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Comment by jki275 | Hacker News Reader

On the contrary, in any circles where precision in language is appreciated or grammar is important, it has been called out as incorrect for years. I remember being hit for it on college papers 20+ years ago.

It's simply incorrect.

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We detached this tedious trainwreck of a subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292674 and marked it off-topic.

Please don't foment this kind of thing on HN again, regardless of how strongly you feel about pronouns. It only gets worse and nastier the larger it grows.

Just because some teacher had a stick up their ass doesn't make them the authority of the English language.

I'm going to blow your mind, but you totes can start a sentence with 'and', and 'but' too. This isn't some new thing, it's always been this way. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/words-to-not-b...

I think they are saying that there have been sticks and asses for years, and someone still having a stick up their ass isn't necessarily motivated by transphobia. We've all got pet peeves.

Again, I like what Stallman says about it...

I have multiple English professors in my family, these debates are not new anywhere. Grammar is the technical side of the language, one would think here we'd have more consensus on respect for those technical rules.

Human language rules don't work like programming languages. They are informal and developed in a decentralized fashion. The meaning of words is determined by how they are used, not by a dictionary author.

Edit: Why is your preference for the traditional meaning of the word "they" more important than accommodating people who feel it is the common pronoun that best describes them?

>Why is your preference for the traditional meaning of the word "they" more important than accommodating people who feel it is the common pronoun that best describes them?

He is also people, and feels this is the best third-person gender neutral pronoun to describe a group he is in. Why do you care what word he prefers?

I don't care personally. However, I am under the impression that gender-neutral/non-binary people care about this, and it seems a small price a pay to respect their wishes and use the word "they", as there doesn't seem to be a better alternative. Did jki275 say they are part of that group..? I didn't see that.

The largest group that pushed for this change were women, sick of the automatic assumption they were a man These word are used to describe everyone, and they should be used when you are unaware of a persons wishes After someone tells you what they prefer, you should definitely respect their wishes.

I agree, but there are rules. Dictionaries are just ways of keeping track of rules that already exist.

The great thing about rules is that there are so many to choose from.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Acceptability_an...

Please see my edit.

In another comment I wrote I made the comment that I don't much care how other people choose to speak or act.

I care when they tell me how I must speak and act, specifically when they tell me that cultural norms and rules of grammar must now be different because of their feelings.

What expertise do you have to credibly cast doubt on the self-descriptions of gender-neutral people? Have you seriously researched this? Or are you allowing your feelings to have an undue impact?

Edit: To be fair, I think most people agree this can be taken too far. For example, I don't think we need dozens of new pronouns -- I don't believe there is scientific or psychological evidence for doing so (although I am willing to be corrected about this). But slightly stretching the usage of a single existing pronoun ("they"), in a way that is not entirely new, seems like a pretty small ask.

Cast doubt? I haven't. I've simply stated the attempt to force me to use incorrect language constructs based on their beliefs is not useful and has not been successful.

Quite frankly, I don't care how other people choose to speak. I care when people try to tell me how I must speak.

> Quite frankly, I don't care how other people choose to speak.

Are you not a human who interacts with other humans? You don't care if your colleagues or friends refer to you in a derogatory manner? Or any number of countless other examples where the language of someone else may affect you... Let's be honest and forthright, please.

You're assuming facts not in evidence. Let's not make up straw men here.

There's no Academy Anglaise declaring what is or is not correct English. If there was, America would have overthrown it at the revolution. There's a huge range of local dialect and usage which should also be regarded as valid.

If, on the other hand as you argue below, correctness is in the mind of native speakers, then I can happily declare singular they to be correct.

The singular they has been used at least since the 1300s[0]. At what point does it become correct?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they#Older_usage

I actually really like Stallman's comment on the subject:

" Every language has grammar rules. They are in the minds of speakers of the language — including, for English, me. The fact that they weren't decided by an official edict doesn't mean these rules are a trivial matter; demanding people change their grammar rules is an affront. You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it. "

To more clearly answer your question -- it becomes correct when the corpus of the English speaking world decides it does. That hasn't happened since 1300, why would it happen today?

> You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it. "

Oh, the irony. The person writing a ruleset on grammar for others to follow feels uneasy when others ask the same of him. If he ever listens to hip-hop –or visits Australia– they's gonna have a meltdown.

Which set of English usage is correct, English or American?

(I once had to interpret between two "native" speakers with mutually unintelligible accents, Ulster and Africaans)

Well there's also the difference between a native of the southern US and the northern US, the east and the west -- all are distinct dialects. I don't know how many US dialects there are, but I've been exposed to many of them.

Singular you was incorrect for centuries before it was correct. In between incorrect and correct, you have a good 100 years of grey area usage where social pressures urged change. This is no different.

The fact that a grammar change hasn't happened yet is no indication that it won't.

I don't think anyone said it couldn't change. It's never been accepted in the past and it isn't now.

Except that you are arguing with dozens of people who have already accepted it.

Dozens. Absolutely. 1.5 Billion people speak English, 360 million+ as a first language.

Dozens doesn't really make a dent, does it?

So you have objective proof somewhere that a majority of those 1.5B people don't understand or accept singular they?

I've lived and worked in many cultures all over the world. I've only found this particular debate in one of them.

The debate doesn't even exist anywhere else.

I asked for proof, not your personal anecdote. I too have lived in many cultures. Singular they has been commonly accepted everywhere that speaks English.

Think about the phrase "Everyone loves their mother". Everyone is a singular noun. According to you, this usage would be debated everywhere, because the "correct" English would dictate "Everyone loves his mother".

I dare you to find an English speaking country anywhere in the world where the majority thinks "Everyone loves his mother" sounds more correct. You won't. Because singular they has been a thing for centuries and is entirely common at this point.

The part where you're tripping up is how singular they is used. It is common everywhere in the world to use it in situations of ambiguous identity. The reason you find it absurd is that now we are using it in situations of specific identity but ambiguous gender. That form of usage is indeed new and not majority usage everywhere, but that still does not mean it is incorrect. Actual communication with people is what defines correctness is the English language.

That construct is a common debate among non-native English speakers who have trouble wrapping their head around singular nouns that describe groups.

Shakespeare, who invented half of modern English vocabulary, used singular they.

You're anecdotal experience of getting called out as incorrect does not conflict with GPs statement that such things are and were rare.

Which language? Which grammar? American Standard? The Queen's English? Shakespeare (in which case I think the singular 'they' is perfectly acceptable)?

Many people, over many years, have been "hit" for "incorrect grammar" on very dubious linguistic grounds. Sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century English grammarians have a lot of sins to answer for: splitting infinitives (English isn't Latin and never was), for example.

Me, I've discovered I rather like Sumerian, which IIUC has two genders: (a) humans and gods and (b) everything else.

I'll just leave you with Language Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/).

There are plenty of other languages with varying degrees of pronouns. Tagalog, for instance has no distinction between male and female, they're the same pronoun.

That's not how it's done in English.

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