You might want to work on your grammar, my friend.
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear the speech."— Shakespeare, Hamlet (1599);
Caesar: “No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed.” Cleopatra: “But they do get killed” —Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901);
In an 1881 letter, Emily Dickinson wrote “Almost anyone under the circumstances would have doubted if [the letter] were theirs, or indeed if they were themself.”
George Eliot (1859) – Adam Bede:
“It is too late to spare anyone when they are dead.”
And “Anyone” as a noun is an undetermined number and is often treated as plural. All of these are referencing an ambiguous potential-group, not a context-explicit singular individual.
So you would say that when referencing a singular specific person of undeterminate gender in the third person we should use is? Because I am quite sure that, if that has ever been correct at all, it certainly isn’t now. As per merriam webster:
A student was found with a knife and a BB gun in their backpack Monday, district spokeswoman Renee Murphy confirmed. The student, whose name has not been released, will be disciplined according to district policies, Murphy said. They also face charges from outside law enforcement, she said.— Olivia Krauth
E: also,
“Each member [of the women’s touch football team] found something they could improve on in the future.”
Dalby (Queensland) Herald (Nexis) 21 October 16, 2014 (as quoted in the oxford english dictionary)
Contradicts you as well unless you’d like to argue that “each man are fighting for himself” is correct.
The Cleopatra quote is talking about individuals; Individuals which we know make up a group, but individuals nonetheless.
“Anyone” is a similar concept. You talk about a single person(it’s right there in the word) and apply that condition to however many people. An example in a group of all men would be “anyone may leave the room if he so chooses” and even though it sounds weird, because we heavily favour the singular they, it absolutely works.
This has strong “everything is a conspiracy when you don’t understand how anything works” vibes. Your lack of understanding shouldn’t have to be everyone else’s problem.
No, you dummy. The reason we use “are” with “you” is because it was originally plural. However, language is mutable and ever-changing. You is almost exclusively used as singular now, yet it keeps the plural “are”. The point being, your statement that “they is” is wrong doesn’t prove anything. We use the “wrong” grammar for words all the time and we don’t care, until you can do it to hurt someone.
Huh? I’m a dummy–teach me this arcane English rule that i wasn’t aware of until now.
For what it’s worth though: Have you always held such righteous standards for dialogue? Hard to follow what people are saying when they (oops!) speak with the wrong perspective? You must struggle in the modern world, the way people eviscerate our language publicly pretty much 24/7. I’d feel bad for you if you seemed like a decent person.
Your rebuttal to my issue with the third person handling of a singular they, was you using the second person…as if that was related. Do you still not understand the difference? It’s not that I didn’t understand you, you were just wrong to use it as a counter example to what I said. Damn, you doubled down by showing how poor your comprehension skills are.
And you think you have me figured out as a terrible person because I pointed out, in just 3 words, a grammatical inconsistency. Real quick to jump to judgement there.
“Ah yes, let us disregard basic grammar rules in order to make a stupid argument to ‘prove’ my point, that’s clearly what’ll convince people that my way is the right one”
I’m not the one disregarding the grammar rules. You are.
Wow, I did not expect people to assume I was a biggot for pointing out the issues this causes for clarity in language. Like it is legitimately confusing.
Except I am not, they has been used singularly for centuries now.
Let me put it in a way that will make sense for you. Singular “they” is, more often than not, used when people do not know the gender or amount of a group. Whenever you speak of a corporation or company, it is extremely common to use “they” instead of “it”. E.g. “they are the ones in charge of making that decision”. In the example, you are speaking of a company or similar group, a singular entity by itself. However, since the speaker does not know who or how many people make this decision, the speaker uses a singular “they”.
This is but one example of how they has been used as a singular pronoun for ages, but let us digress a little bit. Why the fuck is the royal “we” allowed, but not the singular “they”? They both follow the same structure but inverse of each other, where the royal we is a way to say “I’m speaking of myself as a part of a bigger entity/community”. You can make an argument that both of these carry plural connotations, but my point is that grammar rules and language as a whole is way more nuanced than black or white.
So, please, save your spit and time with a counter argument that only pushes forward discriminating thinking and stop being a pussy about language change.
Btw, I’m not a native English speaker, which goes to show that I was actively taught about singular they, instead of picking it up intuitively like most native speakers do.
Edit PS: don’t even think of using my non-nativeness as a point against me, I know for a fact I have better grammar and care more about orthography than the average native speaker.
“They are running late”. We’ve been using the singular “they” for hundreds of years, it isn’t that difficult. German uses third person plural for polite second person singular, it’s not that weird to have third person plural be third person singular, too, especially when English makes no distinction between between “you” and “you”.
They is running late?
They’re running late?
You is not very smart, is you?
Again, second person vs third person.
It would seem jakr is not smart one.
You are not the smart one.
Fail.
You might want to work on your grammar, my friend.
'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear the speech."— Shakespeare, Hamlet (1599);
Caesar: “No, Cleopatra. No man goes to battle to be killed.” Cleopatra: “But they do get killed” —Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1901);
In an 1881 letter, Emily Dickinson wrote “Almost anyone under the circumstances would have doubted if [the letter] were theirs, or indeed if they were themself.”
George Eliot (1859) – Adam Bede: “It is too late to spare anyone when they are dead.”
Cleaopatra is clearly refencing a plural group.
And “Anyone” as a noun is an undetermined number and is often treated as plural. All of these are referencing an ambiguous potential-group, not a context-explicit singular individual.
So you would say that when referencing a singular specific person of undeterminate gender in the third person we should use is? Because I am quite sure that, if that has ever been correct at all, it certainly isn’t now. As per merriam webster: A student was found with a knife and a BB gun in their backpack Monday, district spokeswoman Renee Murphy confirmed. The student, whose name has not been released, will be disciplined according to district policies, Murphy said. They also face charges from outside law enforcement, she said.— Olivia Krauth
E: also, “Each member [of the women’s touch football team] found something they could improve on in the future.”
Dalby (Queensland) Herald (Nexis) 21 October 16, 2014 (as quoted in the oxford english dictionary)
Contradicts you as well unless you’d like to argue that “each man are fighting for himself” is correct.
The Cleopatra quote is talking about individuals; Individuals which we know make up a group, but individuals nonetheless.
“Anyone” is a similar concept. You talk about a single person(it’s right there in the word) and apply that condition to however many people. An example in a group of all men would be “anyone may leave the room if he so chooses” and even though it sounds weird, because we heavily favour the singular they, it absolutely works.
This has strong “everything is a conspiracy when you don’t understand how anything works” vibes. Your lack of understanding shouldn’t have to be everyone else’s problem.
You are singularly really dumb.
Second person vs third person, dummy. If you’re going to insult someone’s intelligence, at least be right about it.
No, you dummy. The reason we use “are” with “you” is because it was originally plural. However, language is mutable and ever-changing. You is almost exclusively used as singular now, yet it keeps the plural “are”. The point being, your statement that “they is” is wrong doesn’t prove anything. We use the “wrong” grammar for words all the time and we don’t care, until you can do it to hurt someone.
Huh? I’m a dummy–teach me this arcane English rule that i wasn’t aware of until now. For what it’s worth though: Have you always held such righteous standards for dialogue? Hard to follow what people are saying when they (oops!) speak with the wrong perspective? You must struggle in the modern world, the way people eviscerate our language publicly pretty much 24/7. I’d feel bad for you if you seemed like a decent person.
What arcane English rule?
Your rebuttal to my issue with the third person handling of a singular they, was you using the second person…as if that was related. Do you still not understand the difference? It’s not that I didn’t understand you, you were just wrong to use it as a counter example to what I said. Damn, you doubled down by showing how poor your comprehension skills are.
And you think you have me figured out as a terrible person because I pointed out, in just 3 words, a grammatical inconsistency. Real quick to jump to judgement there.
Sure pal
Edit: tagged you they/them
Have a nice weekend, champ
“Ah yes, let us disregard basic grammar rules in order to make a stupid argument to ‘prove’ my point, that’s clearly what’ll convince people that my way is the right one”
I’m not the one disregarding the grammar rules. You are.
Wow, I did not expect people to assume I was a biggot for pointing out the issues this causes for clarity in language. Like it is legitimately confusing.
Except I am not, they has been used singularly for centuries now.
Let me put it in a way that will make sense for you. Singular “they” is, more often than not, used when people do not know the gender or amount of a group. Whenever you speak of a corporation or company, it is extremely common to use “they” instead of “it”. E.g. “they are the ones in charge of making that decision”. In the example, you are speaking of a company or similar group, a singular entity by itself. However, since the speaker does not know who or how many people make this decision, the speaker uses a singular “they”.
This is but one example of how they has been used as a singular pronoun for ages, but let us digress a little bit. Why the fuck is the royal “we” allowed, but not the singular “they”? They both follow the same structure but inverse of each other, where the royal we is a way to say “I’m speaking of myself as a part of a bigger entity/community”. You can make an argument that both of these carry plural connotations, but my point is that grammar rules and language as a whole is way more nuanced than black or white.
So, please, save your spit and time with a counter argument that only pushes forward discriminating thinking and stop being a pussy about language change.
Btw, I’m not a native English speaker, which goes to show that I was actively taught about singular they, instead of picking it up intuitively like most native speakers do.
Edit PS: don’t even think of using my non-nativeness as a point against me, I know for a fact I have better grammar and care more about orthography than the average native speaker.
“They are running late”. We’ve been using the singular “they” for hundreds of years, it isn’t that difficult. German uses third person plural for polite second person singular, it’s not that weird to have third person plural be third person singular, too, especially when English makes no distinction between between “you” and “you”.
Anyway, it’s simple shit.
We also use “they” singular if we don’t know the gender of a person, like when we haven’t met them yet.
In that sense it was a very logical choice for non-binary people in my opinion.
You are almost there, well done for trying
Nope, that’s actually correct. You may need to re-attend grade school