| > 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. ;-) |
> > 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…