Are you saying that the singular use of ‘they’ is only about 20 years old?
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kbal@fedia.io 2 months agoNah. 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.
june@lemmy.world 2 months ago
kbal@fedia.io 2 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.
june@lemmy.world 2 months ago
But it’s not a stand in for he or she. It’s a term to address people when gender is ambiguous.
This is hundreds of years old and not just something that’s come into vogue recently.
kbal@fedia.io 2 months ago
Of course it is not that it's somehow a "stand in for he or she" inherently in current usage. It's just that it has recently replaced those other pronouns in places where for some time they had held near-universal prevalence among most users of this language.
Just as some people who've never known the old ways think those people who still aren't accustomed to it are putting on an act when they say it's weird and confusing, I suppose it would be easy for those who've lived through the change to mistakenly assume that young people are being disingenuous when they act as if there's been no change for hundreds of years and there's nothing to remark on here. If you're old enough to have seen it happen, the change in usage seems very obvious. If not, perhaps it isn't.
then_three_more@lemmy.world 2 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 2 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."
then_three_more@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I totally disagree with this. Singular they has been in use since the 14th century or so. It’s so deeply ingrained in the language that is perfectly simple to understand. In fact I’d say that people who claim to not understand it are doing so intentionally.
Perhaps a new word will develop naturally as you say. But personally I don’t see a need for it.