Please don't foment this kind of thing on HN again, regardless of how strongly you feel about pronouns. It only gets worse and nastier the larger it grows.
I think they are saying that there have been sticks and asses for years, and someone still having a stick up their ass isn't necessarily motivated by transphobia. We've all got pet peeves.
I have multiple English professors in my family, these debates are not new anywhere. Grammar is the technical side of the language, one would think here we'd have more consensus on respect for those technical rules.
Human language rules don't work like programming languages. They are informal and developed in a decentralized fashion. The meaning of words is determined by how they are used, not by a dictionary author.
Edit: Why is your preference for the traditional meaning of the word "they" more important than accommodating people who feel it is the common pronoun that best describes them?
>Why is your preference for the traditional meaning of the word "they" more important than accommodating people who feel it is the common pronoun that best describes them?
He is also people, and feels this is the best third-person gender neutral pronoun to describe a group he is in. Why do you care what word he prefers?
I don't care personally. However, I am under the impression that gender-neutral/non-binary people care about this, and it seems a small price a pay to respect their wishes and use the word "they", as there doesn't seem to be a better alternative. Did jki275 say they are part of that group..? I didn't see that.
The largest group that pushed for this change were women, sick of the automatic assumption they were a man These word are used to describe everyone, and they should be used when you are unaware of a persons wishes After someone tells you what they prefer, you should definitely respect their wishes.
In another comment I wrote I made the comment that I don't much care how other people choose to speak or act.
I care when they tell me how I must speak and act, specifically when they tell me that cultural norms and rules of grammar must now be different because of their feelings.
What expertise do you have to credibly cast doubt on the self-descriptions of gender-neutral people? Have you seriously researched this? Or are you allowing your feelings to have an undue impact?
Edit: To be fair, I think most people agree this can be taken too far. For example, I don't think we need dozens of new pronouns -- I don't believe there is scientific or psychological evidence for doing so (although I am willing to be corrected about this). But slightly stretching the usage of a single existing pronoun ("they"), in a way that is not entirely new, seems like a pretty small ask.
Cast doubt? I haven't. I've simply stated the attempt to force me to use incorrect language constructs based on their beliefs is not useful and has not been successful.
Quite frankly, I don't care how other people choose to speak. I care when people try to tell me how I must speak.
> Quite frankly, I don't care how other people choose to speak.
Are you not a human who interacts with other humans? You don't care if your colleagues or friends refer to you in a derogatory manner? Or any number of countless other examples where the language of someone else may affect you... Let's be honest and forthright, please.
There's no Academy Anglaise declaring what is or is not correct English. If there was, America would have overthrown it at the revolution. There's a huge range of local dialect and usage which should also be regarded as valid.
If, on the other hand as you argue below, correctness is in the mind of native speakers, then I can happily declare singular they to be correct.
I actually really like Stallman's comment on the subject:
"
Every language has grammar rules. They are in the minds of speakers of the language — including, for English, me. The fact that they weren't decided by an official edict doesn't mean these rules are a trivial matter; demanding people change their grammar rules is an affront. You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it. "
To more clearly answer your question -- it becomes correct when the corpus of the English speaking world decides it does. That hasn't happened since 1300, why would it happen today?
> You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it. "
Oh, the irony. The person writing a ruleset on grammar for others to follow feels uneasy when others ask the same of him. If he ever listens to hip-hop –or visits Australia– they's gonna have a meltdown.
Well there's also the difference between a native of the southern US and the northern US, the east and the west -- all are distinct dialects. I don't know how many US dialects there are, but I've been exposed to many of them.
Singular you was incorrect for centuries before it was correct. In between incorrect and correct, you have a good 100 years of grey area usage where social pressures urged change. This is no different.
The fact that a grammar change hasn't happened yet is no indication that it won't.
I asked for proof, not your personal anecdote. I too have lived in many cultures. Singular they has been commonly accepted everywhere that speaks English.
Think about the phrase "Everyone loves their mother". Everyone is a singular noun. According to you, this usage would be debated everywhere, because the "correct" English would dictate "Everyone loves his mother".
I dare you to find an English speaking country anywhere in the world where the majority thinks "Everyone loves his mother" sounds more correct. You won't. Because singular they has been a thing for centuries and is entirely common at this point.
The part where you're tripping up is how singular they is used. It is common everywhere in the world to use it in situations of ambiguous identity. The reason you find it absurd is that now we are using it in situations of specific identity but ambiguous gender. That form of usage is indeed new and not majority usage everywhere, but that still does not mean it is incorrect. Actual communication with people is what defines correctness is the English language.
Or perhaps I'm posting from a phone which is prone to changing my words on occasion. Please remember to abide by the hn guidelines.
And no, your belief is based on what you learned is correct grammar. Authors and scholars have disagreed about singular they since the time of Shakespeare and English, having no central authority, has allowed singular they since the middle ages.
Singular they was only "outlawed" in the 1800s, with the reasoning was that he could stand in for they in all cases, because one should never mix a plural pronoun with a singular antecedent. This forgot that "you" is also plural, or at least was originally.
The OED and Merriam-Webster both recognize singular they, as do the Chicago manual of style, the wapo style guide, and the associated press stylebook. It is accepted and correct grammar.
You make a bunch of unjustified statements, so I'd ask that you justify them before we continue. But I'll also clarify things.
>Correct grammar is important in a discussion of grammar, is it not?
Justify this.
> It's still grammatically incorrect.
Justify this. You make this claim, but you haven't ever justified it. At this point this conversation has become "Singular they has been used historically, is currently used now, and while previously controversial, is now considered by many to be correct". Your response to this is has repeatedly been "ok but its still wrong". And given that common usage and available experts both contract that statement, I'm unclear on what you're basing this opinion on.
>My "belief" isn't so much based on what I learned but on how the language has been used.
And your belief here is wrong based on how language has been used and is being used, which is what I've been saying. If you're belief that something is bad grammar is based on whether or not it is in common usage, then showing that it is in common usage and has been used should be enough to demonstrate that perhaps you were incorrect, and that it really is correct. But for some reason this isn't enough, and you've been very coy when explaining why you disagree. Hence my request to justify the claim that singular they is incorrect grammar.
>Yes, there is no "central authority", but then you appeal to authority throughout the rest of your comment.
No, I justify the claim that use of the singular they is widely accepted in academic and "serious" grammatical settings, indirect contradiction to your claim that
> You won't find it any different in any academic setting or any other setting where grammar is important.
As for Stallman's comments, I'm not telling you to use singular they. He is, or at least he is if you use the GNU mailing lists. What I am telling you is that your reasoning for believing that singular they is wrong is not well reasoned, and you've repeatedly not addressed that central point, instead choosing to focus on a typo.
I think you've misunderstood Stallman's comments, if you've read them. I'll reproduce them here again as I've done other places, though generally I wouldn't cut and paste several times into one thread:
"
Every language has grammar rules. They are in the minds of speakers of the language — including, for English, me. The fact that they weren't decided by an official edict doesn't mean these rules are a trivial matter; demanding people change their grammar rules is an affront. You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it. "
I don't have to justify myself to you, the statements I made are axioms. The language form you want to be correct is in fact not "in common use", it's simply a bit more commonly used in that fashion [I]inside certain cultural circles[/I]. If that's where you run, you perhaps wouldn't know that outside those circles in the vast majority of spoken and especially written English it is still considered incorrect.
And I'm actually now curious if you know that you're != your, because you've done it again and autocorrect generally gets that right in my experience.
>And I'm actually now curious if you know that you're != your, because you've done it again and autocorrect generally gets that right in my experience.
I just wanted to exercise the bounds of your pettiness.
> the statements I made are axioms
"Singular they is more common than not" is not an axiom. "Singular they is commonly considered correct" is not an axiom. "I believe singular they to be correct grammar" is an axiom compatible with what you keep quoting from Stallman, but I'm not asking what you believe, I'm asking why you believe it, and so far you've said "common usage", which again, I repeat, applies to singular they, despite all of your objections.
It may not be common in your cultural circles, but widely circulated newspapers are about as "common usage" as one can get. If you don't like singular they, that's ok. But please admit that, don't claim that it is incorrect when, in most circumstances, it is not.
Ah, the old "I was just testing you" excuse. I think that one went out of favor when I was in third grade or so.
It's not common in the vast majority of cultural circles -- I know because in my travels all over the world for the past 25 years I've spoken with thousands of people who speak many variants of the language, both as a first language and not. In general, if you ask anyone who has studied English grammar whether it's correct or not, they will tell you it's not. The only place you'll find otherwise is inside small enclaves of "progressive" thought who are trying to change the language to suit their feelings. You put a large amount of credibility on those enclaves. Most of the rest of the world does not care one bit about them.
"people who learned strict British grammar", which is the case for many international/esl speakers do not speak common English.
If that's your metric, then "elevator" is not in common use (lift would be the correct terminology). I put a lot of credibility on American English, where singular they is more accepted.
You're the one bringing up all this talk of progressives and politics. I'm just making descriptive statement about common usage. If "the broader United States" is an enclave, that's news to me.
For what it's worth, you're speaking to at least one person who has studied English grammar and disagrees with you. And I previously mentioned a couple of common authorities on grammar who share a similar opinion. You wrote that off. But I think it may be worth taking a moment to reflect on the possibility that your deeply held beliefs about grammar are not as common or inviolable as you seem to believe.
As for your comment below about appeals to authority, I'd just remind you that the appeal in question was originally made by you when you said
>if you ask anyone who has studied English grammar whether it's correct or not, they will tell you it's not.
Yay for appeal to authority again, it's even better if you're appealing to yourself!
Elevator is in common use throughout the US and abroad -- "lift" is more common in former British Colonies (Hong Kong is one I specifically recall because I've spent time there, but in the Philippines and Thailand it's elevator), but the vast majority of the English speaking world would use elevator now.
Which language? Which grammar? American Standard? The Queen's English? Shakespeare (in which case I think the singular 'they' is perfectly acceptable)?
Many people, over many years, have been "hit" for "incorrect grammar" on very dubious linguistic grounds. Sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century English grammarians have a lot of sins to answer for: splitting infinitives (English isn't Latin and never was), for example.
Me, I've discovered I rather like Sumerian, which IIUC has two genders: (a) humans and gods and (b) everything else.
There are plenty of other languages with varying degrees of pronouns. Tagalog, for instance has no distinction between male and female, they're the same pronoun.
