ALT TEXT:
- Panel 1: A person with the text “Singular ‘they’” written on them smiling with open arms.
- Panel 2: “Singular ‘They’” beaten up by others who said, “Singular they is ungrammatical. It’s too confusing,” “How can anyone use plural pronouns for singular,” and “Every pronoun should only have one purpose.”
- Panel 3: “You” hiding from the mob who was beating “Singular ‘They’”
- Panel 4: “German ‘Sie’” hiding with even more fear next to “You”
I have normally used “they, their and them” when referring to a singular person for about twenty years because I thought that “he/she” and “his/hers” looked ridiculous in emails.
For example; “Next time the engineer feels like he/she needs to overhaul the code…” versus “Next time the engineer feels like they need to overhaul the code…”. Clean and simple.
Example of current use:
Bob - “Hey Jo, Frank thinks we should tweak widget X.”
Me - “Yeah well, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.”
I don’t think that sounds weird.
my language doesn’t have gendered pronouns so we just use “siya” for singular they and “sila” for plural.
I’m curious what other languages specify if “they” is singular or plural and how?
How do you do that in France when even table has a gender…
In Slavic languages too
What is the singular reflexive form of “they”? “Themselves” sounds too plural. “Themself” is inventing a new word, which is not problematic, but if we’re going to invent new words we may as well start using “ve” or “ze” as gender neutral pronouns.
Would you be convinced if you found out that “themself” had precedent dating back to the early 1800s?
