling it out but I’ve seen the words in the 2nd applied to sooo many different comics. I think that’s actually kind of great that it’s so flexible 😆
I think it’s originally from Red vs Blue
If you’re introducing yourself to me, I only need your name.
samus12345So you’re going to refer to John by John’s name exclusively? Sounds a bit awkward, but okay.
I’m tired of calling John, John, every time I refer to Join, but I wasn’t paying attention to John’s pronouns, so now I’m stuck until I have a chance to ask John, when I next see John.
Or you could just use “they.” Convenient!
Yeah. Lol. I figured that out, too, eventually.
Remember when we just conversed like human beings and didn’t have all this convoluted nonsense about worrying over pronouns?
If the person is called John, 99.9% of the time, you know what the pronouns would be, because not everyone is terminally online.
because not everyone is terminally online.
LGBT people exist irl too, you’d be surprised how many there are once you get to know them. People you never would’ve thought were lgbt you can now recognize.
They’re pretty cool too! I have a trans guy friend who will absolutely LOVE to talk about how cars work and fishing spots given the chance. He taught me how to change the oil on my car. I’m hoping to get him a blahaj for Christmas :)
The “terminally online” aspect is the obsession with pronouns, which doesn’t seem to exist in reality.
I know quite a few LGBT people and even work with someone who is trans. None of them have ever once mentioned anything about pronouns. Because we just conversed like normal people.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
The singular "they"
Pre-dates singular "you"
Violets are blue
The singular "they"
Pre-dates singular "you"
Thou shalt use proper pronouns and not be lazy recycling plural pronouns in the singular. What next, are thou planing to use a singular “we” like inbred royalty?
Boomer Humor DoomergodYouse guys should use the plural you
By chance I actually do come from an area that uses it! Although it's more of a "yiz" here
danOnly bogans tend to use it though.
The singular “they” Pre-dates singular “you”
The same way rights were ore-dated by no rights?
‘older’ is not always ‘better’. Make your point, but don’t hinge it on a false comparison.
Ok, hear me out, super supportive, but I had an issue when a friend’s husband wanted me to use “their.”
What issue? I fail to see how that impacts you negatively in any way.
So you’re not, in fact, “super supportive” at all then, are you… 🙄
That comment did not imply any of this in the least
Don’t use it then.
The only time you would ever need to use someone’s pronouns is when they’re not part of the conversation anyway.
I couldn’t care less what people refer to me as if I’m not there.
The only time you would ever need to use someone’s pronouns is when they’re not part of the conversation anyway.
no? it would be weird to use in a one-on-one conversation, true. but it is fairly common to use the third person pronoun of someone during a group conversation, even while they are there
I don’t do this, and growing up was taught that it was rude to refer to someone by anything other than their name in a group conversation.
it is fairly common to use the third person pronoun of someone during a group conversation, even while they are there
But is improper to do so. The proper way to refer to a person who is present is by using their name.
maybe i have never been in proper situations, then, because in my experience, people will use pronouns or names indistinctly
maybe i have never been in proper situations
Indeed. More information on proper communication for you: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalization
You don't use the person's name every time when you're talking about them in their presence. If I'm with my friends Mark and Fergus, and I'm telling Mark a story about something that happened to me and Fergus earlier that day, I'm going to use "he" or "his" to refer to Fergus a lot.
"Can't believe how close we came to an accident on the way here. We were walking past a building with some scaffolding on it, and a brick just about hit me on the head. Fergus was looking up at the site anyway because his company is advertising on the site, so he saw it fall and stopped me just on time."
You don’t use the person’s name every time when you’re talking about them in their presence.
Those who appreciate polite behaviour do.
"Can't believe how close we came to an accident on the way here. We were walking past a building with some scaffolding on it, and a brick just about hit me on the head. Fergus was looking up at the site anyway because Fergus's company is advertising on the site, so Fergus saw it fall and stopped me just on time."
Nobody talks like this
LOL people talk like this. I think perhaps you meant to say that nobody you know talks like this.
“I was with Dan the other day. They forgot their keys at home. They said they had to go back to get them.”
Literally not hard at all?
“I was with Dan (they/them) and Steve (he/him) the other day. They forgot a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”
You’re going out of your way to create a problem that doesn’t exist. Just Dan? Say Dan went back to the car. Both Dan and Steve? Say they both went back to the car.
If you just don’t respect people’s identity then admit you’re bigoted instead of hiding behind faulty logic.
You’re going out of your way to create a problem that doesn’t exist.
The problem does exist, that’s why you’re making suggestions about how to work around the problem.
If you just don’t respect people’s identity then admit you’re bigoted instead of hiding behind faulty logic.
You’re jump to conclusions.
You’re jump to conclusions
Lol. Alright buddy, I’m done here.
You’re not going to bother to point out the fault in my logic?
It's equally unclear if both Dan and Steve use "he", it's just the the options are "Dan / Steve" instead of "Dan / Dan and Steve"
I don’t understand what you’re trying to express.
If the Dan in your example used he/him pronouns and so did Steve, then it is equally unclear
"I was with Dan (he/him) and Steve (he/him) the other day. He hadn't brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."
There's no way to know whether the "he" is Dan or Steve. The they/them pronoun isn't the problem in your example, the structure of the sentence is.
There’s no way to know whether the “he” is Dan or Steve.
This sentence is always ambiguous because there is only one sense of the word “he” but two possible objects. In my example the sentence is always ambiguous because there are two senses of the word “they”. The two situations are completely different linguistic issues.
Your example is of a poor speaker. My example is of a poor pronoun choice.
The they/them pronoun isn’t the problem in your example, the structure of the sentence is.
I disagree entirely.
Dan (or Steve, or both) is the subject of this sentence, not the object.
In both sentences, the pronoun used has two possible meanings in that context. That the two "they" definitions might be listed separately in a dictionary does not seem very important. It wouldn't even need to be separate, as "third person pronoun, indeterminate number and gender" would accurately cover both cases.
What would be a non-ambiguous version of the sentence, in your opinion?
Dan (or Steve, or both) is the subject of this sentence, not the object.
You may be right about that (I’m not sure) but it doesn’t effect the argument.
In both sentences, the pronoun used has two possible meanings in that context.
What are the two meanings (senses) of the word “he” in your sentence? It only seems to have one meaning from what I can tell.
As I understand it, in both sentences there are two subjects (using your terminology) but in my sentence, the pronoun has more than one sense whereas in your sentence the pronoun has only one sense. The multiple senses of the pronoun in my sentence is the cause of the problem, not the multiple subjects.
In my sentence it’s also possible that there is the same ambiguity of subjects as in yours but that is not a given because it depends on which of the senses of the pronoun is intended. And that isn’t clear. Which is the problem.
What are the two meanings (senses) of the word "he" in your sentence?
Dan or Steve is what I mean here — meanings within the context of their usage, not in an isolated sense. These meanings would both be described as "third person singular male pronoun" in a dictionary, but by the nature of a pronoun the whole point is for it to refer to something you've already talked about in context
The multiple senses of the pronoun in my sentence is the cause of the problem, not the multiple subjects.
We can test for this. If there's only one subject, Dan, then the sentence becomes:
"I was with Dan (they/them) the other day. They hadn't brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."
No ambiguity there, it can only mean Dan. Similarly, with a single subject that consists of multiple people:
"I was with the newlyweds the other day. They hadn't brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it."
Exact same thing, no ambiguity. So we can use "they" in both senses and it's totally fine so long as there's only one subject. The ambiguity comes about when there are two possibilities already mentioned that the pronoun could potentially refer to — just like if Dan and Steve are both "he".
Again, we’re talking about different linguistic issues, which I’ll demonstrate below. I see now that my example wasn’t a good example because it conflates a consequence of the problem with the problem itself.
The ambiguity
There are two different ambiguities. You’re talking about ambiguity over the subject whereas I’m talking about ambiguity over the sense of the pronoun.
“I was with Dan (they/them) the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”
No ambiguity over sense of “they”. No ambiguity over subject.
“I was with the newlyweds the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”
No ambiguity over sense of “they”. No ambiguity over subject.
“I was with Dan (he/him) and Steve (he/him) the other day. He hadn’t brought a poster he needed and went back to the car to get it.”
No ambiguity over sense of “he”. Ambiguity over subject.
“I was with Dan (they/them) and Steve the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”
Ambiguity over sense of “they”. Ambiguity over subject.
The ambiguity in the sense of the pronoun is the confusion. That’s the problem. The ambiguity over the subject is a problem but not the problem I was talking about.
If you’re with Dan (they/them) and Dan (he/him), you would also have the problem when saying
“I was with Dan and Dan the other day. Dan hadn’t brought the poster, so Dan went back to the car to get it.”
So to avoud confusion, people should not be allowed to be called Dan anymore. In fact everyone gets a UUID so there is no more confusion.
you would also have the problem when saying …
You would have a problem but it would not be the same problem as in my example. The problem is not because of the choice pronoun.
Well it kinda is. Names are like pronouns, in the sense that we use them to describe to whom we refer.
They are a non injective function on the name set.
The restriction you would like to make is that the function is not multivalued. But it is. As an example, Andrea is a name that is usually associated with a female person, but it is a normal name for male people in Italy.
Well it kinda is.
I disagree.
Pronouns are like names
Pronouns are not names.
I disagree.
I disagree.
Pronouns are not names.
Yes, that is why I wrote “like”. They serve the same functionality.
second
That is the first time you wrote second. That’s very telling.
No no, hear me out.
elbuchoWell… that is entirely a you problem. You should do a little soul searching to figure out why it is so difficult for you to pay someone dear to someone you call a friend the bare minimum amount of respect.
Would you be upset if your friends constantly misgendered you, then acted like you were the asshole because you took issue with it?
VipsuIn Finnish language there are no gender specific pronouns only gender neutral one hän/hänen.
They/them still sounds weird to use even if I know it can be used to refer single person. When talking or writing fast I’ll still often accidentally default to using he/him even for females which I then have to correct.
devfuuuIn my language everything little word is gendered so everything you talk about is bound by it. It’s extremely confusing thinking or understanding how to describe something in terms “non-gendered”.
I really am supportive of all the changes needed in the world, but the use of “they” is very confusing in a singular form for people who don’t have it as first language and concepts and everything was learned by mapping stuff to other language, so please invent some word for it and go with it. It’s already strange and always difficult understanding the usage of “you” in singular vs plural and formal or not speech.
please invent some word for it and go with it
There is are more than one word. It’s going to take quite some time until agreement on the use will distill and become accepted, though.
I get irked when someone says “he or she,” especially repeatedly, because the singular “they” is so much easier to hear and read.