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Comment by bad_username | Hacker News Reader

As a non-native English speaker, I still find it difficult to read texts where a singular person is referred to by a plural pronoun. Every "they" becomes ambiguous and requires more mental cycles to unpack. Is it about Morgan, or some unrelated group of people, or Morgan plus the group?

I understand the cultural reasons, but I regret the loss of linguistic clarity.

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The cultural reasons are not relevant, this is simply normal English being used naturally as it has been for centuries.

For example, consider the following. "I saw someone get hit by a bus this morning." "Oh, were they okay afterwards?".

"They" is clearly a singular pronoun here.

loss? It's been English usage since Chaucer. The "rule" that it shouldn't be singular came from the same people that changed English spellings because they wanted to show off their knowledge of Latin and Greek. All those difficult words that are irregular and don't make sense? Those people.

It's not the pronoun confusion about whether it's a devops team or an individual doing the various actions, it's the writing itself that's jarring, rambling and slightly disjointed.

I'd blame modern teaching material, because "they" is both singular and plural pronoun - just somewhat recently avoided in style guides.

The Wikipedia article on "Singular they" provides some background (the matter is more complex than the short remarks of others here suggest -- and quite interesting): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

I just think this is written by an AI. It just feels off somehow, yet I can't pinpoint it exactly.

I agree, the ‘punchline’ is also an anti-climax and doesn’t seem to offer anything novel.

non native speaker too, I was taught that "they" is the more formal/neutral pronoun to use, or preferred in passive case, isn't that the case here?

No, ‘they’ is never correctly used for a known single human being. In some styles of English it is acceptable for an unknown human being, for example ‘if someone enters here, ask them what they are doing.’

> As a non-native English speaker,

> I understand the cultural reasons, but I regret the loss of linguistic clarity.

Have you thought about the fact that you're using ignorance of English to complain about a very specific anglophone piece of politics?

And rightly so, because noone writes prose like that. It sounds unnatural.

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