Dear native English speakers, would you mind inventing a new word either for gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, or one for what “they” mean to foreign English speakers since you are so insisted in differing its meaning from the text books you shipped us decades ago?
English is so inconsistent at this point. Only the third-person pronouns have gender in singular form, the plural form has no gender and now you are telling us the gender-less form can be singular now? How confusing!
English is widespread partly because it has simple alphabet and relatively easy grammar. I don’t mind someone being in LGBT+ group at all, but could you please don’t mess with the language?
English is so inconsistent at this point.
At this point? At this very point, specifically due to the historically valid usage of one gender neutral pronoun? Now is the time that it’s finally become an inconsistent language? Singular “they” is the thing that has pushed English over the edge from logical and sensical to arbitrary and confusing? Of all the foibles and quirks, this is the one that is simply unforgivable and must be changed?
I didn’t say anything you said.
I think a more sensible way to include LGBT+ group is to just make “she/her” obsolete. We are all “he/him”, and we are “they/them” when in a group. Way cleaner than this, excuse me, shit that we foreign English speakers have to adjust to for every few years.
We agree. We make he/him obsolete and we’re all she/her, as there are more female people on the planet, so less people have to adapt
Others have addressed some of your other points, but
would you mind inventing a new word either for gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, or one for what “they” mean to foreign English speakers
We actually have that. Xe / Xem / Xyrs. It isn’t very widely used though, and is generally considered a neo pronoun.
Honestly I don’t really expect it to get mainstream use anytime soon, in part because people are already accused to the singular They / Them / Theirs (except for when a nonbinary person asks to be refered to as such).
There’s more than one option, I for one prefer Elverson which is Ey/Em/Eirs
Ok, hear me out, super supportive, but I had an issue when a friend’s husband wanted me to use “their.”
So you’re not, in fact, “super supportive” at all then, are you, and are not, in fact, worth hearing out… 🙄
Don’t use it then.
The only time you would ever need to use someone’s pronouns is when they’re not part of the conversation anyway.
I couldn’t care less what people refer to me as if I’m not there.
“I was with Dan the other day. They forgot their keys at home. They said they had to go back to get them.”
Literally not hard at all?
“I was with Dan (they/them) and Steve the other day. They hadn’t brought a poster they needed and went back to the car to get it.”
This demonstrates the semantic problem with using “they” as a pronoun: it isn’t clear who went back to the car, (1) just Dan or (2) both Dan and Steve. Nor is it clear who needed the poster and who hadn’t brought it.
The only time you would ever need to use someone’s pronouns is when they’re not part of the conversation anyway.
no? it would be weird to use in a one-on-one conversation, true. but it is fairly common to use the third person pronoun of someone during a group conversation, even while they are there
it is fairly common to use the third person pronoun of someone during a group conversation, even while they are there
But is improper to do so. The proper way to refer to a person who is present is by using their name.
Well… that is entirely a you problem. You should do a little soul searching to figure out why it is so difficult for you to pay someone dear to someone you call a friend the bare minimum amount of respect.
Would you be upset if your friends constantly misgendered you, then acted like you were the asshole because you took issue with it?
Always liked this one:
But this one is good too…
Not complaining or calling it out but I’ve seen the words in the 2nd applied to sooo many different comics. I think that’s actually kind of great that it’s so flexible 😆
I remember as a kid the teachers were desperately trying to make “he or she” a thing and told us the singular “they” would never be acceptable.
I’m personally glad that movement failed.
looking back, some of my educators were monumentally stupid
OVERSHARING TIME
My body doesn’t burp; when I drink something carbonated I have to physically gag myself with something to get the air out. When I was a kid I didn’t know this and would get pain in my stomach and didn’t understand why.
Coke with my lunch two days in a row resulted in trips to my home room teacher to ask to see the nurse, or go home. My home room teacher crossed her arms and said, “this is the second day in a row you’ve done this to us,” and lectured me about trying to get out of class. I had no way of proving that I was actually in pain. I was angry and scared and couldn’t do anything about it. Do not give me the keys to the time machine or there will be violence.
I had a math teacher that was there to coach football… instead of the normal method for balancing equations and such he’d insist you use his wonky play call diagrams.
Which made all the other algebra and trig teachers have re-teach kids coming out of his last class.
Dude was a stereotypical jock that was going to give one of his athletes a free pass for stuffing a friend of mine into a locker. At least until i stuffed the tight end in his locker, instead.
So. How about this. We swap the keys and go all strangers on a train?
I had this exact same problem growing up. When I started drinking excessive amounts of beer the pressure became enough to break through, and I finally started burping. That somehow fixed my body completely, and I’ve been able to burp normally ever since, but my God I’ll never forget the pain of being unable to burp. Literally the worst pain of my life
While we’re oversharing, I had a similar issue:
I had bad asthma as a kid and stress would bring on an asthma attack. An inhaler wasn’t enough, I had to go to the nurse and use this loud, ugly machine called a nebulizer. Obviously, one of the most stressful times in school is during a test, so taking a test could easily trigger an attack. Teachers always begrudgingly wrote me a pass to the nurse and made it clear to me that they “knew” I was faking to get out of the test.
Not one of them got the idea into their heads to just make me take the test with me. I would have been able to take it just fine while breathing through the stupid nebulizer. It’s not like I enjoyed being hooked up to the damn thing or enjoyed not being able to breathe well.
The good news is I only have to have an inhaler now, which takes care of the asthma when it comes up maybe once or twice a year. And that’s only if I have a cold. I hear others are not so lucky.
jesus
that sounds awful.
I love how teachers take it personally that you don’t want to do mandatory work lol. anyway. glad you made it out of there.
I learned English at school and the first time I encountered singular they was when my teacher explained it to us. Sometimes non native speakers are less prescriptive than native speakers
If you’re introducing yourself to me, I only need your name.
So you’re going to refer to John by John’s name exclusively? Sounds a bit awkward, but okay.
I’m tired of calling John, John, every time I refer to Join, but I wasn’t paying attention to John’s pronouns, so now I’m stuck until I have a chance to ask John, when I next see John.
Source: I’ve done this, actually. I hope I was more subtle.
Remember when we just conversed like human beings and didn’t have all this convoluted nonsense about worrying over pronouns?
If the person is called John, 99.9% of the time, you know what the pronouns would be, because not everyone is terminally online.