
Singular ‘They’ Is Word of the Year - secondary
https://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/280996
======
sampo
My native language doesn't have gendered pronouns, and it is surprisingly
difficult to learn to fluently and effortlessly use 'he' (or 'she') in English
in situations when there is no need to specify the gender, or when the gender
is not known ("After the user clicks the button, he/she receives ..."). My
brain is just not wired that way, I feel like I am forced to create
information when there is none, and potentially incorrect information, lies.

Almost as if a language didn't have a construct to talk about cars without
specifying their color at the same time, so you all the time have to create
random colors in order to talk about cars in the abstract.

I was very happy when I learned that 'they' is a mostly acceptable solution.

I understand gendered nouns can also be a politically loaded topic, but I only
meant this as a perspective from someone who learned English as a second
language.

~~~
gyardley
This is pretty close to how I, as a native English speaker, feel about
gendered inanimate objects. I have no idea why so many other languages force
you to stick a gender on something without any genitals.

I would've preferred not to have to learn that something as simple as 'milk'
is feminine in Spanish, masculine in Italian, and neuter in Russian - that
hunk of my brain could surely be put to better use.

~~~
mitchty
The first thing you need to do is realize that grammatical gender has nothing
to do with actual gender or lack thereof.

Unless you really think a turnip is feminine, and a little girl has no gender
like in German.

All they're doing is describing a category of like nouns. The term for the
grouping happens to be the word gender. The word is overloaded in this case to
mean multiple things and is at best a false cognate.

The fact that the same thing can have multiple genders or lack thereof as you
noted should be the biggest clue that grammatical gender has nothing to do
with genitals.

~~~
SilasX
It doesn't matter whether it's related to biological gender[1]; the fact
remains that these languages force you to remember extra information that
serves no semantic purpose, which causes the same problem as English does/did
when forcing you to pick a gender for the pronoun of a generic person.

Whether you call it "grammatical gender" or "gender" or "noun class" is
irrelevant; it all burns down the same cigarette butt.

[1] Although it pretty clearly is, since languages consistently lump in the
female version of a human noun (cartera) with the grammatical gender of woman,
and male (cartero) with man; the little-girl exception you mention from German
is because that diminutive suffix (-chen in Mädchen) takes the neuter case
with higher priority. The (fact that this is such a predictable, rare)
exception proves the (general validity of the) rule.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Although it pretty clearly is, since languages consistently lump in the
> female version of a human noun (cartera) with the grammatical gender of
> woman

Languages with grammatical gender don't even consistently have "masculine" and
"feminine" categories (though certainly that's the most common distinction,
with or without a "neuter" category, in a grammatical gender system.) E.g.,
several have the grammatical genders of "animate" and "inanimate" (or
something similar), but not "masculine" and "feminine".

~~~
SilasX
I know -- I perhaps should have clarified that I meant "languages with
[something commonly referred to as grammatical] gender for nouns", although I
feel it was clear from context, since the footnote was referred to after "
_these_ languages" (not languages in general).

------
davesque
I've always used this intentionally in spite of being fully aware that it's
"ungrammatical." Saying that singular they is ungrammatical is rather like
saying that irregular verbs are ungrammatical or uncountable nouns are
ungrammatical. It doesn't matter because there are already a significant
number of irregularities in English and having one more isn't going to cause
any problems and, relatively speaking, isn't going to make English any less
systematic.

~~~
amsilprotag
I find myself doing the same, despite increasing preference for "she" by
academicians and journalists.

See the top post in another HN thread for my criticism, copied below. When
"she" becomes the default, I find myself veering off from the topic at hand to
consider gender politics and try to infer the author's intention. Does OP see
makers as "us" and managers as "them"? Is OP using "she" because /they/
believe managers are disproportionately male and so chooses a pronoun to
prevent further exclusion? An ideal grammar solution should not require the
author to disclose his politics, either by omission or commission, just to
communicate effectively.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10658187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10658187)

"Manager time" is a small allocation. Since the manager's heap only uses
blocks this size, she can do this all day without any problems or
fragmentation.

"Maker time" is a large contiguous block. If the heap is empty, you can
allocate them without any problem. But stick one manager-sized block in the
middle and now you've split your heap such that the total time available is
large enough, but it's not contiguous. Classic heap fragmentation[2].

------
dkarapetyan
I use this all the time. Easier than worrying about gendered nonsense.

~~~
nailer
+1. Reading Ben Horowitz's book, every fictional CEO is 'he' or 'she' which
makes you think you've missed something and they're not fictional. 'They'
could have sufficed perfectly.

------
DennisP
I've never liked this, but I have to admit that logically, a mismatch in
number is no worse than the mismatch in gender we get by using "he," which has
the disadvantage of being annoying to many people. And I don't think efforts
to make up a new pronoun are likely to succeed. Singular "they" might well be
the future.

But if I could have my pick I'd go with "um."

~~~
baddox
The interesting thing is that the singular usage of "they" doesn't get used
with singular verbs. It seems that the syntactic pluralness of "they" is too
strong for it to simply get thrown in place of "he" or "she" without changing
the verbs.

I would say "she is here" or "he is here," but not "they is here."

~~~
progval
One of the things I find weird in English is you do that too “you”: “you are”
even when talking to a single person; whereas in French (for instance) there
are two different pronouns for the singular and plural use of “you” (“tu” and
“vous”), with different forms forms for the verbs.

So using plural form of verbs with singular “they” does not seem that
surprising to me.

~~~
dragonwriter
English "you" is the grammatically plural (previously used also to denote
formality, where it is not _semantically_ plural) form, corresponding to
French "vous". The English grammatically singular form ("thee/thou")
corresponding to French "tu" has generally fallen out of use, so "you" has in
effect become the all-purpose 2nd-person pronoun, but its still
_grammatically_ plural.

Likewise, "they" is grammatically plural, regardless of its contextual
semantics.

------
untothebreach
> turning either to invented pronouns like xe and zie

This made me pause...aren't _all_ pronouns (and for that matter, words in
general) "invented?" Are they (see what I did there...) just making a
distinction between words that are adapted or modified from other words, and
ones that aren't?

~~~
jnevill
Perhaps "Newly invented pronouns" would have been more clear. The distinction
being Singular "They" has been around for a long time, and "Xe" can't be
pronounced by the human mouth and confuses the older folk. Or something...

~~~
untothebreach
Ha, well as one of the "older folk," I will say that while "xe" doesn't
confuse me, it is definitely a bit jarring when I see it used. I have no
problem with it's use, I am just not used to seeing it. I recently read a book
by a fantasy author whose stories I enjoy, but in this latest book she used
"xe" quite often to describe some non-binary characters, and it always managed
to pull me out of the story.

~~~
coke12
I'm reading Greg Egan's Diaspora right now and he uses ve, ver, and vis for
the (post-/non-human) main characters. It's definitely exciting in a
worldbuilding sort of way but I still prefer they, them, and their because
it's much less jarring.

------
spdionis
When I was taught italian grammar I was told explicitly that if the gender of
the subject is unknown the masculine one should be used by default as a rule.
Sounds totally alright to me.

Now I'm wondering how many people would be offended by this.

------
colept
When writing "he or she" \- they does seem like a viable substitute when
gender is irrelevant.

But I cannot stand this new trend of making gender irrelevant for the sake of
pushing gender lines. We use gendered pronouns for context clues, metadata,
and comedy. It's a natural construct and universal to many languages.

~~~
warfangle
'They' isn't a viable substitute just when gender is irrelevant.

There isn't really a label for what I identify as, but it is not 'she' or
'he,' it's somewhere in-between and neither at the same time. So even 'he or
she' wouldn't apply to me: I'm not one or the other.

I _prefer_ xe/etc; but I'm absolutely 100% fine with they/them. Just don't
call me he (because I'm not) or she (because I'm not). ;)

Does that make sense?

> It's a natural construct and universal to many languages.

I think this ignores too much how language imposes itself on a culture - and a
culture on a language. The gender neutral pronoun is a natural construct and
universal to many languages, too. We just don't have an "official" one in
English.

~~~
mkrfox
I saw a comic strip once where someone was talking to a nonbinary person.
Somewhere in it, the (presumably) cisgendered person said "but then I won't
know your gender!"

And the nonbinary person replied "that's okay, because I don't know it
either."

(I probably mis-remembered parts, and I'm not telling it anywhere near as
well)

------
Renevith
Language Log has posted for many years about singular they, often spotting
examples of it in well-edited publications.

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?cat=27)

See also the wikipedia page on singular they, chock full of usage examples:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they)

------
dcole2929
Does this article really not give a single example of use of singular 'they'
or did I just read too fast?

~~~
jpmattia
> _or did I just read too fast?_

I must have read too fast as well. The author would have done well to include
several examples, and they doesn't include any examples. Almost makes me feel
like they is pranking me, to be frank.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> The author would have done well to include several examples, and they
> doesn't include any examples. Almost makes me feel like they is pranking me,
> to be frank.

"Singular they" still normally pairs with plural forms of other words, not
singular forms: "I talked with a person today. They were interested in
grammar.". (Rather than "They was interested", which sounds completely wrong.)

~~~
jpmattia
> _" Singular they" still normally pairs with plural forms of other words_

I'd point out those "plural forms" are now "singular forms" as well, so it
looks like those terms will need refining.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I'd point out those "plural forms" are now "singular forms" as well

No, they're still plural, just as they are when combined with other
grammatically plural pronouns that are used with singular semantics (the
royal/editorial use of "we" and -- even more commonly -- "you", the second-
person plural pronoun that has in virtually all uses displaces the singular
one.)

~~~
jpmattia
Like I said: Those terms will need refining, and all you've done is add
"grammatical" and "semantic" to differentiate the cases.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Those terms will need refining

But they won't. We've used "plural" and "singular" fine in referring to the
grammatical features of verb tenses and the nouns/pronouns they agree with
just fine for centuries, despite the fact that grammatical number of "we",
"they", and _especially_ "you" has often -- for longer than we've even _had_
formalized descriptions of English grammar -- disagreed with semantic number.

There's nothing new here to necessitate "refining" anything.

------
dimitar
I've noticed that economists and other academics like to use "she" in the same
cases as the singular "they" \- a common-gender third-person pronoun, the "he
or she". Yes, it intentionally uses the feminine third-person, but I guess it
makes a point about inclusion this way.

~~~
lsaferite
It's a political statement.

Usage of the male pronoun is historic just like the usage of the plural
pronoun. The choice to go agains hundreds of years of usage is very political.

Personally I prefer the plural when you do not know or do not wish to
highlight the gender. It jibes more with my personal sense of right.

~~~
ams6110
I was taught that "he" is gender-neutral as/when needed, and in true Humpty-
Dumpty fashion that's what I use.

------
padobson
This bit:

 _Singular they was Word of the Year back in 1365, when it first appeared in
English as a gender-neutral English pronoun. It won again in 1885, when it was
praised in the Atlanta Constitution for triumphing over the ignorant
opposition of grammarians and lexicographers._

Reads like an Onion article. Am I not in on the joke?

~~~
qntty
_Truth in advertising: The Web of Language Distinguished Usage Panel, charged
each year with picking the Word of the Year, consists entirely of me._

------
ChuckMcM
A pretty fun read, I also like the disclaimer :-). I was always much more
comfortable with the singular they and the plural yall.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Tell CMOS then. You are in the same state after all.

They said (tee hee hee) this: A. I’m afraid your gender-neutral pronoun (at
least in the sense you need) does not exist in our lexicon. I agree that the
plural pronoun with a singular noun seems inadequate; I would suggest that you
recast the sentence altogether or at least make “mind” plural for agreement:
their minds. Other writers alternate between using “his” and “her” in such
constructions in order to give equal status to each pronoun.
[http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Pr...](http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Pronouns.html?page=1)

~~~
untothebreach
Elsewhere on that page they seem to give, if not approval of the construct,
than at least acknowledgment that it is solving the problem:

> The use of they as a singular pronoun is a hot topic in online grammar
> forums. By traditional standards, the sentence is incorrect because it
> contains no plural noun for they to refer to. Traditionally, the correct
> versions are “The telltale sign of right-wingers: they can’t write in
> English to save their lives” and “The telltale sign of a right-winger: he
> can’t write in English to save his life.”

> The growing acceptance of they as singular is in response to a need for a
> gender-neutral pronoun that avoids the use of he to mean he or she. Good
> writers would make right-winger plural to avoid the appearance of
> incorrectness or gender bias, but in other sentences the plural is not a
> good option: “Someone ate my Twinkie, and they’d better watch out!” In those
> contexts, many language experts now approve of the use of they. You can
> learn more by searching online for “singular they.”

------
peteratt
One of the advantages of Spanish over English is that the problem that
singular 'they' is trying to solve doesn't even exist. Gotta love that always-
on gender alignment feature :)

------
yarrel
I've used this since the 90s, so -

oh God, I'm a pronoun hipster. ;-(

------
jaquers
I've noticed certain papers/essays posted here using "she" when referring to a
hypothetical person, which I think is a nice touch—since "he" is contained
within the word.

------
Strilanc
Using the post's title on hacker news is probably misleading. It sounds more
official out of context, whereas in the post the "award" is just a tongue-in-
cheek framing device:

> _-Truth in advertising: The Web of Language Distinguished Usage Panel,
> charged each year with picking the Word of the Year, consists entirely of
> me._

The comments keep up the joke:

> _Kudos to the Distinguished Usage Panel! "They" chose wisely and well._

~~~
dang
I see your point, but all "word of the year" awards are made up anyhow. If
anybody suggests a more accurate title we can change it.

------
kbutler
English already has a perfectly good singular, gender-netural pronoun: "it".
We're just not used to using "it" for non-child people:

    
    
      When the baby is hungry, it eats.
    
      When the person is hungry, it eats.
    

If you adopt "they", you have to either adopt plural verbs, or allow "they" to
be associated with singular verbs:

    
    
      When the person is hungry, they eat. 
    
      When the person is hungry, they eats.

~~~
dragonwriter
> If you adopt 'they', you have to either adopt plural verbs

Which we already do with semantically singular uses of the first-person and
second-person grammatically-plural pronouns in English, so that's not really a
big deal. (And already do with semantically singular uses of "they": its been
"adopted" in English-as-actually used for over half a millennium.)

------
ryangittins
I've had enough of this discussion! The new gender-neutral singular pronoun is
_thou_! That's right, _thou_ was the answer we were looking for.

~~~
bradleyjg
I think thou is second person ("you"), not third ("he" and "she"). We _are_ in
need of a second person plural though--at least outside of the South where
they have "y'all" and NJ where they have "youse guys".

~~~
clarkmoody
Don't forget "all y'all" when referring to more than a couple people.

"Y'all" is plural, "all y'all" is _more_ plural.

~~~
JoshTriplett
In conversations with people who also speak multiple languages, I've sometimes
explained the distinction between "y'all" and "all y'all" as similar to the
one between "allí" and "allá" in Spanish. Both "allí" and "allá" mean "there"
(as opposed to "aquí", "here"), but "allá" is further away in a progression;
informally you could translate it as "way over there".

For instance, suppose you know a family of people. Two people out of that
family are currently visiting you. You might say "Y'all should bring the whole
family over next time; all y'all are welcome anytime." The first "y'all"
refers to the two people visiting; the "all y'all" refers to the whole family.

~~~
vorg
I've heard "These, them, or those?" used to indicate a 3-step progression.

------
patrickfl
Scanned the article, can someone give me a solid example of how this is used
in a sentence?

~~~
volaski
You see it in notifications from social apps. "Jenny has started following
you. Follow them back", etc. Because a lot of apps don't ask people to enter
their gender they just resort to "them" instead of "him" or "her". It's really
as annoying as people just using "her" everywhere just to be safe.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Why is using "her" everywhere worse than using "him" everywhere?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why is using "her" everywhere worse than using "him" everywhere?

Because its just as gendered _and_ conflicts with standard usage (which, in
English, accepts the use of the masculine linguistic gender for subjects of
unknown sex or gender identity, so it is not better from either a "gender
neutrality, regardless of accepted usage" standpoint or from a "clarity of
communication through conforming to accepted usage" standpoint.)

------
tosseraccount
They be utterly pretentious. Germanic languages have gender.

Language change should be natural, not forced based on some nebulous social
engineering goal.

Speakers of Old English considered each noun to have a grammatical gender.

If anyone has a serious citation for "he" was imposed by "meddling
grammarians", please let us know.

Don't we already have a neutral pronoun: "it"?

~~~
dang
The point is that it has nothing to do with language change. It has been
settled usage since Chaucer.

It's generic 'he' that was the interloper. Ironically, the language engineers
of today have most in common with the meddling grammarians who tried (never
entirely successfully) to impose it.

