[jraph]

I actually somehow knew that singular they is not exactly new, but not to this level of details.

But that only makes the argument more interesting: something that was normal was lost, and is now somehow coming back in some form… with push backs like "it breaks the English grammar" , where English actually already worked like this before (for the exact same use or not). Push backs I saw here on HN, or on RMS's website [1]. Regardless the new use, the grammar construct was actually there all along.

I love both your and the parent answers by the way, thanks!

[1] https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

[brigandish]

I think there's some confusion about this.

They used to refer to someone (as a singular pronoun) whose gender is unknown has been valid English for hundreds of years.

He to refer to someone whose gender is unknown is, as the link you provided points out, a more recent addition to English grammar and could be starting to fall away again.

They to refer to someone whose gender is known can be and is used occasionally but can sound strange at times too, he or she would and should usually be preferred.

To only use they to refer to someone whose gender is known is novel, forced, and contradicts the previous rule so it does break grammar (as the other link from Stallman shows).

Nothing has been lost.

[wizzwizz4]

Not quite: I think you've conflated some senses.

• The third-person plural 'they' is uncontroversial.

• The third-person singular 'they' for an unknown (but not general) individual, while valid English in nearly all dialects, went through a period of being proscribed for no apparent reason.¹

• The third-person singular 'they' for a specific individual, of unknown gender, was proscribed and uncommon. Evidence of its historical use is a lot rarer than the unknown-individual usage.

• For a known individual of known binary gender, you normally use the pronoun corresponding to their gender. (As you observed, neutral 'they' is becoming popular as an alternative.)

• For a known individual of known non-binary gender, it gets trickier. It's hard to separate language from culture, and English culture has more-or-less² only had two genders throughout the EMod–Modern English period: denoted by 'he' and 'she', respectively.³ To describe a non-binary individual who's sufficiently far from either of those categories is impossible, unless you fall back on the closest available construction: once 'it', currently 'they'.

To use 'they' to refer to somebody whose gender is known is a relatively recent construction – but English has been steadily losing its gender for the past few centuries. A few decades ago, to people in rural areas of England, a hedge was 'she', not 'it'. Now, we have sewists, and a woman's hair can be 'blond'. It breaks grammar no more than any other option would – and certainly less than the loss of 'thou' did:

> Again, the corrupt and unsound form of speaking in the plural number to a single person, you to one, instead of thou, contrary to the pure, plain, and single language of truth, thou to one, and you to more than one, which had always been used by God to men, and men to God, as well as one to another, from the oldest record of time till corrupt men, for corrupt ends, in later and corrupt times, to flatter, fawn, and work upon the corrupt nature in men, brought in that false and senseless way of speaking you to one, which has since corrupted the modern languages, and hath greatly debased the spirits and depraved the manners of men;—this evil custom I had been as forward in as others, and this I was now called out of and required to cease from.

The History of Thomas Elwood, via https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_varieties_of_religio...

Plenty of languages have a gender-neutral form of address: one that can be used for anyone. It serves a purpose, it fits a pattern, people are using it, and it doesn't even require extra logic in my natural language parser: I see no reason to call this sense ungrammatical, especially not when the others are accepted.

---

¹: For a specific instance of the general person, 'one' and 'you' are used, with 'one' currently out of fashion: I personally prescribe 'one', but often find myself using 'you' anyway.

²: Upper-class English culture, anyway. Great Britain's got a dozen ethnic groups on it, more ways of speaking than you can shake a stick at, can't even make up its mind what a 'country' is, and don't get me started on the trade/invade/cold-war dynamic with what seems like the entirety of Western Europe. And then you've got religion on top of that: are we with the Pope? Are we against the Pope? Do we even care? Which prayer books are we using? Are we running out into the woods when the moon is full and yelling 'Diana' into the night? Is the priesthood male, or some 'third sex' – and if so, what (if anything) does that have to do with 'eunuchs'? And then there's historiography on top of that, because culture is affected by people's beliefs about what is and isn't traditional… No, it's much easier to stick with what the wealthy and powerful's letters and diaries and books say, than to try to work that whole mess out with basically no sources available.

³: This isn't strictly true: I've seen writing that used þorn ſimultaneously with 'it' for Hermaphroditus. Currently, 'it' seems to be exclusively for objects, dehumanising when used for people… except infants, where it's an acceptable gender-neutral personal, for some reason.

[brigandish]

1. The changes you've outlined are all simplifications except the ones for non-binary, which as the Stallman essay linked above outlines, is a mess. Simultaneously more confusing, less accurate, less precise, sounds more clumsy, and takes more effort. Not a winning strategy (though calling people bigots got quite far for a while).

2. We know what a country is, we've created several.

3. We're not with the Pope and haven't been for nigh on 500 years now and won't be back.

4. Non-binary is a luxury belief[1]. It came directly out of universities and has been supported via people of a similar background in media and education sectors, so if we're wondering how the wealthy and powerful want us to speak, we need look no further than this. As the link states:

> Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.

5. There are no true human hermaphrodites as even those born with something akin to the other sex's genitalia have only been able to produce from one type, usually female. As with singular they, it is a misnomer and the medical profession prefers more accurate designation of disorder of sex development. Calling them it would seem dehumanising.

> Plenty of languages have a gender-neutral form of address: one that can be used for anyone. It serves a purpose, it fits a pattern, people are using it, and it doesn't even require extra logic in my natural language parser: I see no reason to call this sense ungrammatical, especially not when the others are accepted.

Putting the verb at the end of the sentence is grammatical in Japanese, that is not a reason for why it should be grammatical in English, any more than giving my television a female gender would be (French), or using capitals for every noun (German). I'm all for helpful innovations but as stated in point 1, this ain't that, or should that be they ain't they.

[1] https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-...

[wizzwizz4]

> the ones for non-binary, which as the Stallman essay linked above outlines, is a mess.

Exactly the same criticism applies to singular you, down the the example sentences. I would take Richard Stallman's criticism more seriously if he was a thou proponent. (Use whatever words you like for the generic person / unknown gender cases, but don't start othering people by using non-standard pronouns exclusively for them.)

> country […] Pope

That paragraph was about historical developments; sorry it wasn't clear. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debatable_lands

> Non-binary is a luxury belief.

It's a basic fact of life in many pre- / non-British Empire cultures – and even in modern-day cultures formerly of the Empire. If you mean the modern, 'western' ideas of non-binary gender, that's derived from the experiences of transgender people, and existed for decades before the academics picked up on it.

Virtue-signalling existing about something doesn't mean the thing is made up (see: carbon credits, corporate inclusivity). Your linked essay somewhat misses the point: belief in virtue-signalling is also a status symbol, as is name-dropping social psychology and evolutionary psychology in an argument, and I could easily rebut that essay in exactly the same way it rebuts the 'defund the police' movement (except, that wouldn't be intellectually honest: for all its central thesis is flawed, and its examples are misrepresented, it does describe a real phenomenon).

> that is not a reason for why it should be grammatical in English

If I may be pedantic for a moment: it's the same grammatical construction as things that are grammatical, so it is grammatical. That's not up for debate! Even "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is, per Noam Chomsky, a grammatically-correct sentence. What's in question is whether it's acceptable, to which I say the notion of acceptability is not how language works, and especially not how English works. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription for further discussion.

> or should that be they ain't they

They ain't them. ;-)

[brigandish]

You can fight the good fight to bring back thou, no one is stopping you (ha), other than perhaps the good sense to realise no one wants it and, more importantly, appeals to hypocrisy or inconsistency are basic logical fallacies.

> > Non-binary is a luxury belief.

> It's a basic fact of life in many pre- / non-British Empire cultures – and even in modern-day cultures formerly of the Empire.

But not part of a Britain that has a literate population that's been through basic science at school, which still appears not to have been enough for teenagers, and curiously, university educated journalists and educators. What could tie those groups together?

Regardless, what's happening elsewhere in other languages is for the speakers of those places and languages to deal with.

> If you mean the modern, 'western' ideas of non-binary gender

Yes, I do. I don't live in 1550 nor in pre-modern Britain, hence, those time periods have no relevance to this discussion other than "things change".

> If I may be pedantic for a moment: it's the same grammatical construction as things that are grammatical, so it is grammatical. That's not up for debate!

You're arguing on the side of an innovation, of course it breaks grammar rules (and who claimed that Chomsky's sentence was not grammatical? Again irrelevant). The only thing worth writing in that whole text was “What's in question is whether it's acceptable”, and it isn't. Wouldn't it have been better to focus on that instead of chatting nonsense about borders that only Scots with a chip on their shoulders care about?

No, because it would expose the paucity of any good reason to accept this innovation. The idea that those who are against this are being prescriptive is funny, I'm not demanding that anyone use an innovation in language to refer to anyone else upon threat of punishment if they don't comply. Now that's not how English nor English culture should work.

> They ain't them. ;-)

Glad you're paying attention but I meant what I wrote, the joke doesn't work if I make it more grammatical ;-)

This is so far off-topic we might end up in our own debatable lands…