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Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

> the practice of defaulting to "he" correlates with hundreds of years of treating women as chattels

Er, no. It just means it is the unmarked/unremarkable case corresponding to males being generally worth less and discardable ("save the women"...).

It is also a quirk of some of our languages that the gender-neutral pronouns are considered derogatory when applied to people. German and English have this problem ("it", "es"), whereas French "on" seems to be okay.

So the language requires gendering when no gender is semantically intended. In German, every noun is gendered. So "person" is "she", whereas "human" is "he", "Civilisation" and "Society" are both "she", "state" is "he". "Lampshade" is "he" whereas "Lamp" is she, etc. You can try to read deep meaning into these quirks, or you can just not.

TL;DR: Not only are you reading way to much into linguistic quirks, your analysis is also at best shaky.

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But the way that sentence would normally be said where I'm from (Australia) would be "as long as they give a good talk" - no need to use specifics when you're talking about a specific person. I find it disjoining when I hear otherwise.

I also find it weird that German and Spanish inject gender into every noun, although I do get that there's little meaning behind it (from the little quizzing I've given speakers of each)

> But the way that sentence would normally be said where I'm from (Australia) would be "as long as they give a good talk"

Yes, language evolves. Currently, this is almost certainly grammatically incorrect, "they" being the third person plural and (not shown here, but assumed) the speaker being singular.

"They" is being pressed into service as the non-derogatory, gender-neutral third person singular that's missing in english. So "they" has started to mean both third person plural and unspecified third person singular. The previous solution was that "he" meant both "male" and "unspecified". So previously women got their own pronoun, men didn't, now we have a harder time telling whether there's a single person or a group.

Both solutions have their quirks, both work at some level.

I pondered this exact thing, but came to the thought that you actually are talking about multiple people.

"As long as they give a good talk" - you're not talking about one specific person but in fact a general population of speakers.

Original was: "problems a speaker at a conference might have, as long as he gives a good talk/presentation."

The pronoun refers to "speaker", singular, yet indefinite, we don't necessarily know who it is.

Let's substitute "they: "problems a speaker at a conference might have, as long as they give a good talk/presentation."

Yep, works for me, but I think the "they" definitely talks about about that single (if indefinite) speaker. Yet we use the plural of the verb ("give"), so the sentence is confused, grammatically. I wonder what will give as this evolves, whether "they gives" becomes acceptable or we simple leave "they" grammatically plural even when it is semantically singular.

Language. Fun times!

> Currently, this is almost certainly grammatically incorrect, "they" being the third person plural and (not shown here, but assumed) the speaker being singular.

"They" has been grammatically correct for single person of unspecified gender for hundreds of years. Do a little research before saying ignorant things.

Only "on" in French is specifically for persons whereas "it" is for things and not persons. It is properly considered derogatory to refer to a person as a thing - hardly a quirk. "On" is also non-specific and can't stand in for he or her. The advantage or quirk in French is the singular possessive pronouns follow the gender of the thing possessed not the possessor. Edit: to clarify, my objection is that "on" is not an example of a gender-neutral all-purpose or sentience-neutral pronoun. Not having one of these is hardly a quirk (just a pita).

>Only "on" in French is specifically for persons whereas "it" is for things and not persons.

I think that's what I wrote.

As in english you use 'an apple' and 'a girl'. It's just linguistic quirks. Not a demeaning term

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