
Merriam-Webster declares ‘they’ its 2019 word of the year - pseudolus
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-12-09/merriam-webster-2019-word-of-year-they
======
pilif
I envy the English grammar over this. In German the equivalent third person
plural pronoun "sie" could absolutely not be used in singular context and
would cause the predicate of the sentence to have to switch to plural too
which doesn't work semantically.

So in German, I'm stuck with trying to evenly distribute female and male
pronouns or writing the ugly equivalent to "he/she"

~~~
quadrifoliate
> would cause the predicate of the sentence to have to switch to plural too
> which doesn't work semantically.

Not sure how English is different here. We do have to make somewhat awkward
constructions using "they", and the predicate changes as well.

"She has to make sure her code passes tests before committing it" changes to
"They have to make sure their code passes tests before committing it".

~~~
ghaff
I hadn't actually thought of that you're right. We still treat they as plural
from the perspective of the verb even if we're using it as a singular pronoun.

It really is sort of a hack to use an existing pronoun in a way that sounds
least wrong to people.

~~~
gibspaulding
I wonder if, as a singular "they" becomes more common, we will begin seeing it
treated as singular grammatically.

i.e. "They has to make sure their code passes tests before committing it"

It sounds weird after a lifetime of treating they as plural, but is a lot more
clear. I have a friend who's S.O. prefers to be referred to as "they", and I
constantly find myself confused whether we are talking about his S.O., or some
group of people.

~~~
umanwizard
No, we won’t. (Even if singular “they” becomes ubiquitous, which is by no
means guaranteed).

 _You_ was once exclusively plural. It is now usually singular, but we still
use plural verb forms with it (“you are”, etc.). Conversely with _on_ in
French, which was once exclusively singular but now means “we” in colloquial
speech yet still takes singular verb forms (“on est français” = “we are
French”. “il est français” = “he is French”.)

~~~
gibspaulding
Wow, I never noticed that! I suppose it's rather naive to think that common
use would evolve to follow rules, rather than the other way around.

------
elliekelly
I always wonder what Meriam-Webster was like before Twitter. Did their social
media manager shape the culture or did they highlight a culture that already
existed? I would have imagined a dictionary publisher as a pretty stuffy place
but they seem fairly progressive and were one of the first “personality”
brands I remember seeing on Twitter.

~~~
iudqnolq
I just ran into an interview between Twitter Business and Webster's Twitter
person. You might find it interesting

[https://media.twitter.com/en_us/articles/q-a/2019/talking-
tw...](https://media.twitter.com/en_us/articles/q-a/2019/talking-twitter-with-
adam-maid-of-merriam-webster.html)

Apparently they Slack chat about linguistics.

------
razakel
"They" has been a valid singular pronoun in English since Chaucher; it's not a
new invention.

~~~
electrograv
I’ve always liked pronouns like “they” because it never made sense to me (when
growing up and learning “proper grammar”) why our only singular pronouns must
be gendered. It seems better for everyone to focus on the substance of the
sentence without anyone having to think about gender at all, unless it’s
explicitly relevant to the sentence (and it’s usually not).

That said, I wish we actually had an explicitly singular version everyone
agreed upon. Since “they” is usually thought of as plural by default (at least
without context), it can be confusingly ambiguous to use when referencing sets
of people in both singular and plural.

Perhaps we should recycle old words like “thee” ;) (mostly joking, but it
would be kind of cool).

~~~
LatteLazy
You can't easily gender plural pronouns because the people/things they refer
to could be a mixed group.

Gendering singlur pronouns is one way to avoid ambiguity.

Take these sentences:

I met a boy and a girl. They gave me a toy.

If it said "he" or "she" gave me the toy, you would know who specifically gave
me the toy. The fact it says "they" likely means they acted together to give
me th toy (otherwise I'd have said "he" or "she").

You could dump gendered pronouns and make everyone "they". But then you lose
information. Who gave me the toy?.

You could dump pronouns all together, but then you would have to specifically
name all the people/groups and use their full names all the time. That's long
and complex.

Both pronouns, and semi-specific pronouns (gendered or plural/singular or
cased ones or any combo of those) let you push more information in less time.
They're a hack, but a very useful one.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Any misunderstanding can be improved with better communication skills, which
everyone can stand to improve

------
jasonmcaffee
Aren’t there times when it’s not really possible to use a non-gender pronoun?
e.g. Brian went to put a book on a shelf, but as they did the book fell out of
their hands.

~~~
ashleyn
Well, what gender pronouns refer to seems to be changing from an objective
measure of one's physical sex, to a subjective matter of one's preferred
identity. This came about because there is a not-insignificant portion of
individuals who refute gender roles society imposes on them with dubious
legitimacy. So if "Brian" here said "they" preferred "they/them" pronouns, the
usage would be correct. "Correctness" in this case then becomes what the
individual person asked you to refer to them as. If they never asked you to
refer to them a certain way, then the default assumption becomes the previous
usage - a descriptor of a purely physical attribute.

If anything this issue is a succinct summary of how language encompasses
worldviews and moralities. The reason this is so controversial, is partly
because the imposition of the gender roles mentioned above doesn't just come
out of nowhere, and this usage of language undermines their impositions.

------
martokus
More interesting is that "impeach" came runner up...

------
lovehashbrowns
I do like they as a singular pronoun. But I'm most intrigued by the word
"snitty." And its etymology is what excites me the most about this word. I
really like words that are recent but still have mysterious origins. OK is
another one of my favorites.

------
detcader
Finally, we are retiring the "he" and "she" pronouns, words that arose over
centuries within male-dominated cultural, literary, academic and religious
landscapes helping to imbue physical sex with brutal economic purpose. We're
ready to all be "they" because the primary identities of today are humans
(neighbors, workers, believers) and we're ready to retire gender roles and
move on to treat sexual dimorphism as something only a peg more significant to
someone's sense of self than handedness!

...right? That must be in the article somewhere, I might have skipped over a
few sentences.

------
tomcooks
I wonder why a LA times article has been linked, when Merriam-Webster's own
website has a whole section dedicated to this subject[0]?

Blah.

[0]([https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-
ye...](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year))

------
mtrovo
As a non native speaker I find it difficult sometimes to parse who/what
exactly is/are the subject of a phrase because of the use of the same pronoun
on singular and plural forms. This already happened with “you” and I’m having
a hard time to believe it’s a good idea to use they as a neutral singular
rather than a new word just for that.

Is there any historical reason to use it like this?

~~~
umanwizard
For what it's worth, the formal language is “worse” than the colloquial one in
one way: _you_ being plural is only a thing in standard writing, at least in
my dialect of English. I basically never use plural _you_ and systematically
use _you guys_ (pronounced quickly, as one word), which has become the plural
second-person pronoun in at least some dialects of English.

~~~
ghaff
>you guys

You'll find those who will object to this in a mixed gender setting. Things
like y'all and you folks are probably preferred in at least some contexts.
(Having said that, I still reflexively use you guys a lot and I know lots of
other people, including many women, who do as well.)

~~~
umanwizard
People can dislike it if they want. It’s my native language and I don’t intend
to change it to accommodate other people’s tastes.

