Comment on [deleted]
kbal@fedia.io 8 months ago
Unfortunately you're at least ten years too late in trying to get people to ask themselves this question
Comment on [deleted]
kbal@fedia.io 8 months ago
Unfortunately you're at least ten years too late in trying to get people to ask themselves this question
then_three_more@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You mean 600 years too late.
kbal@fedia.io 8 months ago
Nah. Maybe twenty years tops. That so many people fell for the fallacious line of argument you're thinking of was part of the difficulty in trying to push for any of the various theoretically "better" choices that are still available should humanity unexpectedly swerve in the direction of caring about such things.
then_three_more@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What would you say are better? I find singular they much more elegant than a lot of the new words that were made up. The fact that to apply it to a known individual, rather than an unknown individual seems like a natural extension of the usage that has existed for centuries.
kbal@fedia.io 8 months ago
I don't really have a preference myself, but Richard Stallman's continued insistence that "per" is the right answer is the example that comes to mind.
As he puts it, "most languages have genderless singular third-person pronouns which are distinct from the plural pronouns. English deserves to have them too."
june@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Are you saying that the singular use of ‘they’ is only about 20 years old?
kbal@fedia.io 8 months ago
Obviously it's been used in some grammatical situations as a singular third-person pronoun since forever. It's just as easy to come up with example phrases that would not sound in any way odd to a 20th-century person as it is to come up with examples from the 17th century. But its recent popularity as an all-purpose stand-in for "he" and "she" is indeed unprecedented, and even if it weren't it'd be a notable change.