Use of word "they" when referring to a single person

[cianfa72]

Sorry for the basic question.

I'm not so fluently with english. Is the use of the word "they" when referring to a single person actually a generic term for "he" or "she" ?

Thanks.

 

[Ibix]

Depends what you mean by "generic". I'd say it's primarily for when you don't know the person's sex - if you know of a Dr Smith you might say "they published", but would usually switch to "she published" or "he published" if you find out.

Worth noting that in a modern context, it's also used by some people who've bought into the idea of "non binary identities" and say they aren't actually either men or women. Some of them ask you to use "they" to refer to them instead of "he" or "she" or some self-invented pronoun. Most people play along, with varying degrees of eye-rolling.

 

[PeroK]

Sorry for the basic question.

I'm not so fluently with english. Is the use of the word "they" when referring to a single person actually a generic term for "he" or "she" ?

Thanks.

Here is another case. Take announcements on British trains, for example. You hear things like "customers are reminded to take their belongings with them when they leave the train."

That sounds rude to me! It's like not wanting to talk to someone directly. I would say: "please remember to take your belongings with you when you leave the train."

But, perhaps some people think it's rude to say "you" and more polite to say "they".

English can be tricky!

 

[DrGreg]

You hear things like "customers are reminded to take their belongings with them when they leave the train."

But that is grammatically correct because "customers" is plural.

To make it singular you would have to say "each customer is reminded to take his or her belongings...".

 

[PeroK]

But that is grammatically correct because "customers" is plural.

I didn't say it was grammatically incorrect. I said it was rude.

 

[fresh_42]

But that is grammatically correct because "customers" is plural.

You is plural, too. The second case, not the third as with they. You addresses people, they is talking about people, and talking about people in the third person when they hear you and you know it is rude.

You would never use the third person plural in French. It is vous not ils ou elles.

Things are different in German. We use the third person plural to address single persons in a polite way. The second person singular or plural would be rude. And it is, as in many advertisements nowadays that mimic the English usage in order to create a virtual privacy that does not exist. The third person plural in German is the equivalent to Sir(s) and Ma'am(s). Using the third person plural in English is incorrect in my opinion.

I think that they is an ugly workaround to avoid the binary gender system. We have similar absurdities in German to make language gender-neutral. It's ugly.

 

[CrysPhys]

I think that they is an ugly workaround to avoid the binary gender system. We have similar absurdities in German to make language gender-neutral. It's ugly.

Yes, it's ugly. But the alternatives are even uglier. So using they to refer to a single person of unknown or non-binary sex for now is the least bad option.

 

[phyzguy]

Spanish is evan worse, since the romance languages have gender built into the language. So now we are seeing latinx or latin@ instead of latino or latina.

 

[fresh_42]

Spanish is evan worse, since the romance languages have gender built into the language. So now we are seeing latinx or latin@ instead of latino or latina.

We can say Spanier for male, or all Spanish persons and Spanierinnen for female. That led to constructions like Spanier/innen, Spanier*innen, SpanierInnen. Cruel if you ask me, and I doubt this serves women's rights.

The internet is full of jokes about gendering the German language, especially about words that do not have a gender and are historically male. E.g. we do not barbeque chicken, we grill Hähnchen (little roosters). It simply doesn't make sense to gender a rooster. Some make jokes and write Hähnchinnen.

And these overly pc people have the next problem on their agenda. How to address people who consider themselves neither nor? It is getting weirder every day.

 

[pinball1970]

On the non binary side of things, the grammar thing is for me, too much.
I cannot suddenly upend nearly six decades of talking normally.
New words, fine.
New concepts fine.
Trans community wanting respect and support where needed, of course. The gay community had a similar journey and society has come a long way since the 1950s.
This is a matter of having to think before you use what words are appropriate, not some new technology or concept, basic English, pronouns!
I was told to stop mis-gendering a caller in a live chat. The caller had a male voice male name so I used "he."
The pronouns given were "they" at the beginning which I rarely pay attention to.
I am open to new, ideas, politics and societies, I am not open to incorrect grammar.
Even if I wanted too I would suck at it, it does not get any more basic than pronouns, ingrained into my brain as a child.

 

[phinds]

I saw an article a year or so back that I sent to a very "woke" friend. It said that there are now 50 (FIFTY !) gender pronouns in the English language. I sent it to him as a comment on woke gone overboard but his response was something like "Yeah, 50 pronouns, so what?"

Yuck.

 

[fresh_42]

The current solution here is to pronounce all constructions with 'innen' in plural and 'in' in singular as e.g. 'Spanier_Innen' and 'Spanier_In' with a tiny tacet, a pause between the male version and the female appendix to emphasize that both are meant. And these are a lot of words, literally hundreds! We traditionally used 'Spanier' to mean both genders, but it is of course the male version. So we did not distinguish between a group of Spaniards of both sexes and a group of men. Now we have

factually all over the entire spoken language whenever groups are addressed: from bakers over flight attendants to doctors. This is so disturbing to my old ears and I still cannot see how this would serve emancipation. As if femicides would miraculously stop existing by using a pause.

The irony is, that I absolutely love tacets. In music. At least a quarter. Preferably supported by the drummer. But not in spoken language.

By the way, I just recognized that baker is also male in English. Maybe you native speakers should start a movement and call them baker_In or baker_ess.

 

[PeroK]

I saw an article a year or so back that I sent to a very "woke" friend. It said that there are now 50 (FIFTY !) gender pronouns in the English language. I sent it to him as a comment on woke gone overboard but his response was something like "Yeah, 50 pronouns, so what?"

Yuck.

The funniest story I heard was a group of woke researchers who sent a questionnaire to all the undergraduate students at their university. One of the (computer science) students identified most with the gender of "apache attack helicopter". It got more serious when then wanted to remove the anonymity to have him (I guess it was really a him) expelled!

 

[fresh_42]

It got more serious when then wanted to remove the anonymity ...

How would have been AH-64 of any help?

 

[Ibix]

"Yeah, 50 pronouns, so what?"

I actually have quite a lot of sympathy for the idea of a non-sexed pronoun. If I want to discuss Professor Smith's work then the only reason I need to know his or her sex is so I don't have to write "his or her" or some grammatically abominable alternative. A neutral one would simplify that.

But the idea of personalised pronouns completely misses the point of pronouns. I either use pronouns in a sentence like "he said to wait over here" where I don't actually know the guy's name, or in something like "Dave said X on Tuesday, but he said Y on Thursday". ln the first case, if I don't know the guy's name I don't know what pronouns he's decided he thinks I should use. I can use "he" or "she" because I can tell the sex of the person at a glance, but there's no physical attributes linked to other pronouns. (Anybody who actually has a rotor on his head, chin mounted 30mm, and laser guided missile pods under his armpits gets a "sir" from me.) In the second, the whole point is that I can only get away with using a pronoun that could refer to half the human race because there's only one person in the sentence. The more fragmented pronouns become the less useful that becomes, and the closer the sentence becomes to "Dave said X on Tuesday, but Dave said Y on Thursday" - and suddenly it's less obvious that both those Daves are the same one.

 

[fresh_42]

A neutral one would simplify that.

Too bad that "it" is not available.

 

[Yuras]

I actually have quite a lot of sympathy for the idea of a non-sexed pronoun. If I want to discuss Professor Smith's work then the only reason I need to know his or her sex is so I don't have to write "his or her" or some grammatically abominable alternative. A neutral one would simplify that.

For some reason languages are very persistent when it comes to gendered pronouns. "If a language has gender categories in the noun, it has gender categories in the pronoun" (Greenberg's linguistic universal #43, see Joseph H. Greenberg "Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements". In: Joseph H. Greenberg (ed). "Universals of Language", 1963).
Most likely gendered pronouns serve some important role in languages, which I guess we don't fully understand.
(Disclaimer: Greenberg's universal were formulated based on a limited number of languages, so they are not necessary apply to all languages.)
ADDED: I just realized that English-speaking people probably have no idea what I'm talking about since English technically doesn't have grammatical gender

 

[phinds]

But the idea of personalised pronouns completely misses the point of pronouns.

Yes, but the "woke" community has changed the point of why we use pronouns from a grammatical construct to a sociopolitical statement and thus your (to me correct) statement doesn't resonate with them.