English is not my first language but my understanding of the language is very good and this just baffles me, the logic behind is broken. If you, the singular human being reading this, thinks that people should refer to you as a "they", can you please articulate an explanation?
It is neutral and used in situations of ambiguity regurally. "Someone left their phone here" for example.
>>44411597no thank you saar
so just to clarify, you think the following is a grammatically correct sentence:“i saw someone fall down the stairs today!”“oh no! was he or she okay?”“yeah he or she was fine, he or she was just a bit embarrassed”“oh, that’s a shame for him or her”
>>44411597english is weird, that's all. we used to have more complex singular pronouns like thy and thine, but those fell out of use and were replaced by "they", which has been singular and collective for about 600 years. >brian is one man, they have a fan club. >Their fan club contains many men and women.>They vote on who can join the club>Their members all get to voteit's all correct, it's just a general purpose pronoun for any subject of a sentence that is not the speaker. i guess you technically shouldnt use it for an object unless you want to anthropomorphize it though. i wouldnt say >i hate my computer because they are slowmy computer doesnt have an identity after all.
>>44411654This makes sense until you find out who actually left their phone, then you switch to her or him, right?
>>44411682Actually no, i think this is a correct use of they/them but once you realize how many people fell down the stair you switch accordingly, "she fell", "they fell" etc
>>44411682I went to a religious elementary school and they really drove in the him or her thing, this is absolutely what I would be expected to write. I didn’t know it was a whole contentious issue back then
>>44411701you know how many people fell from the first sentence, since they say >someone Which is singular. from there the use of they is a valid singular gender neutral pronoun, and it's reasonable to keep using it unless you're particularly interested in the sex/gender of the person who fell. since the first person didnt specify WHO fell we can assume it's not someone we know, so there's no reason to be interested in details about them. Especially since the first person is telling us a story and would volunteer that information if it were important. "They" is fine for that case
>>44411686>brian is one man, they have a fan club.>Their fan club contains many men and women.I dont see how these sentences are correct, it should be "he has a fan club" and "his fan club contains many men and women" Why would you use they when we know it's brian's fan club, not a full ensamble of people? like the beatles
>>44411714You are correct, if the identity of the person who fell is not important for the story or the person hearing it doesn't care enough to ask then "they" is correct, but if the storyteller says jenny fell, then we can asume the subject is female and we can move on to use she/her
>>44411689It's plural because it's in a "he or she" uncollapsed state and then when you figure out who it is, it's he or she, not they.
>>44411726>I dont see how these sentences are correctno reason, it just is correct. language isnt math, there's nothing to check against, that's just how it is. >it should be "he has a fan club" and "his fan club contains many men and women"you can feel that way, but it's not how the word works.>Why would you use they when we know it's brian's fan club, not a full ensamble of people?because it can be used interchangeably for either. there's nothing wrong with using it that way, and there's no obligation to specify someone's gender every single time we refer to them, so we dont bother>>44411759>but if the storyteller says jenny fell, then we can asume the subject is female and we can move on to use she/heryou CAN, but you dont have to. you can refer to Jenny as "she" or as "they" if you like, because it's not specifically a collective pronoun
>>44411771Not referring to someone's gender only works in the Queer space, not normal human areas of life
>>44411771>no reason, it just is correct.This is my problem, "it just is" isn't an explanation>you can feel that way, but it's not how the word works.I think it's absolutly how it works, there are grammatical rules in place to convey accurate information, you can't go changing terms just "because">you CAN, but you dont have to. you can refer to Jenny as "she" or as "they" if you like, because it's not specifically a collective pronounI dont see a reason to use any other pronouns other than she/her for jenny, she is a woman and a singular person, so those are her correct pronouns
>>44411816>This is my problem, "it just is" isn't an explanationYou have autism. When I was a kid we were taught "he or she" was correct when gender was unknown, and people might write that way, but everyone said "they." At that point "he or she" was politically correct. Before you'd just say "he." This was 90s/early 00s. Grammatical rules change over time. It's not weird.
>>44411774>i dont know who, but a client complained about me at work>when he or she did he or she said he or she felt i didnt take him or her seriouslyno native english speaker has ever said this, but the use of they instead is perfectly normal. you cant redefine words to suit your agenda if your new usage sounds retarded...>>44411816well as i said before-didst thou read shakespeare? if thy memory is as thine, then thou should know we used to have a much more complicated system of pronouns. But we dont any more. The only reason is that languages change and this is the new way. "They" sounds better in a lot of contexts, and works better with some tenses, and most importantly was NEVER exclusively collective, so thats just how it is now. i mean, you can say "english" shouldnt work that way, but the queen of england uses the royal "we" as a first person singular pronoun, so you might as well just accept it...
Faggots use the existence and proper usage of the singular they in the context of an indeterminate antecedent as a "gotcha" rationale for being able to use they identify as schizogender.
as if any of you retards have any frame of reference for grammar "rules," the history of their development, or any of the disputes around grammatical constructions anyways.
>>44411682I think they (no pun intended) mean that there should be a different word for singular and plural of the third person, much like there is for the first and second persons.
Language is a chaotic mess that makes no sense. As long as the language used succeeds in communication, it is of that language. No ifs or buts. English is a crazy unintuitive language, that is constantly changing.
>>44411689why? you just established that it can be used to refer to a single person, so if neither her nor him apply then they works fine
>>44411963should there be a single and plural version of the second person pronoun, pray tell?>>44411979this
