Let's Talk About Singular They.
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- Опубліковано 8 тра 2024
- A sequel to: • In Defence of Grammati...
Thanks to my patrons!!
Patreon: www.patreon.com/user?u=73482298
Special thanks to Calvin for pestering me until I made this video.
Sources:
Baron, D. (1981-2015). The Words that Failed: A chronology of early nonbinary pronouns.
Baron, D. (1986). Grammar and Gender. New Haven.
Baron, D. (2018). A brief history of singular ‘they’. Oxford English Dictionary Blogs.
Fisher, A. (1745). A New Grammar [2nd ed. 1750]. Newcastle upon Tyne.
Gerner, J. (1998). Singular and Plural Anaphors of Indefinite Personal Pronouns in Spoken British English. Corpora Galore: Analyses and Techniques in Describing English: Papers from the Nineteenth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerised Corpora.
Graham, S. (2001). Sulawesi's fifth gender. Inside Indonesia.
McWhorter, J. (2013). The Royal They: Fighting against the tyranny of pronouns. The New Republic.
LaScotte, D. (2016). Singular they: An Empirical Study of Generic Pronoun Use. American Speech. 91 (1): 62-80.
Miller, C. & Swift, K. (1980). The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. New York. Harper & Row.
Safire, W. (1985). On Language; You Not Tarzan, Me Not Jane. The New York Times.
Wagner, S. (2003). Gender in English Pronouns: Myth and Reality. University of Freiburg.
(1881). Detroit Free Press. May 13 edition.
(2018). Collins COBUILD English Dictionary.
(2022). they. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
Constitution of the United States of America. Article 1 §2.
Literary examples of the singular “they”:
Austen, Jane. (1814). Mansfield Park.
Shakespeare, William. (p. 1623). The Comedy of Errors.
Shaw, George Bernard. (1898). Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant.
Anonymous writer. (c.1350). William and the Werewolf. Translated c. 1350-1375 to English from the original French written c. 1200.
NOTES FROM VIDEO:
[Note 1] When I say “is from”, I am arguing purely from a synchronic perspective - I mean it as a shorthand for the fact that the plural mixed gender and plural masculine are the same, and distinct from the plural feminine in French. I am not making an argument from etymology here.
[Note 2] Wagner argues that “the choice of a supposedly masculine personal pronoun (him) said nothing about the gender or sex of the referent” in Middle English. However, I would argue that the association with the masculine over the feminine still applies. Wagner herself writes that this pronoun can be used for any combination of the genders “masculine” and “neuter”, or sexes “male” and “asexual”, deliberately excluding the “feminine” or “female”. Despite being gender-neutral in some contexts, this pronoun was never epicene, not even in Middle English.
[Note 3] Note, of course, that “man” was originally the word for “human”, and only later came to mean “male adult”. In Old English, “man” was “wer”, and “woman” was “wif”.
[Note 4] Joke.
[Note 5] Note the significantly lower percentages found only three years earlier, in Erdmann (1995), with singular “they” only being used in just under 50% of cases. This study was, firstly, done on Americans, who may be more biased against the singular “they”, and was also a study of written language, reflecting how the singular “they” is often seen as too informal by publishers, and therefore either avoided by authors, or changed by the editors.
[Note 6] Actually, in the examples given from Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors and Austen’s Mansfield Park, the gender of the referent is known (masculine in the former case, feminine in the latter), but an epicene pronoun is used regardless. Go figure.
[Note 7] I am aware that people have been identifying as non-binary for a long time, even in Europe and colonial America. The sociology and history of this is worth looking into, but I am personally less interested in it and therefore didn’t want to go into the topic in the video.
[Note 8] When it is a subject, this “sie/Sie” can be separated out into “she/feminine it” with the 3rd person singular verb ending, and “they/you” with the 3rd person plural verb ending. In the dative, the same split accords, as the former take the dative “ihr” and the latter the dative “ihnen/Ihnen”. When in the accusative or genitive, there is no difference in spoken language between the four. However, in writing, the formal “you” is distinguished from the others because it, and all its forms, are capitalised.
Chapters:
0:00 - The Epicene “They”
2:48 - The Generic “He”
5:28 - The Non-Binary “They”
7:21 - Credits
Written and Created by me
Art by kvd102
Music by me
Translations:
Ferr - Indonesian
D'ignoranza & Marco Lisoni - Italian
Leeuwe van den Heuvel - Dutch
Gergő Kulman - Hungarian
Ray Karr - Spanish
Ollie - French
千雨 Chisame - Standard Mandarin, Japanese
Risto Kynkäänniemi - Finnish
Jafar - Arabic
Natália - Portuguese
Álftanes - Cantonese
Maymun - Turkish
Eneko Andonegi - Basque
Kantoros1 - Czech
Mihaela Modic - Slovene
defr - Korean
#theythem #nonbinary #pronouns
pronouns don't need to exist
correct but they're useful
its easier to say one word instead of always specifying what you're talking about
i even used three pronouns in this comment
no more pronouns
let's all speak like UK roadmen and use the word "man" to replace 1st 2nd & 3rd person pronouns
me when pronouns 😡
@@youtubewontletmehaveaonewo2471 this person used a pronoun and now should be cancelled
It’s also fun to point out that singular they is older than singular you.
wha?
@@MXY... yeah, people go on and say how new it is and don't care about you.
Edit: you *pronouns* sorry. People do care about you
@@isabellach thanks for the edit I would have been very confused
@@isabellach 🤣that was amazing to read
@@MXY... I think it was thou singular & you plural, which became thou informal & you formal, which became you always. Also makes it funny that people use thou formally when trying to sound old-timey.
Thinking back to when I did mock trial in highschool and our team was chastised by one of the judges for referring to a witness by the "Liberal pronoun 'they'"
Hope he sentenced y'all to juvie
That's fucked up
Welp, conservatives getting tilted
i would be so embarrassed
Imagine if there were pronouns which indicated political ideology
I don't have an opinion on the singular they, but I do think it's funny how often people accidentally use it when they're decrying its use.
It's one of my favorite types of transphobe self-own.
Another fun one is that when you see a transphobe saying "WE CAN ALWAYS TELL," you can reply with a picture of a cis woman, imply she's a trans woman, and be like "you REALLY think she doesn't look like a woman?" and they'll rattle off like 5 ways that that CISGENDER WOMAN is obviously a man in a dress.
Usually you want to choose a picture of a famous transphobe, because otherwise it's mean-but on at least one occasion I actually saw someone get tricked into doing it in response to a picture _of herself_
@@user-bz3kd2mt3u A picture of HERSELF? Is she hiding something?
What how does someone not recognize an image of themselves 😂
I wish german had an equivalent of Singular 'they'. If you don't know someone's gender, you could then use that instead of "er oder sie"
@@keit99 Doesn't german have "es"? Is it only for things?
All of my English teachers throughout my life never had an issue with singular “they”. Matter of fact, I never even knew people were throwing a fit over it until Twitter. We’ve been using it since FOREVER, why is it suddenly so contentious? Were people never taught this? 😭💀
Probably not, as a non-native speaker, I've always known that "they/them" is plural. It's just less confusing to use "he/she" than "they/them" as the latter requires context in order for it to make sense.
"He/She ate some food." can only be interpreted as someone eating food. Whereas; "They ate some food." can be interpreted as a group or, within this context, as someone eating food. At this point we might as well make a new word for it. If "tryna" is a thing, then a gender neutral pronoun can be a thing.
@@iqbalindaryono8984 english is my 1st language and singular they has always been used, even before the twitter fiasco about the topic started
we don't need to create a entirely new pronoun because people are now upset of they being used in such a way
it is not hard to interpret a single person when using they - "they left their wallet on the counter", "they left the party on their own accord", "they were all by themself", etc.
it has always been like this, people are just now upset because queerness has been attached to using singular they
"why is it suddenly so contentious?"
in short, the answer is conservative moral panic over trans and nonbinary people.
@@lxvrrbxy your second example could actually be plural. Technically even example 1 could be too if for a particular occasion 2 people just had one wallet between them. I mostly use they, but you can’t the fact that it can often be confusing whether it is plural or singular. “They” has grammatical issues, but it’s better to sort out the optimal way to use it than make a new pronoun or something.
Non-native here
They've only taught us he/she/it in school, so it was weird using 'they' as singular pronoun at 1st, but I got used to it quickly
I assume most of the people throwing tantrum about it are non-natives who are extremely unaware
In my language for example there is no equivalent for singular 'they'. There are only binary pronouns. Like, that whole state of existence is just absent from your mind until you get into English-speaking community. You can't even translate it correctly, you can use the plural version of 'they' but it sounds so wrong, it's funny
And people are usually hesitant to shift their paradigm when it doesn't immediately benefit them
If people think pronouns are confusing wait until you hear about... Verbs.
What is a verb!!! I've only heard about these gosh darn pronouns😡
@@luckycharms_ 😂
@@iampancak3 ur username is cool but I like waffles😔💔
@@luckycharms_ I'm a traitor to my own kind, I also like waffles 😭
Exactly! People say pronouns are confusing… it’s like they don’t even know what prepositions are! (They probably don’t.)
We should just combine all the major pronouns into “shit” (She, he, it) it would make English class a hell of a lot funnier
This. This is amazing I want this
you're so real for this
Best comment, i love it
i have you seen how kevin played in that match? yeah shit was shit
I NEED that
my māori teacher once marked us wrong because we answered they instead of he/she when translating ia (A GENDER NEUTRAL PRONOUN). So on the next test we answered he/she/zer/fae/er/it/pae/ver. She never marked us wrong again.
Gotta be inclusive to those faeries you know? XD
@@angeldude101 fae/faem r actual neopronouns that r pretty popular :D
@@rainboSnails (I thought it was fae/faer) I know. It's just that it was the only noun-self pronoun on the list (which does make sense since it is _the_ most popular among the noun-self pronouns.)
There's also _really_ interesting history linking the fae with the kind of people most likely to use neopronouns like that in the first place. (It's not as pretty as it might sound.)
@@angeldude101 I never understood why faerie was used as an insult here. Is it because faeries are of the ‘devil’ in old Christian myth?
Same bro my teached marks me wrong
You don't know how envious I as a German am of your 'they'. So neutral, so beautiful.
Die deutsches "der/die/das" gefällt mir viel besser. Alles ist immer so klar. Im Englischen gibt es so viele Sätze, in denen nicht klar ist, was der Gegenstand des Pronomens ist. Hier gibt es ein Satz:
"Suzanne went to the grocery store and pharmacy to buy bananas and condoms. She used them up before she even got home!"
Now, just WHAT has Suzanne been up to! DId she eat all the bananas? Or did she .. ummm ... use all the condoms on her walk home!?
Aber auf Deutsch braucht Suzanne ihre Sexualmoral nicht zu verteidigen. Alles ist klar:
"Suzanne ist zum Lebensmittelladen und zur Apotheke gegangen. Sie kauft ein paar Bananen und eine Schachtel Kondome. Sie hat sie aufgebraucht, bevor sie überhaupt nach Hause kam!“
Ja, es ist ganz sicher was Suzanne hat gemacht!😅🤣
Look up the word "Thon". Much better by a landslide in terms of using it for people.
@@ems4884 that doesn't even make sense? How would translating this into German make it more clear? Because I'm a German native speaker who just translated this in his head and it changed nothing.
(also der/die/das (articles) has nothing to do with the singular they (pronoun)!
@@ems4884 As a German, nope, not clear at all just from the "sie". Like the "aufgebraucht" is more of an indicator than the "sie"?
How's the Gender Star treating you guys? Has it butchered your once beautiful language yet?
There are even times when we use singular they for people of known gender. If I have a couple girl friends over and afterwards I find a handbag on my couch, I think it's way more natural to say, "Someone left their purse." than "Someone left her purse." Both are correct but one sounds more natural to me.
Good example and congrats on your poly relationship! or friendship if you meant friends who are girls rather than girls you are in intimate relationships with.
Well, you don't really think about people's gender. You just use this phrase automatically.
@@stm7810 Why does having friends who are girls make one 'poly' in any sense? Cheers! :)
@@zapazap Girlfriends, in current casual language means people with feminine genders who you are romantically or sexually involved with. I just also acknowledged the other meaning it could be.
@@stm7810 That use is common in my circles when the speaker is a man. Otherwise, the implication is merely friendship, esp when the plural is used. YMMV. Cheers! :)
Saying “Someone left their bike here” Feels natural. I’ve never heard anyone say “Someone left his or her bike here”
"A person left the bike here, that belongs to said person"
they can be used for a person you don't know the gender of, like if you see someone online and don't know their gender, you can use they.
Sounds a non english speaker would say
@@eleternauta2640 What's wrong with not speaking english?
@@tea.crystal727 so... you're still using they/them to refer to a singular person. You can't argue they/them is only used for plural and then use it singularly when the gender is unknown. That's contradictory.
The existence of pronouns implies the existence of casual nouns
🤯
Noobnouns
But of course! Casual nouns usually only refer to one or two things, so they only come into play every once in a while. Pronouns though? They gotta cover for everything.
the transgender competition
@@globingoblin8625 Hackernouns
I am french and when we were like 8 our teacher told us about « ils » being masculine but used for women too even if there are 1 man and 100 women we GASPED🤣
Same in Spanish, awful
yeah, i'm learning french and the gender rules can be pretty confusing. i know that some people have been using iel as the epicine singular but idk if iels has caught on yet
I remember being taught the exact same thing, with the exact same example lol
it's similar in russian, if there's a man in a group of two people you have to say "оба" (masculine both) instead of "обе" (feminine both)
to me that never felt right though so i just use "обои" in everyday speech which technically translates to wallpaper and is grammatically incorrect but is not gendered at least lmao
@@globingoblin8625 why is It awful
the plural pronoun "y'all" is probably one of the best things to come out of Texas
Agreed
i thought Scott the woz invented it
@@Carbonara_17 yes
I thought y’all was singular and all’y’all was plural
@@lemonhscott7667 You are incorrect. "Y'all" is a conjugation of "You all" so it's inherently plural. "All'y'all" is a conjugation of "All of you all" which is redundant but also feels correct to say sometimes.
As a Finn with no gendered pronouns it comes very naturally for me to also use "they" in English.
"As a Finn with no gendered pronouns it comes very naturally for me to also use "they" in English."
But you loose the singular/plurial meaning?
So many languages don't have gendered third person singular pronouns and theyre based for that tbh
It's the same thing in Georgian as it's a completely gender-neutral language.
@@anteeko nope, hän is singular, he is plural
bro when I first read this I thought your name was literally Finn and you have 0 gendered pronouns 💀
whenever people try to tell me they/them cannot be singular I alr know their english teachers hated them 💀
(They're) the kid the teacher called on in class to do a reading just to watch (them) struggle over it. Every English teacher I had did that.
They’re the kid who the teacher has to say the word that they are reading because it took them too long trying to understand a word like cumbersome.
they for unspecified geneder is ok.
they for made up genders is not ok
It can't be singular if you KNOW the gender of the person you're referring to.
@@ermazargw3908 Yes… it can 💀
Looking at recent comments on this video is a hell of ride. I don’t know what I expected.
sorting youtube comments by newest first is a 100% effective way to reduce the amount of brain cells you have
@@epiclemon9927TRUEEE
I hate that I can say "they" in reference to a person of unspecified gender and people act like I'm making a statement on gender identify. What else am I supposed to say? "This individual of unspecified gender"? Not everything is political, some things are just convenient.
It's even funnier when you are actually talking about someone you don't even know and people lash out at you.
@@jeremyroland5602 🤓
Plus it's almost certain they would subconsciously use singular "they" in their daily lives if they weren't thinking so hard about it.
@@shadybat3183 I've been seeing so many people replying to that guy, what did they say?? They deleted all of their comments with just replies remaining
@@cynicalradicand Right? Imagine a transphobe sees someone left their bag behind after a meeting, I guess they're required to say something like "oh dear, someone left his or her bag here! I wonder if he or she noticed, I hope he or she comes back to get it. He or she probably left his or her wallet and phone and everything!" It's laughable. They make themselves look like idiots twisting in grammatical knots all to avoid accepting nonbinary people who're just living their lives.
"PeOpLe ARe MakINg NeW PronOunCe NoW" people in 1858: t h o n
1 mentally insane person*
**Makes random letter with complex set of rules for when to use it for no reason at all**
"he"
- associated with having facial hair
"T H O N"
- powerful consonant
- deep vowel
- pronounced like impending doom manifesting at once
- personal pronoun you want to use for a sapient monolith
@@user-qd8yy9lc4g you make a good point, added to my vocabulary and list of pronouns
@@user-qd8yy9lc4g I now know how to corectly refere to sentient monolyths.
Thon is also the French for thuna.
If someone cannot comprehend singular "they", how can they comprehend the rest of the language? Singular "they" is not very confusing. It's extremely simple. It's grammatically correct and historically grounded. It's older than modern English.
And yet people keep arguing that it is only a plural pronoun, when really it can be both singular and plural
@@LiliannEnder It's amazing how many people have incredibly strong opinions about English grammar and spelling, even though their arguments often prove that they have no real understanding of English grammar or spelling. It's bizarre.
for real. no one is confused by "you" meaning informal second person, formal second person and multiple second person, yet singular "they" is somehow confusing.
also i think we should start using "thou" again as informal second person.
They just don’t like y’all
@@somegrill7561 It isn't even about that. When you are talking to someone online, often you won't know their gender.
If you don't know their gender, what pronouns should you use? Should you just default to "he" for them? Should you use "he/she/it/they", just to cover all the bases?
Or would it make more sense just to use singular "they" as a default, like I have been doing continually through this comment ("use for them")? Singular "they" is the most natural choice when you aren't certain about gender. The non-binary aspect is incidental.
Imma start using thon/thonself to annoy my dad and when he complains, ‘1858!’
This is literally 1858 by George Orwell
For a second I figured "thon/thonself" sounded metal as fuck, until I realized thon is the french word for tuna
I don't understand how that's not metal, in fact, that makes it more metal. Don't you wanna be called tuna? Don't you wanna call other people tuna? Tuna supremacy.
Lmaoooo
Tuna
Honestly I would just ignore french they call water "eau" and its pronounced "ö"
"thon" doesn't sound metal, it sounds like something you scoop salad with.
As an English teacher, it's been almost my life's mission to reclaim the legitimacy of Singular they! I've genuinely had fights with district managers who wanted me to not talk about it in fear of some parent thinking I'm teaching kids about "twitter pronouns"
good stuff, I wish you luck out there
Comparing it to twitter pronouns is absurd
You're a hero :)
Based district managers.
@@_blank-_ yes, they're based in bulshit
Glad to see the resurgence of singular “they.” When I was in elementary school, I remember my parents lecturing me not to use the pronoun “they” to refer to a singular person. In the end, I resigned myself to say “he or she,” “his or her,” or “one,” etc.
I still like one and a pronoun, it's fun to use when you're being ironically grandiose lol
An example I like to use in that situation is that no one says "he or she cut me off!" when they're driving and someone cuts them off on the road
But one is even less grammatically correct by her own logic because it just means “you the way you would use it if you said this sentence” referring to people in general, which is even pluraler than they, now To be clear I am okay with you using it as such, I am just suprised she is.
I personally find it rather confusing but your point of “get over it” genuinely makes sense to me. While currently my mind only thinks of they/them as a person who is entirely unknown, I see no reason why over time I couldn’t come to think of it for people who I do know. Language evolves, and unless you want to sound out of touch, you’d best evolve with it
Agree. We speak what is natural. Prescriptivism is wrong, whether it's for or against the new use of singular "they" to refer to a known person. If it sticks, it sticks. If another neat solution comes along, that's cool too.
I’m happy to see this willingness to learn, even though it may take some time, have a great day Alex
Logically, if "they" is an acceptable pronoun for a person of unknown gender, the discovery of their gender should not make "they" completely unacceptable (although upon discovery, the speaker may logically prefer to use "he" or "she").
Indeed - to further elaborate on your point, the phrase "you'd better evolve with it" is considered standard English nowadays, but I remember my Gran saying that she once had a tutor who told her off for using "you" instructionally or when writing to an unknown reader. "One" was considered to be the correct pronoun in this instance: i.e. "One should be careful" instead of "You should be careful".
@@TechnoticPlatehow does that spund like a caveman??
Without pronouns, what would amateur nouns have left to strive for?
nice pfp
HA!
agreed
Esports version of nouns
the antinouns seeing this comment:
I study linguistics. Trust me this is probably the easiest part of the English language to get your head around.
Not for right wingers apparently, must be a brain issue I suppose
Least confusing English grammar rule
I mean most people who complain about this can't type grammatically correct anyways...
@@peefromtmv you rude.
@@thatsawesomeithink and you proved a point
A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
Here’s a history lesson in the use of singular “they” which goes back all the way back to the middle ages (courtesy of the Oxford English dictionary):
The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf. Except for the old-style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern. Here’s the Middle English version: ‘Hastely hiȝed eche . . . þei neyȝþed so neiȝh . . . þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere.’ In modern English, that’s: ‘Each man hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together.’
Since forms may exist in speech long before they’re written down, it’s likely that singular they was common even before the late fourteenth century. That makes an old form even older.
In the eighteenth century, grammarians began warning that singular they was an error because a plural pronoun can’t take a singular antecedent. They clearly forgot that singular you was a plural pronoun that had become singular as well. You functioned as a polite singular for centuries, but in the seventeenth century singular you replaced thou, thee, and thy, except for some dialect use. That change met with some resistance. In 1660, George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, wrote a whole book labeling anyone who used singular you an idiot or a fool. And eighteenth-century grammarians like Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray regularly tested students on thou as singular, you as plural, despite the fact that students used singular you when their teachers weren’t looking, and teachers used singular you when their students weren’t looking. Anyone who said thou and thee was seen as a fool and an idiot, or a Quaker, or at least hopelessly out of date.
Singular you has become normal and unremarkable. Also unremarkable are the royal we and, in countries without a monarchy, the editorial we: first-person plurals used regularly as singulars and nobody calling anyone an idiot and a fool. And singular they is well on its way to being normal and unremarkable as well. Toward the end of the twentieth century, language authorities began to approve the form. The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) not only accepts singular they, they also use the form in their definitions. And the New Oxford American Dictionary (Third Edition, 2010), calls singular they ‘generally accepted’ with indefinites, and ‘now common but less widely accepted’ with definite nouns, especially in formal contexts.
Not everyone is down with singular they. The well-respected Chicago Manual of Style still rejects singular they for formal writing, and just the other day a teacher told me that he still corrects students who use everyone … their in their papers, though he probably uses singular they when his students aren’t looking. Last Fall, a transgender Florida school teacher was removed from their fifth-grade classroom for asking their students to refer to them with the gender-neutral singular they. And two years ago, after the Diversity Office at the University of Tennessee suggested that teachers ask their students, ‘What’s your pronoun?’ because some students might prefer an invented nonbinary pronoun like zie or something more conventional, like singular they, the Tennessee state legislature passed a law banning the use of taxpayer dollars for gender-neutral pronouns, despite the fact that no one knows how much a pronoun actually costs.
It’s no surprise that Tennessee, the state that banned the teaching of evolution in 1925, also failed to stop the evolution of English one hundred years later, because the fight against singular they was already lost by the time eighteenth-century critics began objecting to it. In 1794, a contributor to the New Bedford Medley mansplains to three women that the singular they they used in an earlier essay in the newspaper was grammatically incorrect and does no ‘honor to themselves, or the female sex in general.’ To which they honourably reply that they used singular they on purpose because ‘we wished to conceal the gender,’ and they challenge their critic to invent a new pronoun if their politically-charged use of singular they upsets him so much. More recently, a colleague who is otherwise conservative told me that they found singular they useful ‘when talking about what certain people in my field say about other people in my field as a way of concealing the identity of my source.’
Former Chief Editor of the OED Robert Burchfield, in The New Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1996), dismisses objections to singular they as unsupported by the historical record. Burchfield observes that the construction is ‘passing unnoticed’ by speakers of standard English as well as by copy editors, and he concludes that this trend is ‘irreversible’. People who want to be inclusive, or respectful of other people’s preferences, use singular they. And people who don’t want to be inclusive, or who don’t respect other people’s pronoun choices, use singular they as well. Even people who object to singular they as a grammatical error use it themselves when they’re not looking, a sure sign that anyone who objects to singular they is, if not a fool or an idiot, at least hopelessly out of date.
fantastic comment, and hard agree on the final part...I think the whole conservative argument "singular they/them doesn't make any sense!!!" isn't truly an argument as much as a meme told between conservatives to mock modern changes in gender, and subsequently, changes in language. it takes two seconds of thought to realize that English uses they/them all the time in varied contexts, and that it's pretty damn useful, but when you're a conservative mindlessly repeating a meme to your friends, i guess two seconds of thought is too much to ask for.
just here to applaud the essay-in-a-comment, from a fellow comment essayist. also enjoyed the splash of ME at the start, a period of english I devoted 7 years of my life to studying and learning.
Love this. Also a pronoun costs exactly $2.45 in my country
readin allat. good comment
@@NatalleeK can I have some for free, as a treat
I've always used "they" in the singular when referring to a person I don't know the gender of because saying "he or she" is clunky. No one cared until language became another front in the culture war. Many people started getting pedantic over that usage of "they" all of a sudden. Me thinks that many of them don't genuinely care about grammatical rules.
Exactly. I really don’t get why people spend extra time writing “he/she”when you can literally just write they
Using ineffective communication to own the libs or something.
Same... if idk their gender I use they
And that's why I intentionally use "He" every single time.
If those people don't care, why would I or any of the normal ones?
@@595no that’s worse
Minor correction: singular they is not necessarily used in the case of unknown gender but for *unspecified* gender (including cases where the lack of specification is due to lack of knowledge). For example, consider "I have a close friend who went to medical school, and they told me not to make the same mistake". It's more likely that I'm choosing not to reveal my friend's gender than it is that I simply don't know it
or there's actually proximity or adherence to a semantic plural, but that's a different case altogether
So maybe if we start thinking it as unspecified gender rather than unknown, it could come across easier for some people to get a grasp. Because that makes sense to me. Saying you are unspecified so you don’t have to feel pressured to be any gender and not feel like they’re nothing. Unless if that’s what they want.
@@jaydabomb2510 yeah this is a great way to start bridging the gap between people who aren’t used to consciously using singular they/them!! i’m going to use this next time, thanks :)
@@jaydabomb2510I agree with you, and it's a big part of why I like to bring people's attention to it. Without singular they, gender is almost mandatory in English. People think they're entitled to know everyone's gender, even when identities are meant to be kept confidential but are still "known" to someone.
And yes, there's a variety of reasons why people want to use singular they for themselves. It could be they are questioning their gender or the pronoun best reflects their gender. I think the fewer assumptions we make, the better
@@JustinJonesLi for me half of it is being nonbinary and the other half is that the "th" sound is far less triggering to my sensory issues as compared to the "sh" sound, which a lot of older people seem to almost put emphasis on too depending on their accents. Also, people seem to spit far more when making the "sh" sound and I've literally been spat on before, and the pronoun "she" always sounds so damn /loud/ to me. The "ay" sound also is just far better to me than the "ee" sound. So it's a combo of myself not wanting to be automatically called a woman and also me just fucking hating "she" as a pronounced sound
This actually changed my vision on the non-binary use of “they”, I should’ve done my research, I always thought that “they” could only be used as plural and thus couldn’t be used by a person that hasn’t established their gender or just don’t want to, I purposely didn’t use “they”, I genuinely thought it was stupid, but I should’ve dug deeper, great video by the way, straight to the point and pretty informative on the use of pronouns in general.
Congrats on changing your mind. It actually take a lot to when confronted with new information change your previously held beliefs.
hey man, I was in the same boat some 4-ish years ago, and now I'm trans LOL you learn and you discover more about the world and yourself. good on you for growing
@@MarcyRavenManji stop it
Get some help
@@walleras and what sort of help are you suggesting I get? Take some time to reflect on yourself and others my friend.
It is well put together and informative but it basically comes down to something even admitted in the video. It's confusing. And, with the way the singular "they" is already utilized in the English language, it is too confusing. And for people to adopt practices, they have to want to. And people don't want to adopt confusing practices, especially when there's nothing to gain from it. I also doubt there's enough people claiming to be nonbinary to make it common practice. And I don't think this fad of people calling themselves nonbinary is going to last much longer than the emo fad in the 2000s.
Let me tell you, as a lawyer I am held to pretty high writing standards, and even the legal profession is changing to except singular they. It's efficient and everyone know what you are talking about. Language evolves, even in It's most formal formats. No one writes like a lawyer from 100 years ago, and the system hasn't broken down yet (at least from a symantec standpoint). Clarity > tradition.
your high writing standards as a lawyer must be astronomical when you still mess up except with accept
"None of these have caught on... *yet* " The neopronoun takeover of September 2035 mark my words
Putin if you hear me, please push the button 🙏💥
If it's not broken, why try and fix it.
@@atbing2425 idk i think neopronouns are funny
@@atbing2425 personally this was actually the first time I’d heard of “thon” specifically. And even if it doesn’t come into general usage as a neutrally gendered term, I actually really like the idea of having a “the one” contraction since the existing epicene pronoun “one” (with regard to how I tend to use it anyway) is already very convenient when referring to general populations, for example, “one must have food, water, and shelter in order to survive.”
I've read once a fanfic with neopronouns. The author just added them into the story without any explanation or context. The reader has to assume that in this alternative universe the existence of non-binary people is so normalized that giving any exposition would be ridiculous
Like when you read a normal novel nobody explains to you what does she/her mean and what does it mean to be a woman. Similarly I was "forced" by the fanfic to accept non-binary as normal
It was surprisingly refreshing. The author didn't treat me like a child who needs to be lead by a hand
Maybe that's the future that awaites us. Well, as a person who studies in Poland I already have a taste of the potential mess. So when I talk to a lecturer I have to use different honorifics depending on their degree +3rd person. If I forgot them I would piss them off. And of course there's no outside indicator which would help me guessing which honorific I should use - I have to remember them all. Not a good system. Unsurprisingly younger lecturers prefer more general mr. or ms.
Simplicity is important in language so I think that if neopronouns ever ended up in standard English then there would be one dominant while others would be ignored. Not out of malice but because the variety of pronouns would kinda ruin their usefulness
As a Japanese speaker, I envy English for having a practical epicene/singular/animate/3rd person pronoun. (Technically we also had an epicene pronoun in history, but it shifted to masculine when translators imported gendered pronouns.)
*Oof*
Yeah I'm a 日本語 learner and I've wondered for ages if there really is a non gendered way to refer to a person in japanese but I guess in the case where 彼 and 彼女 can't work あの／その／この人 works as well。。。I'm curious what the epicene pronoun that took on masculinity is?
As a learner who translates as practice, it's DEFINITELY weird but doesn't Japanese avoid pronouns anyway?
Honestly, it feels like a completely new problem where instead of having nobody agree on the right way to gender, gendering at all is the weird thing.
@@no.7893 Originally 彼 was epicene until translators of European literature needed a way to differentiate "he" and "she", resulting in the creation of 彼女 as a feminine pronoun towards the end of the 19th century, and 彼 shifting to masculine.
There is nothing stopping you from speaking like a nerd and using archaic Japanese.
I admit it still doesn't feel intuitive to me because I took school very seriously as a kid as well as having an English teacher who was a bit snobbish about language as a mother. Singular "they" was heavily emphasized as incorrect both at home and school during my childhood. It doesn't help that I'm on the autism spectrum and, while not sounding like Sheldon Cooper, I definitely lean towards the sort of speech patterns he parodies. Having said that, inclusion is a far higher priority than my slight discomfort, so I make a point of using singular "they" when it's appropriate. I still let out an unintentional "he or she" more often than I'd prefer, but I'm getting there.
"Inclusion" should never be a priority. People with big friend groups get stabbed in the back. And it happens quite alot. Smart people tend not to have large friend groups. Smart people are not inclusive because, quite honestly, not everyone deserves to be liked, shown kindness or helped. Not everyone is a good person and, smart people inherently know this so, to lower the chances of being backstabbed, exploited or, hurt, very few people are allowed in. People that are very carefully observed are let in. Gatekeeping is NOT inherently bad and, making inclusivity a priority over self-preservation as well as your own boundaries is a massive mistake.
@Jordan Matthews who hurt you? And why does it affect being respectful towards nonbinary folks?
@@hudsonhaynie1632 His comment doesn't really come off as somebody who has been hurt in some way, but rather as a fifteen year old trying to sound like a *b a d a s s*
@@jordanmatthews1466 It does not matter if someone is a bad person, you *cannot* judge whether someone deserves to be "liked". i don't know how 'smart' you think you are but you dont come off very emotionally intelligent, because everyone even terrible people deserve basic human respect and needs. Thats what we owe eachother, we owe eachother kindness. Get off your high horse, and i dont care what that bullshit iq test says. Intelligence cant be measured accurately, so as far as you're aware you're about as smart as everyone else. Your way of seeing the world can create rigid hierarchies in your head and thats just not real life because no ones superior to anyone
@@jordanmatthews1466 most succesful people are extremely well capable of making connections. People who can't really make connections are much more likely to end up less succesfully in life. No matter how 'intelligent' (if they can't make connections, they are definitely not socially intelligent) they are.
Tom Scott put it great a while ago. "Some people are They. Get over it."
“After all, what’s more grammatically incorrect than using a gendered pronoun for someone that doesn’t match their gender.” I AM STEALING THIS.
@@landaclay9331
Unbased and also just scientifically wrong
@@landaclay9331 There's literally no valid argument for binary gender. Linguistics, biology, sociology, whatever you try to go for to justify it, you can't. If you're uncomfortable with the fact that non-binary people exist, maybe work on that. Cause your feelings won't change reality.
@@landaclay9331 "This is how it is, that's it" isn't very convincing when the scientific consensus disagrees with you. I can see that you are very angry, but again, facts don't care about your feelings.
@@landaclay9331 and your mom likes when I’m both of them
@@landaclay9331 supposing youre right too, it doesnt discredit the use of singular they in the slightest
"What could be more grammatically incorrect than using a gendered pronoun for someone... Which doesn't match their gender?"
I literally screamed, this is the biggest roast I've ever witnessed in my whole life.
aubey omoi
@@therealshmorg yes.
i'm kinda slow, i didn't understand it 😭
@@duckified. using a gendered pronoun for someone non binary is technically wrong gramatically, bc it doesn't match their gender, its like using she for a guy
@@duckified. it means it's a logical mistake to refuse to use a certain pronounce because that person identifies different
I remember that Turkish has literally 1 pronoun.
For everything.
And they get along just fine because context exists
Not exactly. Turkish language has 1 third person singular pronoun which is "o".
I would mention that “Man” in terms of Human has always been neutral and dates itself back as a generic term for person (which side note is weirdly a case of masculine becoming neutral as it’s “per son”) in Proto-Indo-European. The term for males in older English was “Wer” (where “werewolf” comes from) while female was “Wif” (where “wife” came from). It’s only later on that man became a gendered term for males while also still being neutral but it started off as epicene.
And how and why did it become gendered?
@@algotkristoffersson15 for the same reason they were trying to push he/him pronouns as the default in place of singular “they”
@@TheSpiralProgression which is what?
Oh man. I remember taking a business English class, and an entire portion of the class was dedicated to reinforcing the idea that the singular they wasn’t grammatically correct, and that I should use “he or she” instead. I cringed the entire time, as it felt very politically motivated, with little regard to how clunky it would sound to reject the singular they as a grammatical concept. To this day, I shall continue using singular they, both because it’s more natural to me, and because of spite against that class for insisting otherwise.
I would totally write an entire essay on purpose both using, supporting, and explaining singular 'they' just to piss off the teacher
What in the world… The usage's been there since way back tho, what the heck people lmao
Are they non-natives? You should show this video to them lol
It probably was politially motivated
the same thing happened to me in my english class but I was young and naive so I believed the teacher when she told us it was grammatically incorrect so I used "he or she" in essays for like the next 2 years even though I didn't like how it sounded, just because I thought it was right
If they see a wallet on the floor do they just go like " oh no, he or she lost his or her wallet!"
Once, I got really high marks for an english examination and one of the mistakes I made was using “they” instead of “he” “she” for a person whose gender I don’t know.
Wow. I hate English teachers
Eh just start using thon or something.
@@iris_drawssandwiches you'd be shocked at how adamant the examination systems of entire countries are on excluding people, as well as anything that is not basic 1950s british english
oh i used to get marks cut for that too :/ everytime i need to use it on a test now i very begrudgingly use 'she or he' just so i can get my marks TT it's annoying, makes sentences sound much more clunky too
@@strawbaerae not a perfect solution as it sounds incredibly impersonal but I use "one" instead of singular "they" in essays and that is considered gramatically correct in my country's english exams
“I bet you use singular _you._ “
People where I live: “… and plural _y’all_ “
I'm very glad my country doesn't have a gendered pronoun, so it's not difficult for people to refer to me as someone who is Non Binary
I love the
"But none of these pronouns have caught on... *yet*." It's so vaguely threatening. Hilarious and amazing.
You find threats amusing?
@@Qrtuop
🤓
@@Qrtuop 🤓
@@Qrtuop somites, threats are not always agressive.
Also anyone replying with nerd emoji just can't explain their thoughts fr
To me, this way of doing things is just so convenient, the words for human and person are gendered in my language, so not having to go around it seems like a no brainer. Just use they and be done with it
Agree, since I got comfortable communicating in English, the forced gendering of my mother tongue annoys me to no ends. Like I am not against having gendered pronouns too, sometimes gender and or sex do matter, but not nearly as often as one is lead to belive. English has pretty much the perfect balance between inclusivity and specivity in that regard.
It allows say mum or dad, but also parent in singular. If I can not tell someone's gender/sex, simply using they, easy as that.
Right, why bother using he/she when you can use they?
@@badgerfern6469 depends on what you mean, using he or she, or using he/she, the later is indeed stupid, for the former there are arguments if in addition to they.
a little outside perspective from a European: I went to multiple schools in Germany, Finland and Greece, and in every one we were taught the use of „they“ as a neutral singular pronoun (as well as the plural form, of course) in English class from elementary school and upwards. Seeing (mostly native English speakers) argue about this so much recently is kind of funny and absurd to me - this use of „they“ has been around for ages lol
“Let’s talk about singular they”
Me, at 2am: “Sure, why not?”
I remember back in middle school, they gave everyone a grammar test where we filled in the blanks of sentences to make sense grammatically. There was a sentence where the subject had unknown gender, something like "someone left the classroom, and _____ went down the hall" (probably not exact since this was almost a decade ago at this point), and I used "they" because, well, it sounded the most correct, but nope the answer was he/she. Good to have some confirmation that I was correct all along.
Yeah, he/she is just a mouthful
They is just more natural
Insufficiently inclusive. I suggest 'she/he/it'. (Contractable to 's/h/it').
@@zapazap haha fecal matter
@@exotic1405 Oh, my!
engineer gaming
This was the longest way to say "get used to it" in the most passive agressive way. I love it
Edit: please stop commenting I could literally care less whether or not you'll adjust for others who prefer they/them I just wanted to point it out for the funnies
It's not even "get used to it" it's "you are already used to it and desperately trying to convince yourself that you aren't."
I will never call some one they or them if they view them self as non binary which is a mental illness ime calling it a it just like I call any object because objects don't have gender
@@landaclay9331 ratio
@@landaclay9331 if no1s gonna tell him i will
"I will never call some oen they or them if **THEY** view **THEM** self as non binary..."
you literally contradicted yourself two words after saying something
@@bunningssnags6104 if they complain its proper grammar they're still referring to a nonbinary person as they/them so yeah..
Written and edited by Me!? Wow, Me did such a great job when they put this together. 👍🏼 You did a great job, Me.
Nice job
Deeply funny that the people in the 1750’s arguing against the singular ‘they’ mirror the argument of those advocating today against people using singular ‘they’ to refer to themselves - in the 1750’s it was “basic grammar”, but nowadays the GC narrative is “basic biology” - both of which being argued with a generous dollop of ignorance towards more complex biology/grammar!
"it's just basic biology"
Yes it is basic biology
That's because the talk about non-binary, intersex, etc. people is in advanced biology and you're too dumb to study it
Biology and grammar are nor really comparable as all grammar is fabricated by humans and can be changed, biology is at least not the former, and therefore does not warrant an argument in the first place.
In german, "someone" goes with he and "person" goes with she. I remember, back when we were teen boys some people would mock you when you used the generic male while talking about love/dating ("oh, are you gay?"), resulting in some people ungrammatically using the female where a generic male was needed.
I think that beautifully shows that even after hundreds of years with a generic he in the german language, it still conjures up the image of a man. And somewhat ironically, the fear of sounding gay resulted in a more inclusive (albeit ungrammatical) use of language in a group of teen boys.
how ironic... homohobia led to inclusivity... lol
It’s kinda like that in Spanish…persona is feminine and humano is masc
Es macht lich so traurig das man sich überhaupt über they/them lustig macht im Deutschen, obwohl wir "Sie" haben was ein equivalent zu 'they'. Klar Neutrale Pronomen gibt es nicht wirklich aber man kann ja bald was finden & eventuell in der Vergangenheit suchen :)
@@-mmm-kay7980 Ich bin da nicht so optimistisch. Sprache entwickelt sich nur von der Mehrheit aus natürlich. Die verschiedenen progressiven Strömungen sind nicht geeint genug, wodurch keine massentauglichen Neopronomen entstehen können. Stattdessen gibt es unzählige Varianten und Ideen, welche sich alle gegenseitig behindern.
@@martinschmid797 Leider muss ich dir recht geben, mit denn viele Neopronomen wie Xier/xem, ;Dey/Dem; Sier/Siem; etc kann man echt schnell denn Überblick verlieren.
Am klügsten wäre die Neopronomen Dey/Dem, meiner Meinung nach, am besten da sie vom englischen ableiten kann. Klar wird das eine Umstellung sein, dennoch hoffe ich das es genug Menschen gibt die sich einigen können.
Nach dem Gendern Debakel kann man es wahrscheinlich in naher Zukunft streichen. Wenn so viele Menschen jetzt schon ein Problem haben, kann ich nur schwarz sehen für alle Transgender ppl.
Was meinst du?
Fun Fact: about a hundred years ago Chinese only used gender neutral pronouns. They used to only have one word to refer to someone in the third person, it was 他 (other than 它, which more or less means "it"). But later as China and English speaking countries started to communicate more, for some reason they felt the need for gendered pronouns for translations. So they added the character 她 to mean "she" and 他 was now "he". But for pronouns referring to a group of mixed genders they still used the original 他 character as a root.
And one more bonus fact: 他 uses to root character 人, which means human, and 她 uses the root character 女 which means woman. The person who first started to use 她 was originally criticized for the choice as it took human out of the word "she".
Bonus bonus fact: non-binary Chinese speakers now most often use X也 or TA as their pronouns. The frist pronoun follows the solution often used when there isn't a gender less word in your language. And the second is the pinyin (frenetic pronunciation) of all 他，她，and 它. They are all pronounced exactly the same.
So ya.... that was fun. I don't think anyone will read this though. Have a good day.
I am China pronouns 100 years ago
The worst thing about adding 女 to 也 is that multiple words with negative meaning also use the 女 word in combination, words like 奸 and 奴.
@@cyncynshop Yes, China has historically not been the best when it comes to women's rights.
At lease chinese used it
As Chinese myself, I'd rather people call me a chink than calling x this x that. It's utterly bullshit and confusing.
Love the format of your videos. The cite in the corner is a nice touch.
In school i used they in a sentence years ago and it was crossed out and corrected with he/she and i assumed it was wrong as singular until this video thank u, i will now use they as singular, for example “a person should enjoy their time” i hope that teacher has seen this video but probably not
i vividly recall that my literature teacher deducted marks for using singular they;;; lmao only two years later, my linguistics teacher was actively using it in her classes. pretty safe to say which teacher i preferred
that's so dumb. Singular they has been used since Shakespeare and has always been grammatically correct. Your literature was just outright wrong
@@evilgoose6768 that was hyperbolic, humans do make mistake from time to time.
@@GimOA i feel like it was feelings over facts 😶 like the teacher was so biased with his political view that he pushed it onto his teaching and grading.
@@evilgoose6768 Literature is frequently grammatically incorrect. Some because it was written before English grammar was finalized, others because Artists have the freedom to use grammar as they see fit.
@@EvanOfTheDarkness That's not how any of that works lmao
I had an argument with my English teacher about this topic in Year 9, with him against the use of "they" as a singular pronoun. I wish I could have seen this video 5 years ago so I could have destroyed him
Nerd
Epically owning teachers in the free marketplace of ideas with FACTS and LOGIC 😎
Even without this video and sure you would have destroyed him. There is no logical way to hate singular they. It's been around longer than singular you!
I think the best way to comeback at these sorts of argument is this. Language is spoken, used and defined by its native speakers. No matter how important or proper you claim to be, whatever authority you are part of, English will always be defined and spoken by its natives. The way the people wish the language to be is the way it is.
@@isabellach Do you know of a case where someone with a (known) name was refered to as "they"?
"Go talk to Shakespeare. They will help you." Something like that from the past?
Two of my favorite subjects combined in one video! Never thought I'd see the day~
i find it so amusing how people can get so easily irritated by a single word
It's because it makes no sense, I'm not saying that they was never used singularly but that's usually when you don't know who the person is.The new non binary "they" seems new I never heard of it until a few years ago, I wonder if anyone before the 2010s identified as non binary.
@@Jcon4002they probably did, but the increasing prevalence of the internet has allowed people to have a voice in a world where they were previously rendered silent
@@Jcon4002there is evidence on non binary people in ancient byzantine, in native nations in North and South America, and so many more places.
We have the records and writings of Magnus herchfeld in the 1900s where he talks about peopl "who are not and do not want to be clearly male or female"
Just because you were not taught about something dosent mean it never existed and assuming it does only limits how much you will learn.
@@puppyqueen5688 get 'em
Itchiness
Finally someone gets that 'they' can be singular
why "finally"? wasn't the entire point of the video that singular they has been around for a long time now and are more accepted than any alternative by the majority of people?
Most people get that.
@@nibbletrinnal2289 I know but lots of people still don't recognise that they isn't always plural
@@hutshelll they intentionally go out of their way to pretend they don't get it just to delegitimise nonbinary people
only to accommodate people who are mentally ill or women who are desperate for attention for progressive acceptance points
as a Tagalog speaker, singular "they" makes so much sense because it's like our gender neutral 3rd person singular "siya/niya/kaniya". a lot of native words, except for some Spanish and English loanwoards, are gender neutral in Tagalog, and the only way you can reveal the gender is by literally adding male/female: e.g. "anak" = child/offspring, "anak na babae" = (literally "child/offspring" that is female") daughter.
@@eradict ???
I want to learn tagalog so bad but there's barely resources online and I cant move there rn as of now 😭😭
@@eradict Austronesian languages are literally ungendered like most languages in the world 😭 what the hell are you taking about
My mom is Bisaya and she calls me and my sister “nak” (it might ‘nak but idk what the full word is). Austronesian languages are ungendered at heart!
i'm adding this to my list of reasons to learn tagalog, thanks
This is the best summary of this topic that I've seen. I'm going to send it to the next family member or friend when they are having trouble wrapping their head around the singular "They".
I've never bought a Thanks on UA-cam before, so that should tell you how much I appreciate it. Have a coffee on me, my friend!
Really liked that ending sequence
Also amazing video, the language roots were very interesting
Also wow man, is your music avaliable anywhere?
I love speaking a language without gendered pronouns
wish i could relate
As a malay speaker "dia" is an inclusive pronouns for everyone else here
I’m an Indonesian learner and I’ve never felt so much relief to see that things aren’t gendered like in my mother tongue (Spanish)
When talking,we use the same pronouns“ta” in Mandarin
While writing,we used to use the same 他 in Chinese.For some reason,we added a new word 她,which is a female pronouns
it always bothers me cuz 他 doesnt have gendered definition,then why added a new for female?
i am an italian mandarin student and i too find quite silly the fact that 她 and 他 are pronounced the same way but written differently. like!!! i don’t like that it’s non specific just as long as it’s spoken. my classmate did tell me that a gender non specific 3rd person pronoun currently exists but I forgot the character and I can’t remember if it was legit or not.
Not knowing this channel, I nearly passed on this video--the last one I saw discussing "they" was just some idiot crying about it, not realizing at all how long it's been part of the English language.
This is one of the best explanations about any word I've ever seen. I was cheated of most of the education I was legally required to have, so I was never taught more than the most basic of grammar. Fortunately, I function well as an autodidact. Along the way, I've learned of a number of the stunts grammarians and classicists of the past couple of hundred years have pulled, including hating "they" for no good reason, and trying to get rid of it. If this channel covers this sort of topic, I'll have to sub.
i'm glad you enjoyed :) i try my best
me aswell, was pleasantly surprised.
IKR? Like how English teachers tried like hell to stamp out the word "ain't" as "improper English" back when I was a schoolkid growing up
...when a shocking number of commonly-used words in English-speaking countries are absolutely *not* English words!
- rendezvous (French)
- armada (Spanish)
- shampoo (Hindi)
- kangaroo (Australian Aboriginal)
As anyone who's studied linguistics knows, any living language is a live, moving target -- dictionaries & teachers don't define a language, the people who use & adapt that language R the real ones who ultimately decide that.
Fun fact: other than Esperanto, Hangool (the official language of Korea) is the only exception I can think of -- an invention of a Korean king who singlehandedly developed both a new spoken language & a unique written alphabet in order to solve the mishmash of competing, incompatible Chinese dialects that were causing endless confusion & frustration for himself & his subjects. Unlike Esperanto, Hangool had the power of both royal decree & an official army to back up its adoption & dictate its correct usage....
@@zenkim6709
"...when a shocking number of commonly-used words in English-speaking countries are absolutely not English words!"
Always remember: English doesn't borrow words from other languages. It chases them down into dark alleyways and mugs them.
As a formally educated man, you just taught me a new word, "autodidact".
You really should be proud of yourself
it stings to see that many dislikes on this video (3,6K). really shows you who's feelings don't align with "facts and logic"
For posterity, most who hit "dislike" do so to signal to the algorithm they prefer topics other than grammar/English/gender/K.Klein/Whatever. Some are bots, and some hit it on accident. The average video gets around 5% dislikes to likes, which is what we are seeing here. Finally, complaining about dislikes on a youtube video is so 2012. Tighten up
@@Sockem1223 "Tighten up" ❔Tighten up what? Their iris sphincter?
”Also Me” did a great job with editing!
Indonesian Pronouns
✓ Epicine Third-Person Singular Animate (dia)
✓ Second-Person Singular (kamu) ≠ Second-Person Plural (kalian)
✓ Inclusive First-Person Plural (kita) ≠ Exclusive First-Person Plural (kami)
mal-indo unironically the best language on earth, grammatically speaking
Noone asked
Works in Filipino too
Inclusive "we" = Tayo/Natin
Exclusive "we" = Kami/Namin
Second person singular = Ikaw/Mo
Second person plural = Kayo/Ninyo
Third person singular (EPICENE ONLY) = Siya/Niya
Third person plural (Again, EPICENE ONLY) = Sila/Nila
@@VEVOJavier You can’t just go to a comment section on a video about linguistics and then complain when people are talking about linguistics.
@@violenttoddler7168 They are just upset because nobody asked *them*
a few years ago i had an english teacher lecture us about how singular they was ungrammatical and that we should use "he or she" in essays. right after reading works by shakespeare which use singular they . . .
Well seems he or she wasn't paying attention to shakespeare and I wonder if he or she has ever tried writing only using that.
I'll just drop some facts now.
William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April1564 - 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He or she is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He or she is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays,[e] 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His or her plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He or she remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his or her works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
That's hilarious, I wonder how your teacher missed the irony so hard. I don't understand why schools allow teachers to spread their biased opinions to students, knowledge should be objective, and "they" is objectively correct grammar-wise. No amount of arguing will change that.
Did someone point their irony out?
As a Dutch person, I'm envious of they.
We always have to go with "he/she" or "his/her" so something like that. That's what we do when we don't know someone's gender. So you get;
"Run after that person! He/She left his/her bag on the counter!" instead of the much simpler "Run after that person! They left their bag on the counter!"
Diens, whomst, is getting re-invented and also Die which would result in a sentence like
""Run after that person! Who left whomst bag on the counter!""
diens has caught on a bit, die hasn't yet, probably because it also means 'that' in Dutch.
Tricky stuff, that's why I'm so jealous of English singular they. ;)
I feel its interesting that generic he is now relegated to old or idiomatic talk. Like "he who plunders, inevitably blunders"
Yeah, also stuff like "the wise man"
In elementary school I distinctly remember being taught that the English standard pronouns were: I, you, we, y’all, she, he, they, and it. With I, you, we, y’all, she, he, and they all being used to refer to people, and it being an object. We and y’all were plurals. I, you, she, and he were singulars. And they was the special pronoun that acted as both singular or plural depending on the context. I don’t see what’s so hard to get about it.
Wow, did you get taught y'all for formal use or just in general? I think that y'all is really only in the US. Unless people adopt it.
@@beeankha Y'all is not only in the US. Other languages have something similar - Spanish, to name one.
@@jacksoncastro136 I'm talking about English not other languages
Why was your elementary school teaching "y'all"? That's not actually a recognized word, let alone a pronoun.
@@Nakia11798 Ya'll was used as an example to teach children of abbreviations such as we'll, they'll and you'll. It was also a great example to teach students of slang words in english.
As a german i truly envy your true neutral they! We really have to try hard constructing new inclusive forms violating tons of grammatical rules, so use your privilege!
Same with Italian, but we don't even have neutral adjectives. It's a mess.
Same problem in Portuguese :(
@@connaeris8230 For romance languages, I've seen "elle" in Spanish before (though it's obviously way more obscure then the English equivalent). This idea doesn't loan into Italian easily, sadly... maybe "lai"? For portuguese you could maybe do "elo"
Man i hate your laungage soo mutch, it's so anyoing to have to work trough a senfece like a toddler trying to complete a puzzle
man can't we just be our unique selves wherever on the masculine/androgynous/feminine/neuter spectrum we want to be, without feeling threatened by gender in natural language
Yeah it's very grammatically bewildering to me.
When you brought up "thon" I immediately thought "that makes complete sense!"
Interesting video! I liked the comparisons with other languages!
Im a writer and have sexless/genderless aliens in one of my works as central characters. Singular 'they' was the only option for them. I was worried this might be considered ungramatical by the reader and it didnt feel quite right when I started using it, but Im now so used to it it feels completely natural. My only gripe is that it can definitely be confused with the plural form. In my example, I have muliple characters who take this pronoun and they travel in a group, as such, in some instances I have to use descriptors instead of pronouns to avoid confusion. The singular they isnt as flexible as other pronouns in this regard. I think we're very lucky to have a word available to use in English even if not perfect though, but it would be nice if in the future a distinction between singular and plural could evolve for ease of use.
When writing nonbinary characters I just clarify the person or group I'm talking about every time it switches, it is quite similar to to just using more than one character of a masculine or feminine gender for example you could say something like "All the aliens cimbed into the disk shaped ship and took off, the loud rumbling leading all on board to wonder if they were being followed. Back on [insert planet name here] [character name] sat alone in the sand, they had been assigned the role of staying back to watch the children, and making sure that the children wouldn't kill one another. [character name] smiled at the children, their eyes filled with sand the ship had blown in their face."
i personally use “it” due to aliens not being humans or born in earth at all.
it nudges them being “different”, and will be contrasted via emotions in your writing.
@@stego- It is pretty depersonifying though, and may not be what the author is going for.
@@emarceeqem4715 its an alien. they aren’t human. and you should show that.
despite “It” being degrading, it also causes uncertainty too. it isn’t an insult.
you could always do “She” if its a prized possession or “He” if its a disgusting/disturbing thing. So its not really just “It” and “They”
@@stego- I'm not saying "it" for a supposed race of sexless aliens is always an invalid choice. I'm saying it might not be what the author is going for. That was a key part of what I wrote.
Edit: idk why folks decided to started arguing under my comment so I'm just gonna leave this here now: go outside and breathe. Life is short.
nice pfp
Many moons ago when I was in college the official style guides(MLA? APA) required the awkward "he or she". I went with rearranging my sentences to use "one" or "a person" instead. Malicious compliance and extra words for the word count.
@@liznohandle I have actually done that as well, that's what I did before I started just using "they" lol
It baffles me why schools care so much, because they say it's "confusing" even when they actually perfectly understand what you're trying to say. They try to make the excuse about "WELL what if there are two or more people and you're only talking about one of them?? How am i supposed to know who you're talking about???" In reality, when you're talking about a single person in a group of people, you'd specify by using their names anyway, or something along the lines of "one person" and "the other person".
You'd rarely ever see a sentence like "a student and a teacher were talking, and they asked a question." Instead, it would be "a student and a teacher were talking, and *the student* asked a question."
People who hate the use of singular they are literally just knit picking for the most isolated examples and using them to base their entire hatred off of.
@@jeremyroland5602 🤓
I so badly want to see the timeline where everyone has thon/thonself in thons bio
What a delight to watch this video! Thank you for it.
In German, if a subject is unknown, the use of the male 3rd person singular has persisted. "Jeder hat seine eigenen Träume!" (Everybody has HIS own dreams.) Also interestingly, the possesive pronouns for "her" and "their" in German are the same - "ihre". I have actually no idea, whether the plural comes from the singular, or if these 2 words have their own origin.
Honestly, as a German, the entire German grammatical gender system belongs thrown out of the window
More than that, "jeder" is male as well, with the female analog being "jede". One could use "alle" as an unspecific alternative. Curiously, this necessitates the use of the female (or plural?) version in the above sentence: "Alle haben ihre eigenen Träume!" Just as "all" instead of "everybody" would demand the use of "their" instead of "his" (thus, it's probably plural, not female).
we have "ens" now
Which is certainly not used by a lot of people, especially when not online, and was created by a singular person. Even people i know who do make an elaborate effort to gender and such don't use it.
Honestly I personally often quite intuitively use die and deren to refer to people of unknown gender , (though perhaps that is due to the influence english has had on me) but I have never seen anyone use Ens, except in a short clip i one saw where the person who invented it talked about it.
But just saying "we have ens now." Cmon, that's just not the case for almost all german people, even those who do make an effort to use gender inclusive language.
@@nilkonom We have what? Please elaborate.
I feel like people don’t know that they can be used to describe a person that is hooded, hiding their gender/face. “They leaped over, face cloaked as they slashed through the table.” Singular they has existed before lol, regardless of your thoughts on the new pronoun stuff.
yes.. because that person's gender is not known. The only difference with the modern issue is people "know" someone wants to be called they/then but also see clear signs of a certain gender, and chose to base the terms used of their visual observation of gender.
@@CrypticCobra in practice, 'they' is less ambiguous when referring to an unknown individual than for a known individual because that unknown individual has typically just been referred to, and there are established conventions for clarifying distinctions between an unknown individual and a group that aren't necessary when using 'he' or 'she' to refer to known individuals, for instance.
But, 'thon' would be better even for that historical usage imo.
I would just use it.
@@theredknight9314 yeah, just saying that singular they isn’t just nonbinary
@@thataintfalco7106 no no, what I meant is I would just use the pronoun “it”
Time to sort comments by new!!
Lol. I guess I can say I’m not surprised by it
I'm subscribing straight away. Promotion of the singular 'they,' an infinitely listenable accent and grammar debates will always win me over, even if it's the first video I've seen from this channel.
People like to pretend that grammar rules are set in stone and not constantly evolving but language is fluid and ever changing. 15 years ago no one knew how to convey sarcasm thought text and then a SpongeBob meme went along and standardized the use of alternating lower and uppercase letters to convey sarcasm.
I agree. How long did it take people to learn Polari when it was first used on BBC Radio? Not long at all.
Especially when people were starting to be fired or cancelled for not speaking it.
And how come I never noticed that?
You know, I never noticed that the capitalization was alternating, always thought it was randomized.
Exactly it’s kinda like how Texans created the word “y’all”
Honestly, I did not know that is a thing (alternative lower & uppercase letters to convey sarcasm, nor that it came from a SpongeBob meme)
Thank you. I’ve been trying to explain singular they to my dad but he likes cold hard facts, like dates and historical usage. I had no idea how to go about finding that info
Googling it is a good start
In Sweden we have the equivalent gender-neutral pronoun "hen", which was popularised in 2012 and was like a gender-neutral equivalent for "han" ("he") and "hon" ("she").
That word is probably just as controversial as the "singular they", but it is accepted enough to frequently be used in newspapers and articles on the Internet.
I would guess that "hen" is inspired by the Finnish word "hän" --- [hæn] --- which means both "he" and "she";
however, Swedish and Finnish aren't the least bit related to each other, and they are completely different from each other, so there isn't any actual linguistic relation there.
I'm glad i heard this. I was learning swedish and i only knew han and hon.
Honestly it could just be "Hey, Finnish has this cool word that we could make use of, so we should!"
Somehow that feels like an oddly Nordic way of introducing something new
hen 🐔
@@DaydreamingSwede there's a ton of swedish words like, some of which are really basic, like "pojke"
Thank you (hah) for pointing out that 'you' is both singular and plural depending on context and is thus completely in the same zone as 'they'.
Fun fact!
In Hungarian, we only have ő, which is gender neutral. We either use that or refere to the person with their name (there are no gender neutral names though).
Then again, pronouns can be left out completely in the language, as you can make normal sentences without using them (so for example you could say "I am eating" without including "I". You´d only include it when it´s the focus point of the sentence.)
Can't believe Hungarians are non-binary, Orban is such an enby icon 😍
@@_blank-_ I think you misinterpreted couple parts of the comment haha
So you have verb conjugation in your language?
@@jonathanlange1339 yup
@@jonathanlange1339 yeah, for the most part we dont even use personal pronouns all that often, because inflections do the job
love this channel so happy my algorithm found you, and as a they/themer I appreciated the switcheroo at the beginning (PS shocked my spell check didn't correct switcheroo was not expecting that to be grammatically correct)
I'm unfamiliar with your work but I was so pleased to hear an English accent talk about this stuff that's not just the worst, most hateful person.
Great video, too!!
As a german a heartfelt thank you for explaining that to me, i was always a bit confused by it, probably because we dont have the epicene.
Und wie gut es wäre, eins zu haben...
Neo pronouns? I know they are not really used but....
@@ynx999 Es würde nichts bringen. Das generische Maskulinum reicht meinetwegen völlig aus.
@@naytte9286 Das generische Maskulinum ist toll, wenn man größere Gruppen anspricht (auf jeden Fall besser als der Gendersternabfall.) Ist für einzelne Personen aber leider nicht so angenehm.
Hätte schon noch gerne geschlechtsneutrale Singularpronomen im Deutschen, für wenn man über Nichtbinäre Personen spricht. Am Besten aber welche, die man auch aussprechen kann, und kein seltsammes Neu-Pronomen Zeug. Mir wäre es am Liebsten, wenn wir einfach They/Them als Die/Denen dem Englischen entlehnen, und die Einzahl dann reinkontextualisieren. Fühlt sich so finde ich am Natürlichsten an und braucht keine Sonderzeichen oder neue Wörter.
@@Zula_The_Squid ich glaube, das ist die Krux des Ganzen. Meiner Weltauffassung nach ist man entweder Mann oder Frau, nichts anderes.
As someone who grew up speaking afrikaans, the debate around singular they is almost exactly the same, in afrikaans people use they in a singular context even though it's grammatically incorrect. But when you point out that they've used "they" to refer to one person, their brain shorts out and they start yelling at you. Even afrikaans professors will use it without realising.
It would be easier if people just accept that "they" can work like "singular when unknown gender", Nobody discusses if using "sie" in German as second person is incorrect, so using "they" as singular makes no sense in being discussed about if it's only and always singular (much less considering people has been using it like that since centuries)
Thank you! I was taught singular they wayyy back in elementary school decades ago.
My only words of support are “why the hell doesn’t this video have millions of views already?“ 😮
What a refreshing video. Thank you. Being pretty deeply and openly Queer and GNC, I've kinda gotten used to being burned by my hobbies, this was not only really interesting, but a breath of fresh air
nice pfp
@@RichConnerGMN thank you much, you too!
thank you! that's so nice to hear, I've been getting so many comments from people complaining about how I've left logic and facts behind and fallen to the gay agenda, but it's nice to see fellow queer people actually appreciate it
@@kklein As an amateur linguist and especially as a queer, I love this video! Still smiling from when I first watched this morning
@@RichConnerGMN Agreed.
As an english learner, this was very useful. I implemented "they" in my conversations and it feels as natural as the other pronouns.
Bicibandido
i saw this video when it popped up in my feed 4 months ago, but put off watching it because i was scared one of my favourite channels would invalidate me. just, thank you. thank you.
Such a lovely video. ❤