6 ms·

I always get so confused when 'they' is used for a single person. Is there any alternative? Everything seems to sound silly

pluma 7y ago
You get confused because you're not used to it. It gets less confusing the more you see it used. There are some cases where it introduces unnecessary confusion but the same is true for any other pronoun. There are some proposed non-binary or gender neutral pronouns but none of them seem to be in use much.
ChrisSD 7y ago
Considering singular they has been in common use for centuries[0], changing it now would be an uphill struggle. People have used words like "ze" but they haven't caught on. [0] https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...
- kmm 7y ago
  Its use with an unspecified antecedent is centuries old, but usage for specific persons is not. Time will tell whether it'll catch on.
  - ChrisSD 7y ago
    The article I linked to gives 1794 as an example of using singular they to refer to a specific person. And as it also points out, there's nothing particularly unusual about using they in the context of a specific person as well as being a plural. It is commonly accepted that "you" is now both singular and plural.
    - iguy 7y ago
      I can't decode what the 1794 usage was. The article describes it as "singular they", used presumably in reference to one of these three authors, but, well, it would help to see the passage in question.
    - ta0987 7y ago
      I don't think there's a better choice today than 'they' but that 1794 example doesn't show that this was a natural use back then. It was a conscious and intentional deviation from standard usage just as it is today, as was noted by the contemporary 'mansplaining' commenter and the contemporary response to him.
- steve_taylor 7y ago
  Butchering of the English language is hardly a modern phenomenon.
  - hnzix 7y ago
    English is not a dead language and so it evolves. Consider 12th century English: Ealdred arceb hine to cynge gehalgode menn guldon him gyld gislas sealdon syððan heora land bohtan.
signalsmith 7y ago
It's kind of odd, because people seem to accept singular "they" for strangers, but not once there's a name. If I say: "I bumped into a stranger on the street and trod on their toes, apologised to them, and they apologised to me" - generally (in normal spoken conversation, not here when we're paying attention) people don't care. Using singular "they" for strangers is pretty common, and hundreds and hundreds of years old. The problem comes when we give someone a name. If I say: "I bumped into Julie on the street and trod on their toes, apologised to them, and they apologised to me", people might think it sounds odd (if they're not used to it). It's as if we have an order/hierarchy in which we expect to learn information about people. Like, by the time we know someone's name, we assume we should already have been told their gender, and we confused if hasn't happened yet.
- keiferski 7y ago
  I would say it’s more that “they” is used for individuals when the subject is specified previously in the sentence or conversation. In your example sentence, “the stranger” clarifies this. If the sentence were simply “They bumped into me on the street.” it is unclear if the subject is singular or plural.
  - signalsmith 7y ago
    In my second example, I used "Julie" instead of "a stranger". The subject is specified in exactly the same way, but people might find "they" more surprising in that case. Some people might even take it as a potential clue that Julie could be non-binary, because of how much we expect gender-matched pronouns at that point. (Not saying they should, just that they might.)
    - keiferski 7y ago
      Ah yes, my bad, you are correct. I meant to say that it's not simply that the distinction is between "named individual" and "stranger" but is more complex. It seems like "they" is used 'correctly' for a singular subject when the subject has been previously referred to, but hasn't been given a proper name. But I'm sure a linguist has studied this in further detail.
sverona 7y ago
It's perfectly standard. You're probably already accustomed to using it for a person whose identity you don't know, unless you walk around saying things like "I hope this person comes back to get his or her umbrella."
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  Even if you know what gender the person is it's not uncommon to use they "Well officer, I saw them walk from their car up to the door then they turned and looked around, that's when I saw them pull the ski mask down, draw their gun and enter the bank" --- Manager: What was the customer doing when you told them to leave? Clerk: Well I had been trying to help them with their project but they kept stepping into my personal space, then he places his hand on me and that's when I decided they'd crossed a line and needed to leave --- Most people wouldn't even bat an eye swapping they out for he/she in conversation in person.
  - iguy 7y ago
    It would depend on context, if you ask me. The bank robbery was across the street & half a block down? Completely unremarkable to say "they". The clerk is complaining about sexual harassment, hand on thigh? Avoiding "he" implies a careful choice not to say, either to hide an identity, or because the customer was obviously confusingly gender-ambiguous.
    - silveroriole 7y ago
      I interpreted “they” in the second one as implying distance from the person in question, like the speaker wants nothing to do with them and is emphasising that they were a stranger. Possibly part of why saying “they” feels uncomfortable to people, but I’d never realised it until reading that example.
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        In my case if I don't know someone well, or at all, without thought I use gender-neutral terminology they/them/their and with pets and babies, again without thought, I naturally use it.
WAHa_06x36 7y ago
You don't. It is standard English, and you and people around you use it all the time.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Not to refer to people who are familiar. If it were actually used like this already, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
golemotron 7y ago
Right now, it is a cultural marker. If you run a linguistic use analysis, you see that it is used on the coasts and a few key urban areas in the US and it hasn't made progress toward universality.
- Dobbs 7y ago
  Except you know Shakespeare using singular they[0]. Then the fact that I’m willing to bet decent money that random individuals in rural areas also use singular they all the time without realising. It is just when a trans person wants singular they exclusively that it becomes an issue. 1: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h...
  - iguy 7y ago
    I'm surprised that this misses the distinction made by signalsmith above: the way Shakespeare uses "they" to refer to someone is unremarkable, but what strikes many present-day speakers as an error (even if they fail to explain why) is the use of it to apply to a particular person, especially a named person.
- wahern 7y ago
  Do you have any citations? If you mean the deliberate usage of singular they as a neuter pronoun for subjects who identify as non-binary, then sure. But otherwise, singular they is used by almost everybody some of the time. always4getpass' comment, at least on its face, refers to the latter usage. Frankly, I think even people offended at being forced to use the former usage will relent. Refusing to accommodate (rightly or wrongly) is confrontational, and being confrontational is exhausting. It's already quite natural to use singular they when using a passive, impersonal voice, and using a passive voice is what people will invariably resort to when they're exhausted.
Rumperuu 7y ago
For my money the best thing that ever happened to English was abandoning grammatical gender/noun classes centuries ago - no more masculine, feminine or neuter, everything is ‘the’ or ‘a’.[0] Based on that, I propose we push for ‘it’ as a sole singular pronoun (and keep ‘they’ for plural, as knowing if someone is referring to one or many is far more useful in almost all contexts than knowing whether they are referring to a man or a woman (or ship, or country, etc.), and those few contexts where it is relevant should be easy enough to glean from other information. If you think that could never work, I'd point out that Mandarin managed without gender-specific pronouns until contact with Europeans, and even now they are only distinguishable in written form.[1] Alternatively, there's Stallman's proposal for ‘person’, ‘per’ and ‘pers’.[2] I'm doubtful of any proposal that involves creating new words (see ‘xe’, Spivak pronouns, etc. ), but everything else Stallman says seems to come to pass so maybe. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_grammatical_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_g... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns [2] https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
- mabbo 7y ago
  The problem with "it" is the word's existing use to refer to non-person objects. One could easily interpret being called "it" as an insult, ie: this thing is not even a human. I might not even be willing to refer to a dog as "it" in most circumstances. Honestly though, I'm with you that it's a linguistic gap English needs to fill. Similarly, the second person plural pronoun need to be accepted as "y'all"- and I say that as someone not even from the southern USA.
  - Rumperuu 7y ago
    True, which is why it needs to start with people choosing to be called ‘it’. It's yet to happen, but I'll do my bit if/when I'm ever asked for my preferred pronouns. Also, as someone currently leaving in a place rich with Scousers I would put forward ‘yous’ as a second-person plural pronoun that rolls off the tongue a bit better (and, I would conjecture, makes more intuitive sense for learners of English).
rcthompson 7y ago
Yes, it feels grammatically weird, because e.g. you use "is" for he and she but "are" for they. But there's no option that isn't a compromise in some way. The alternative is coming up with an entirely new pronoun and convincing people to use it, and people have tried that as well. It seems that the singular they is much more widely recognized, though.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  FWIW, I think new words are easier in this case. This new usage of “they” is really confusing when you come across it. Typical usage of first person “they” implies a degree of unfamiliarity with the person in question. So using “they” for someone who is known causes you to question your reading comprehension.
djohnston 7y ago
i knew a trans person whose preferred pronoun was 'it'. i just used its first name.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  "It" just seems so dehumanising. But perhaps with increasing popular usage that will fade.
mkr-hn 7y ago
You get used to it with practice. More enbies[1] are coming out in more places, so you'll get there. [1] Nonbinary -> NB -> enby See also: nibbling.
CydeWeys 7y ago
Good blog post on the subject here: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/ https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-t... TL;DR it's been commonly used this way for centuries, all the way back to Shakespeare and even earlier. There are alternatives, xe/xer/xem, but you can't wish new English words into existence even if they might be useful. You end up sounding sillier trying to use the new made-up words than if you just resign yourself to "they". And can I add that this comments thread here is peak HN. There's a fascinating article about an interesting part of history I'd never heard of before, and yet all but one of the comments here are nitpicking over word choice. And I'm not helping any either.
- mkr-hn 7y ago
  I managed to learn Spivak pronouns because I knew someone who used them, but that didn't make it easy.
teddyh 7y ago
There were probably people saying very similar things around the time when the “thou”/“you” distinction was being replaced with always using “you”. Both changes of the language make some changes, but not very large changes, and you’ll probably get used to it.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  The big difference, though, is that most people have no use for this usage of “they” because most people don’t deal with non-binary people on a regular basis, if ever.
  - 333c 7y ago
    Do you have evidence to back up that claim?
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      The prevalence of gender dysphoria seems to be extremely low: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Epidemiology This usage of 'they' would then be further restricted to the subset of people with gender dysphoria who identify as neither male nor female.
viburnum 7y ago
Singular they has been used in English since about the 14th century.
Terr_ 7y ago
To me it's very natural, perhaps because I've been argui-- er, interacting with so many people on the internet, whose true identities and genders are completely obscured behind an arbitrary username. "I replied to always4getpass, and told them that the generic pronoun seems pretty normal, I hope they agree."

pluma 7y ago

You get confused because you're not used to it. It gets less confusing the more you see it used. There are some cases where it introduces unnecessary confusion but the same is true for any other pronoun. There are some proposed non-binary or gender neutral pronouns but none of them seem to be in use much.

ChrisSD 7y ago

Considering singular they has been in common use for centuries[0], changing it now would be an uphill struggle. People have used words like "ze" but they haven't caught on. [0] https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/ https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

kmm 7y ago
Its use with an unspecified antecedent is centuries old, but usage for specific persons is not. Time will tell whether it'll catch on.
- ChrisSD 7y ago
  The article I linked to gives 1794 as an example of using singular they to refer to a specific person. And as it also points out, there's nothing particularly unusual about using they in the context of a specific person as well as being a plural. It is commonly accepted that "you" is now both singular and plural.
  - iguy 7y ago
    I can't decode what the 1794 usage was. The article describes it as "singular they", used presumably in reference to one of these three authors, but, well, it would help to see the passage in question.
  - ta0987 7y ago
    I don't think there's a better choice today than 'they' but that 1794 example doesn't show that this was a natural use back then. It was a conscious and intentional deviation from standard usage just as it is today, as was noted by the contemporary 'mansplaining' commenter and the contemporary response to him.
steve_taylor 7y ago
Butchering of the English language is hardly a modern phenomenon.
- hnzix 7y ago
  English is not a dead language and so it evolves. Consider 12th century English: Ealdred arceb hine to cynge gehalgode menn guldon him gyld gislas sealdon syððan heora land bohtan.

signalsmith 7y ago

It's kind of odd, because people seem to accept singular "they" for strangers, but not once there's a name. If I say: "I bumped into a stranger on the street and trod on their toes, apologised to them, and they apologised to me" - generally (in normal spoken conversation, not here when we're paying attention) people don't care. Using singular "they" for strangers is pretty common, and hundreds and hundreds of years old. The problem comes when we give someone a name. If I say: "I bumped into Julie on the street and trod on their toes, apologised to them, and they apologised to me", people might think it sounds odd (if they're not used to it). It's as if we have an order/hierarchy in which we expect to learn information about people. Like, by the time we know someone's name, we assume we should already have been told their gender, and we confused if hasn't happened yet.

keiferski 7y ago
I would say it’s more that “they” is used for individuals when the subject is specified previously in the sentence or conversation. In your example sentence, “the stranger” clarifies this. If the sentence were simply “They bumped into me on the street.” it is unclear if the subject is singular or plural.
- signalsmith 7y ago
  In my second example, I used "Julie" instead of "a stranger". The subject is specified in exactly the same way, but people might find "they" more surprising in that case. Some people might even take it as a potential clue that Julie could be non-binary, because of how much we expect gender-matched pronouns at that point. (Not saying they should, just that they might.)
  - keiferski 7y ago
    Ah yes, my bad, you are correct. I meant to say that it's not simply that the distinction is between "named individual" and "stranger" but is more complex. It seems like "they" is used 'correctly' for a singular subject when the subject has been previously referred to, but hasn't been given a proper name. But I'm sure a linguist has studied this in further detail.

sverona 7y ago

It's perfectly standard. You're probably already accustomed to using it for a person whose identity you don't know, unless you walk around saying things like "I hope this person comes back to get his or her umbrella."

ryanmercer 7y ago
Even if you know what gender the person is it's not uncommon to use they "Well officer, I saw them walk from their car up to the door then they turned and looked around, that's when I saw them pull the ski mask down, draw their gun and enter the bank" --- Manager: What was the customer doing when you told them to leave? Clerk: Well I had been trying to help them with their project but they kept stepping into my personal space, then he places his hand on me and that's when I decided they'd crossed a line and needed to leave --- Most people wouldn't even bat an eye swapping they out for he/she in conversation in person.
- iguy 7y ago
  It would depend on context, if you ask me. The bank robbery was across the street & half a block down? Completely unremarkable to say "they". The clerk is complaining about sexual harassment, hand on thigh? Avoiding "he" implies a careful choice not to say, either to hide an identity, or because the customer was obviously confusingly gender-ambiguous.
  - silveroriole 7y ago
    I interpreted “they” in the second one as implying distance from the person in question, like the speaker wants nothing to do with them and is emphasising that they were a stranger. Possibly part of why saying “they” feels uncomfortable to people, but I’d never realised it until reading that example.
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      In my case if I don't know someone well, or at all, without thought I use gender-neutral terminology they/them/their and with pets and babies, again without thought, I naturally use it.

WAHa_06x36 7y ago

You don't. It is standard English, and you and people around you use it all the time.

toasterlovin 7y ago
Not to refer to people who are familiar. If it were actually used like this already, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

golemotron 7y ago

Right now, it is a cultural marker. If you run a linguistic use analysis, you see that it is used on the coasts and a few key urban areas in the US and it hasn't made progress toward universality.

Dobbs 7y ago
Except you know Shakespeare using singular they[0]. Then the fact that I’m willing to bet decent money that random individuals in rural areas also use singular they all the time without realising. It is just when a trans person wants singular they exclusively that it becomes an issue. 1: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002748.h...
- iguy 7y ago
  I'm surprised that this misses the distinction made by signalsmith above: the way Shakespeare uses "they" to refer to someone is unremarkable, but what strikes many present-day speakers as an error (even if they fail to explain why) is the use of it to apply to a particular person, especially a named person.
wahern 7y ago
Do you have any citations? If you mean the deliberate usage of singular they as a neuter pronoun for subjects who identify as non-binary, then sure. But otherwise, singular they is used by almost everybody some of the time. always4getpass' comment, at least on its face, refers to the latter usage. Frankly, I think even people offended at being forced to use the former usage will relent. Refusing to accommodate (rightly or wrongly) is confrontational, and being confrontational is exhausting. It's already quite natural to use singular they when using a passive, impersonal voice, and using a passive voice is what people will invariably resort to when they're exhausted.

Rumperuu 7y ago

For my money the best thing that ever happened to English was abandoning grammatical gender/noun classes centuries ago - no more masculine, feminine or neuter, everything is ‘the’ or ‘a’.[0] Based on that, I propose we push for ‘it’ as a sole singular pronoun (and keep ‘they’ for plural, as knowing if someone is referring to one or many is far more useful in almost all contexts than knowing whether they are referring to a man or a woman (or ship, or country, etc.), and those few contexts where it is relevant should be easy enough to glean from other information. If you think that could never work, I'd point out that Mandarin managed without gender-specific pronouns until contact with Europeans, and even now they are only distinguishable in written form.[1] Alternatively, there's Stallman's proposal for ‘person’, ‘per’ and ‘pers’.[2] I'm doubtful of any proposal that involves creating new words (see ‘xe’, Spivak pronouns, etc. ), but everything else Stallman says seems to come to pass so maybe. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_grammatical_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_g... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pronouns [2] https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html

mabbo 7y ago
The problem with "it" is the word's existing use to refer to non-person objects. One could easily interpret being called "it" as an insult, ie: this thing is not even a human. I might not even be willing to refer to a dog as "it" in most circumstances. Honestly though, I'm with you that it's a linguistic gap English needs to fill. Similarly, the second person plural pronoun need to be accepted as "y'all"- and I say that as someone not even from the southern USA.
- Rumperuu 7y ago
  True, which is why it needs to start with people choosing to be called ‘it’. It's yet to happen, but I'll do my bit if/when I'm ever asked for my preferred pronouns. Also, as someone currently leaving in a place rich with Scousers I would put forward ‘yous’ as a second-person plural pronoun that rolls off the tongue a bit better (and, I would conjecture, makes more intuitive sense for learners of English).

rcthompson 7y ago

Yes, it feels grammatically weird, because e.g. you use "is" for he and she but "are" for they. But there's no option that isn't a compromise in some way. The alternative is coming up with an entirely new pronoun and convincing people to use it, and people have tried that as well. It seems that the singular they is much more widely recognized, though.

toasterlovin 7y ago
FWIW, I think new words are easier in this case. This new usage of “they” is really confusing when you come across it. Typical usage of first person “they” implies a degree of unfamiliarity with the person in question. So using “they” for someone who is known causes you to question your reading comprehension.

djohnston 7y ago

i knew a trans person whose preferred pronoun was 'it'. i just used its first name.

SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
"It" just seems so dehumanising. But perhaps with increasing popular usage that will fade.

mkr-hn 7y ago

You get used to it with practice. More enbies[1] are coming out in more places, so you'll get there. [1] Nonbinary -> NB -> enby See also: nibbling.

CydeWeys 7y ago

Good blog post on the subject here: https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/ https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-t... TL;DR it's been commonly used this way for centuries, all the way back to Shakespeare and even earlier. There are alternatives, xe/xer/xem, but you can't wish new English words into existence even if they might be useful. You end up sounding sillier trying to use the new made-up words than if you just resign yourself to "they". And can I add that this comments thread here is peak HN. There's a fascinating article about an interesting part of history I'd never heard of before, and yet all but one of the comments here are nitpicking over word choice. And I'm not helping any either.

mkr-hn 7y ago
I managed to learn Spivak pronouns because I knew someone who used them, but that didn't make it easy.

teddyh 7y ago

There were probably people saying very similar things around the time when the “thou”/“you” distinction was being replaced with always using “you”. Both changes of the language make some changes, but not very large changes, and you’ll probably get used to it.

toasterlovin 7y ago
The big difference, though, is that most people have no use for this usage of “they” because most people don’t deal with non-binary people on a regular basis, if ever.
- 333c 7y ago
  Do you have evidence to back up that claim?
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    The prevalence of gender dysphoria seems to be extremely low: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria#Epidemiology This usage of 'they' would then be further restricted to the subset of people with gender dysphoria who identify as neither male nor female.

viburnum 7y ago

Singular they has been used in English since about the 14th century.

Terr_ 7y ago

To me it's very natural, perhaps because I've been argui-- er, interacting with so many people on the internet, whose true identities and genders are completely obscured behind an arbitrary username. "I replied to always4getpass, and told them that the generic pronoun seems pretty normal, I hope they agree."