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
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'"
@@mx_ae 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.
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.
@STM 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! :)
@STM The important distinction is a space/pause between girl and friend. A girlfriend is someone you are in a relationship with, a girl friend is a friend who is also a girl. English doesn't have good gendered words to denote friends of the opposite gender sadly.
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_
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"
@@mooniuslinkius 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.
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.
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.)
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.
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
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
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!😅🤣
@@Robespierre-lI 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)!
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.
@@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.
"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
Damn. I was going through comments to figure out if this all is queerphobic, after your comment I went to new comments and damn... Alright, at least seeing that amount of phobia among new comments and a lot of people explaining why they are wrong, at least I know that majority of people aren't phobic here (I'm a trans person myself, and non-native English speaker, it's very difficult to determine if someone's is queerphobic unless they say some radical shit)
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.
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.
@@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
@@snoopyunho 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
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.
@@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.)
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.
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
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.
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!
@@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.
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
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 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
Well, as far as I know, they have one pronoun for he, she, and it. They still have other pronouns like I, you, we, and they. There’s actually a formal and informal way to say you. The formal way is also used if you’re addressing multiple people. It’s such a cool language!
Toki Pona has First person (any gender, any amount, any form) Second person (any gender, any amount, any form) Third person (any gender, any amount, any form) And it all works very intuitively.
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
@@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.
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.
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?
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.
@@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.
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.
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
@@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
@@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
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 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.
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".
Look at those kids tilted by simple biological truth of homo sapiens. If you are reading it, you either a male or female. You either have penis or vagina. You know perfect well your sex (and gender, because if you are not a language but a human being the only thing that is real is your sex); and you also know that no amount of wordlay would change it.
@@AA-cf4es how many 7 year-old sjw-recked compilations do you watch every day? Seriously though, people know that medical intervention in today's time isn't the most perfect thing and people know about the side effects, but there have been studies (im neutral) that demonstrate the overall good that medical intervention does, and the amount of good a little familial and local social acceptance will do for that person. However i doubt that this is your aim at all, to help people, and i doubt that you'll even read this far.
"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.
@@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
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
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?
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?
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
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🤣
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
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
@@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.
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
What a beautiful way to lead into your argument, using singular they/them in a sentence in a way people wouldn't even bat an eye about, to prove your point. Just a great video all around.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
@@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.
i remember when i was in highschool i was describing another person to a teacher or whoever the hell it was and they kept cutting me off asking "Why do you keep saying they? was there more than one person?" despite the fact that in heavy detail it was exaclty 1 person and i didnt have this knowledge so i could never say "No, im describing a singular individual by using the fourth third person context of epicene, describing a singular individual", Yes "They" can be used to describe a group, counter argument use the context i have given you to realise i am talking about a singular person which this video proves in grammatically correct so never insult me again for repeatedly saying "they" despite you continuously asking me what i mean when i have already descibed what i meant muiltiple times
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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 just had to come here and say THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CREATING THIS VIDEO. You put it so beautifully and as a non-binary person who has to explain this to people all the time, I can't believe it took me so long to find this video. I will definitely send this to the next person who doesn't understand.
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!
@@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 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
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)
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.
I'm a native speaker of a pro drop pronouns language, which means you can sometimes sidestep the whole thing by ommitting the pronouns. I've found that I intuitively translate these sentences to English in my head using 'it' before realising it might sound offensive. It's weird because Catalan works like French regarding pronouns, so I would expect to naturally favour 'he' in these sentences.
Same, which is why I'm looking for a third language that is pro-drop and phonetic. This is simply the best combination. So far the best match I've found is Italian. Wikipedia says that in Italian you can drop all pronouns, not only in some situations, unlike my native language.
highly wish singular they was taught more in education, for natives AND ESL students! it's been established de facto for literal centuries, but only held back by the arguements mentioned in your video :(
"Joe went to the movies. They enjoyed it" If someone told me that I would have to ask questions whether they are referring to a non-binary person or it was just a grammar mistake. Also, me personally, I think communication should be easy to get your point across with little confusion
@vazn3586 that does sound like a you issue to be honest. i wouldnt say most people struggle with that, especially if in context, if that's what you're meaning. language is constantly vague and that is why communication involves clarifying language and intent 😊 language does not change just because you think it's easier, it just is, and it is and will always be subjective and typically vague without context and that is not a grammar mistake. if you watched the video you would know that singular they for a non-specific referent has been in use for centuries, and I don't think it's that uncommon in this day and age to have someone refer to someone else as either he/they or she/they, even if their pronouns are strictly she/her/hers or he/him/his there are plenty for articles including on Wikipedia if this is a topic that you struggle to understand or would like to do further reading
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.
in my senior year of high school, my english teacher tried to teach us to use ‘he or she’ instead of just ‘they’. and if we’d use they as a singular pronoun, she would argue with us over the matter. i always hated how clunky that sounded, and how she never even thought to realise how long the singular use of ‘they’ has been around.
English teachers can't realize that their "correct English" is a weird, formal register, and they certainly can't realize whose version of English got to be the one taught in schools, and why. It would invalidate their whole careers.
you also have the use of "thon" pre-dating Converse's recommendation because of a dialectal version contracting "that yon" present in parts of ireland, scotland, and england. interestingly, thon in this capacity--meaning "that one or those over there"--can also be both singular and plural
I love the brief mention of neopronouns at the end, they're often overlooked in other similar videos I've seen online, and it's nice to see them get recognition that isn't constant slander.
Given that the most known-about neopronouns are unfortunately xe/xem (which suffer from the very minor problem of nobody knowing how to pronounce them) I can kind of understand the slander. Thon, while sounding a bit old and posh, seems like a much more natural option for the language.
@@harryg9976 fair point! i feel like it’s easier to look at neos like second names with different grammatical structures- at least that’s the way i view them. when i started using them it took me awhile to adjust to them myself lol
@@harryg9976 That brings me to another question. What is the best pronunciation for xe/xem? And speaking of neos... 1. A Pokemon fangame called Pokemon Reborn has a non-binary character who happens to use xe/xem, Adrienn, the fairy-type gym leader! 2. Another type of neopronoun that is on the mainstream, and whom I am also skeptical of are nounself neos (like cloud/cloudself). In my opinion, they're better off as nicknames, but the main point about this is that they are the true main contributor to neopronoun slander. 3. There is a debate whether "thon" is a neopronoun or the equivalent to they in Old English. Which one is true?
@@mostm8589 “english is too beautiful to pollute with this garbage” mate, english is a frankenstiens monster made out of the corpses of every other language and is nearly incomprehensible if it isn’t your first. it’s about as beautiful as a rats ass. although i would be interested in why you think neo pronouns are dumb
That's extremely interesting because I didn't learned that in school. For me, they was always the pronoun for 3rd person plural, not singular. That's why I have trouble to get gender neutral writing and speech right because its just not in my head. It would be so much easier if everyone just used it also for non native speakers especially teachers.
Yeah, I had the same thing... I never got taught that "they" could be used singularly. Which is actually pretty weird concidering how common they is used as a singular pronoun.
Yeah as a non-native speaker just last year i saw a teacher say that for inclusivity people should use he or she, but she also said that next year they would be taught singular they. They didn't teach it before because it's "complicated". So they just taught the students the more useless he or she instead. At least they teach it though, just a bit late.
my english teacher has taken to putting he/she/they and his/hers/theirs on assignments which is just, strange to me. because on one hand its including people like me but also it feels even more clunky when one 'they' does the same job
I remember trying to write something in middle school and I was very upset because I couldn't think of a gender neutral singlular pronoun, and I was very upset because I really wanted to use it to keep a character dark and mysterious. I'm so mad that nobody told me about singular they until I was an adult.
English is my second language and when I first took note of the "they" debate it was very strange to me that people were complaining about it, it never sounded wrong grammatically and since my learning was VERY informal, I had already been using it that way from the start because I would hear people using it that way, any time you don't know or don't need to specify gender, "they/them" was there
I was expecting the worst but you nailed it. I was taught the singular they at school in the eighties and specifically remember the teacher's disclaimer "in these modern times" before that lesson. I also remember my mum saying that it is incorrect. On a side note, I am learning Spanish and (I feel silly but it's true) when I watch videos in Spanish and they are using the plural 'you' conjugation, it feels really impersonal (haha that's the point I suppose). To clarify, in my sad little life, when watching a video in English, it feels like they are talking to me, not me and lots of others.
Such a great video! I'm Finnish and in our language we only have one, genderless pronoun in singular third person (instead of he and she), which is "hän". Also, in spoken language we usually refer to people as "se", which means it. Also we don't have masculine or feminine words and we don't use articles. So I'm glad we don't have to worry about genders in our language :) But I mean, Finnish has it's own difficulties too. I don't know if anyone will read this, but I find it interesting and I thought I might share!
The hän pronoun has found its way into Swedish and Norwegian as well in recent years, although at least in Norway there is a lot of push-back against it.
An an English major, you should know that It's wrong though. If "they" can be singular then we should use auxiliary "is" with it. Like: They is a lawyer. But we don't.
having just one gender independent third person singular pronoun is a really cool thing in my opinion because i am biased because my language has been doing this forever since it came into existence but im not too fond of it being the exact same word as the plural, especially when some people are getting so sick of "you (sg)" and "you (pl)" being the same that they invented "yall", so imo its cool but itd be cooler if they were separate words
@@electra_ Thall sounds like a word in a fictional language it's very cool... also may I pronounce the "Th" in "Thall" as a coarticulated voiced dental labio-dental fricative?
@@zapazap Originally? Whenever it referred to a single person. Thou and you had an analogous relation to French's tu and vous, where the plural (you or vous) would get used in singular contexts when being polite. In English (and supposedly in Spanish), this polite usage for so common that the original singular pronoun died out completely. Regarding Spanish, supposedly "vos" was originally their version of vous/you, and when their singular "tú" died out, "vosotros" was used to distinguish the plural, which basically was just y'all, it more precisely "you others."
I'd argue that as long as your audience can consistently and easily understand what you mean, you don't need to worry about using grammatically correct language. After all, grammar is really only necessary to ensure that people understand each other.
As a non-binary person, this video slays. Thanks for using your platform to promote awareness! Definitely going to send this to people so I don’t have to go through the emotional labor of explaining myself to everyone who hasn’t taken the time to learn about non-binary identities
@@ventreal4292 true, but it's also not neccessary to put down other people just because they don't conform to our expectations of gender. You never insult someone for who they are, that leads nowhere
@@ventreal4292 Well luckily, with your help we can get schools to teach students about the non-binary so no one has to research it on their own. It can be a rather gruelling procces to try and navigate through what is informational and what is bigotry, I'm glad you understand and are so kind to try and improove the situation! We love our allies! 💗💞💖❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
That is a good point about all of the various homophones and imprecision found in other languages in addition to English. It’s pretty easy to forget when looking at only your native language that human languages aren’t completely unambiguous. It can feel like the language you’re used to speaking has a lot less imprecision than you think it does simply since you’re used to using it
As an enby Myself I feel required to thank you for providing an excellent resource to provide family that are having difficulties understanding they as a singular. You have made my life noticeably easier.
what really frustrates me is that the people who insist “they” is incorrect and who refuse to use it are the same people who, before engaging in the political war that is trans rights, had no problem using it and were likely the same people who would vote that they preferred it over the generic he. but now that they know it’s used by non-binary people, they’re simply using “but it’s not grammatically correct!!!:(“ to mask their blatant transphobia. that’s all it boils down to; they’re just transphobic and would prefer to ignore the existence of non-binary and trans people alltogether, by pretending they’re “incorrect” and “you’re just making up new pronouns for yourselves!!” (as if the pronoun “they” hasn’t been around for hundreds of years)
However the problem is that when that person would like me to use the word 'they', that person is not in my disscusion, therefore, I can choose to call them whatever I would like, for example 'It' or an insulting nickname, therefore, I personally can ignore all arguments for the use of 'they' for singular persons.
Lemme clear things up here, though I know you're just gonna scream at me and call me, like, 500 buzzwords and SWAT my house while screaming "trans rights" in my face like we're not already working towards that. They is actually quite dehumanizing. Most uses of it are used to refer to a group of people, like say, a government agency or a political party. In calling someone "They", you're essentially addressing them like they're part of a hivemind. (Granted, they all scream at cis people for walking around just the same, but that's a debate I'm going to leave for another day.) Now, one exception is if you don't know the person's gender is. That would probably be an appropriate time to use "they", since their gender is ambiguous, thus, you don't know whether they're a male or female. I'd much rather just bite the bullet and refer to someone *only* as he or she, since at the end of the day, we're all still humans, not mindless drones in a hivemind. If I'm going to refer to a group of people, I will use "they". For referring to one person, I will _never_ use "they" out of what little respect I have left for humanity.
"what could be more grammatically incorrect than using a gendered pronoun for someone that doesn't match their gender?" As a nonbinary person, this is probably the greatest thing ive ever heard in my entire existence. Thank you.
I mean, if one was to write anything that needed to be legally enforced, then of course it would be strongly preferable not to cut corners and include everyone you want to enforce the law onto.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
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
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
It’s also fun to point out that singular they is older than singular you.
wha?
@@mx_ae 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
@@mx_ae 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.
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.
Well, you don't really think about people's gender. You just use this phrase automatically.
@STM Why does having friends who are girls make one 'poly' in any sense? Cheers! :)
@STM 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! :)
@STM The important distinction is a space/pause between girl and friend. A girlfriend is someone you are in a relationship with, a girl friend is a friend who is also a girl. English doesn't have good gendered words to denote friends of the opposite gender sadly.
@@Darth_Insidious you can say female freinds
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?
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
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?
@@mooniuslinkius 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.
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 NEED that
Shit/Shitself
A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
Thank you for this X3
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 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.
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
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.
@@Robespierre-lI 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)!
@@Robespierre-lI 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?
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.
@@jeremy5602 🤓
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.
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.)
"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
@@TenositSergeich you make a good point, added to my vocabulary and list of pronouns
@@TenositSergeich I now know how to corectly refere to sentient monolyths.
Thon is also the French for thuna.
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
Thank you for the great idea
@@efce You’ve made a terrible mistake. I’ve seen some of the trash you’ve decided to sift through.
Damn. I was going through comments to figure out if this all is queerphobic, after your comment I went to new comments and damn... Alright, at least seeing that amount of phobia among new comments and a lot of people explaining why they are wrong, at least I know that majority of people aren't phobic here (I'm a trans person myself, and non-native English speaker, it's very difficult to determine if someone's is queerphobic unless they say some radical shit)
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
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
@TMVGemini24 (Pee) you rude.
@@thatsawesomeithink and you proved a point
@@RealMrHater glad someone noticed 😁
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.
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
@@snoopyunho 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
@@miglek9613 never consciously thought of trying that but i think it'd work here too, thank you!
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
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!"
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 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 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!
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
@@jamtime_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.
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
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..
I remember that Turkish has literally 1 third person 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".
Well, as far as I know, they have one pronoun for he, she, and it. They still have other pronouns like I, you, we, and they. There’s actually a formal and informal way to say you. The formal way is also used if you’re addressing multiple people. It’s such a cool language!
As a Turkish person who lives in Türkiye, I can confirm everything above is true. "O" really is useful
@@heybak That’s really cool! I’m not Turkish but I also like that pronoun very much.
Toki Pona has
First person (any gender, any amount, any form)
Second person (any gender, any amount, any form)
Third person (any gender, any amount, any form)
And it all works very intuitively.
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
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?
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.
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
@@glo_bin Hackernouns
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
"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
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.
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??
“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 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
Look at those kids tilted by simple biological truth of homo sapiens.
If you are reading it, you either a male or female. You either have penis or vagina. You know perfect well your sex (and gender, because if you are not a language but a human being the only thing that is real is your sex); and you also know that no amount of wordlay would change it.
@@AA-cf4es how many 7 year-old sjw-recked compilations do you watch every day? Seriously though, people know that medical intervention in today's time isn't the most perfect thing and people know about the side effects, but there have been studies (im neutral) that demonstrate the overall good that medical intervention does, and the amount of good a little familial and local social acceptance will do for that person. However i doubt that this is your aim at all, to help people, and i doubt that you'll even read this far.
"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
Imma start using thon/thonself to annoy my dad and when he complains, ‘1858!’
This is literally 1858 by George Orwell
when thon complains
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
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?
@@MrHoggReads yeah
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
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.
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.
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
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?
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 💀
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
@@glo_bin why is It awful
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.
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.
@@violenttoddler They are just upset because nobody asked *them*
What a beautiful way to lead into your argument, using singular they/them in a sentence in a way people wouldn't even bat an eye about, to prove your point. Just a great video all around.
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.
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.
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.
i remember when i was in highschool i was describing another person to a teacher or whoever the hell it was and they kept cutting me off asking "Why do you keep saying they? was there more than one person?" despite the fact that in heavy detail it was exaclty 1 person and i didnt have this knowledge so i could never say "No, im describing a singular individual by using the fourth third person context of epicene, describing a singular individual", Yes "They" can be used to describe a group, counter argument use the context i have given you to realise i am talking about a singular person which this video proves in grammatically correct so never insult me again for repeatedly saying "they" despite you continuously asking me what i mean when i have already descibed what i meant muiltiple times
A HIGHSCHOOL TEACHER??? Good god they should know this ;-;
@@knockout8157 “‘They’? Was there more than one person?”
This is a joke if it wasn’t obvious
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
@@jeremy5602 🤓
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
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”
I just had to come here and say THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CREATING THIS VIDEO. You put it so beautifully and as a non-binary person who has to explain this to people all the time, I can't believe it took me so long to find this video. I will definitely send this to the next person who doesn't understand.
real !!
As an english learner, this was very useful. I implemented "they" in my conversations and it feels as natural as the other pronouns.
Bicibandido
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
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)
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?
I'm a native speaker of a pro drop pronouns language, which means you can sometimes sidestep the whole thing by ommitting the pronouns. I've found that I intuitively translate these sentences to English in my head using 'it' before realising it might sound offensive. It's weird because Catalan works like French regarding pronouns, so I would expect to naturally favour 'he' in these sentences.
Same, which is why I'm looking for a third language that is pro-drop and phonetic. This is simply the best combination. So far the best match I've found is Italian. Wikipedia says that in Italian you can drop all pronouns, not only in some situations, unlike my native language.
@@spicynoodle7419 Hungarian
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'.
highly wish singular they was taught more in education, for natives AND ESL students! it's been established de facto for literal centuries, but only held back by the arguements mentioned in your video :(
Education mentions the grammatically correct way sometimes, but not always
I prefer study my grammar instead.
@@GimOA What do you mean by that?
"Joe went to the movies. They enjoyed it" If someone told me that I would have to ask questions whether they are referring to a non-binary person or it was just a grammar mistake. Also, me personally, I think communication should be easy to get your point across with little confusion
@vazn3586 that does sound like a you issue to be honest. i wouldnt say most people struggle with that, especially if in context, if that's what you're meaning. language is constantly vague and that is why communication involves clarifying language and intent 😊
language does not change just because you think it's easier, it just is, and it is and will always be subjective and typically vague without context
and that is not a grammar mistake. if you watched the video you would know that singular they for a non-specific referent has been in use for centuries, and I don't think it's that uncommon in this day and age to have someone refer to someone else as either he/they or she/they, even if their pronouns are strictly she/her/hers or he/him/his
there are plenty for articles including on Wikipedia if this is a topic that you struggle to understand or would like to do further reading
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
in my senior year of high school, my english teacher tried to teach us to use ‘he or she’ instead of just ‘they’. and if we’d use they as a singular pronoun, she would argue with us over the matter. i always hated how clunky that sounded, and how she never even thought to realise how long the singular use of ‘they’ has been around.
Top ten things that NEVER happened. You use He or She if you know the gender. Simple as that
tell her to use thon instead..
No be he or she is just too wordy imo.
English teachers can't realize that their "correct English" is a weird, formal register, and they certainly can't realize whose version of English got to be the one taught in schools, and why. It would invalidate their whole careers.
‘Therefore I an unable to can’ but like more exclusionary
Awesome video + informed + based + inclusive + grammatically correct + great end + underrated channel + Liked + subscribed + simple +easy to understand
:D
overall w
Ancara messi ancara messi
you also have the use of "thon" pre-dating Converse's recommendation because of a dialectal version contracting "that yon" present in parts of ireland, scotland, and england. interestingly, thon in this capacity--meaning "that one or those over there"--can also be both singular and plural
Surely I'm not the only one who was taught about the use of a singular they in 2nd grade, right?
@the_roman_emperor_fisheaterNah the idiots need to know
@@darlindeli3340no they dont, the least they know the fastest natural selection can take them out
It's wrong though. If "they" can be singular then we should use auxiliary "is" with it. Like: They is a lawyer. But we don't.
@@IndianKat "it doesnt work the way i want it to therefore it isnt real!!" sound logic bud
@@IndianKat just because you are an English Major that doesn't mean you know everything there is to know about English lol
I love the brief mention of neopronouns at the end, they're often overlooked in other similar videos I've seen online, and it's nice to see them get recognition that isn't constant slander.
Given that the most known-about neopronouns are unfortunately xe/xem (which suffer from the very minor problem of nobody knowing how to pronounce them) I can kind of understand the slander. Thon, while sounding a bit old and posh, seems like a much more natural option for the language.
@@harryg9976 fair point! i feel like it’s easier to look at neos like second names with different grammatical structures- at least that’s the way i view them. when i started using them it took me awhile to adjust to them myself lol
@@harryg9976 That brings me to another question. What is the best pronunciation for xe/xem? And speaking of neos...
1. A Pokemon fangame called Pokemon Reborn has a non-binary character who happens to use xe/xem, Adrienn, the fairy-type gym leader!
2. Another type of neopronoun that is on the mainstream, and whom I am also skeptical of are nounself neos (like cloud/cloudself). In my opinion, they're better off as nicknames, but the main point about this is that they are the true main contributor to neopronoun slander.
3. There is a debate whether "thon" is a neopronoun or the equivalent to they in Old English. Which one is true?
Dumb things deserve slander. English is too beautiful to pollute with this garbage.
@@mostm8589 “english is too beautiful to pollute with this garbage” mate, english is a frankenstiens monster made out of the corpses of every other language and is nearly incomprehensible if it isn’t your first. it’s about as beautiful as a rats ass. although i would be interested in why you think neo pronouns are dumb
A very neat exploration of the topic, I didn't know the singular they had such a long history
nice pfp
@@RichConnerGMN no
That's extremely interesting because I didn't learned that in school. For me, they was always the pronoun for 3rd person plural, not singular. That's why I have trouble to get gender neutral writing and speech right because its just not in my head. It would be so much easier if everyone just used it also for non native speakers especially teachers.
Yeah, I had the same thing... I never got taught that "they" could be used singularly. Which is actually pretty weird concidering how common they is used as a singular pronoun.
Yeah as a non-native speaker just last year i saw a teacher say that for inclusivity people should use he or she, but she also said that next year they would be taught singular they. They didn't teach it before because it's "complicated". So they just taught the students the more useless he or she instead. At least they teach it though, just a bit late.
My teacher couldn’t even explain when to use “a” vs “an”: it’s not about spelling at all!
it is grammatically incorrect so thats why you werent taught it when referring to people
@@ventreal4292 What are you talking about lol
my english teacher has taken to putting he/she/they and his/hers/theirs on assignments which is just, strange to me. because on one hand its including people like me but also it feels even more clunky when one 'they' does the same job
Yeah that sounds more like paperwork than an assignment
Same, it’s so weird
@@elius1548 nice pfp
@@RichConnerGMN Tysm!
saying more just to end up excluding nonbinary people
I remember trying to write something in middle school and I was very upset because I couldn't think of a gender neutral singlular pronoun, and I was very upset because I really wanted to use it to keep a character dark and mysterious. I'm so mad that nobody told me about singular they until I was an adult.
English is my second language and when I first took note of the "they" debate it was very strange to me that people were complaining about it, it never sounded wrong grammatically and since my learning was VERY informal, I had already been using it that way from the start because I would hear people using it that way, any time you don't know or don't need to specify gender, "they/them" was there
Why are there so many people saying that they dont use pronouns or that pronouns are unnecessary 😭 "i dont like pronouns"
*i* is a pronoun!
The pinned comment is a joke btw if ur talking abt that. But yh the amount of ppl arguing that "we don't need pronouns" is so annoying bru
Ain't nobody gonna stop using "you"
I assume they mean the LGBTQ+ meaning of pronouns, the ones we use as gender defining words and whatnot.
I was expecting the worst but you nailed it. I was taught the singular they at school in the eighties and specifically remember the teacher's disclaimer "in these modern times" before that lesson. I also remember my mum saying that it is incorrect.
On a side note, I am learning Spanish and (I feel silly but it's true) when I watch videos in Spanish and they are using the plural 'you' conjugation, it feels really impersonal (haha that's the point I suppose). To clarify, in my sad little life, when watching a video in English, it feels like they are talking to me, not me and lots of others.
I wrote an essay in high school that is basically this video. Fantastic job
Such a great video! I'm Finnish and in our language we only have one, genderless pronoun in singular third person (instead of he and she), which is "hän". Also, in spoken language we usually refer to people as "se", which means it. Also we don't have masculine or feminine words and we don't use articles. So I'm glad we don't have to worry about genders in our language :) But I mean, Finnish has it's own difficulties too. I don't know if anyone will read this, but I find it interesting and I thought I might share!
as a enby person this is why i love finish
Finnish is beautiful and I'm gonna use it for every instance when a person complains about having to use 'they' when they know another's sex
@@traijndeer same
The hän pronoun has found its way into Swedish and Norwegian as well in recent years, although at least in Norway there is a lot of push-back against it.
finnish is one of the most difficult languages i've ever tried to learn, but it's also one of my favorites
As an English major...
People have a problem with singular they? Today? As in this very century?
Conservatives who don't like non-binary people going by they/them forget about how it's a very normal thing, it mainly just stems from ignorance.
It's idiots who forgot how grammar works
I know, right? Epicene they is ancient and used all the time even today, but people somehow didn't realize it or something?
Mainly transphobic (idk if that is the right word) people
An an English major, you should know that It's wrong though. If "they" can be singular then we should use auxiliary "is" with it. Like: They is a lawyer. But we don't.
having just one gender independent third person singular pronoun is a really cool thing in my opinion because i am biased because my language has been doing this forever since it came into existence but im not too fond of it being the exact same word as the plural, especially when some people are getting so sick of "you (sg)" and "you (pl)" being the same that they invented "yall", so imo its cool but itd be cooler if they were separate words
simple answer: they and thall /j
Thall come back now y'hear?
@@electra_ Wait I kinda like th'all, I'mma go and implement it into my English vocabulary now.
@@electra_ Thall sounds like a word in a fictional language it's very cool... also may I pronounce the "Th" in "Thall" as a coarticulated voiced dental labio-dental fricative?
Many such cases - "you guys," "youse," "yins"...
As a western American, I differentiate between singular and plural you with y'all in informal settings. Big fan of y'all.
I instead propose to bring back thee/thou. They were only lost because people got too polite and stopped using the singular forms.
@@angeldude101 y'all is just so nice, tho!
@@angeldude101 When is "you" more polite than "thou"?
@@zapazap Originally? Whenever it referred to a single person. Thou and you had an analogous relation to French's tu and vous, where the plural (you or vous) would get used in singular contexts when being polite. In English (and supposedly in Spanish), this polite usage for so common that the original singular pronoun died out completely.
Regarding Spanish, supposedly "vos" was originally their version of vous/you, and when their singular "tú" died out, "vosotros" was used to distinguish the plural, which basically was just y'all, it more precisely "you others."
@@angeldude101 I defer to you sir. Cheers! :)
I'd argue that as long as your audience can consistently and easily understand what you mean, you don't need to worry about using grammatically correct language.
After all, grammar is really only necessary to ensure that people understand each other.
Yup. The rules of the English language are descriptive, not prescriptive!
And this wins award of most sane and based comment in the comment section!!!!!!
Grammar has other uses too, like synonym rolls.
grammar is a must, pronouns is not obligatory.
@@GimOA Grammar changes with the times, though. We aren’t still using Old English. Rules change. And these ones already have.
“I miss when neopronouns didn’t exist”
-some guy born 200 years after the creation of neopronouns
As a non-binary person, this video slays. Thanks for using your platform to promote awareness! Definitely going to send this to people so I don’t have to go through the emotional labor of explaining myself to everyone who hasn’t taken the time to learn about non-binary identities
its not a requirement for people to research non-binary whateverness on their own
@@ventreal4292 true, but it's also not neccessary to put down other people just because they don't conform to our expectations of gender. You never insult someone for who they are, that leads nowhere
@STM just dont even bother this person has been going to comment to comment to change ppls mind
My preferred pronouns are usually it/it/its/itself. I like to be charitable. Cheers! :)
@@ventreal4292 Well luckily, with your help we can get schools to teach students about the non-binary so no one has to research it on their own. It can be a rather gruelling procces to try and navigate through what is informational and what is bigotry, I'm glad you understand and are so kind to try and improove the situation! We love our allies! 💗💞💖❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
That is a good point about all of the various homophones and imprecision found in other languages in addition to English. It’s pretty easy to forget when looking at only your native language that human languages aren’t completely unambiguous. It can feel like the language you’re used to speaking has a lot less imprecision than you think it does simply since you’re used to using it
Love that ending line. I use they extensively, some older speakers have raised their eyebrows at it but it just feels natural to me
As an enby Myself I feel required to thank you for providing an excellent resource to provide family that are having difficulties understanding they as a singular. You have made my life noticeably easier.
i try, i know a lot of my own family certainly needed to see this so i'm glad it can help other enbies
@@kklein wait are you enby? me too!
what really frustrates me is that the people who insist “they” is incorrect and who refuse to use it are the same people who, before engaging in the political war that is trans rights, had no problem using it and were likely the same people who would vote that they preferred it over the generic he. but now that they know it’s used by non-binary people, they’re simply using “but it’s not grammatically correct!!!:(“ to mask their blatant transphobia. that’s all it boils down to; they’re just transphobic and would prefer to ignore the existence of non-binary and trans people alltogether, by pretending they’re “incorrect” and “you’re just making up new pronouns for yourselves!!” (as if the pronoun “they” hasn’t been around for hundreds of years)
However the problem is that when that person would like me to use the word 'they', that person is not in my disscusion, therefore, I can choose to call them whatever I would like, for example 'It' or an insulting nickname, therefore, I personally can ignore all arguments for the use of 'they' for singular persons.
Lemme clear things up here, though I know you're just gonna scream at me and call me, like, 500 buzzwords and SWAT my house while screaming "trans rights" in my face like we're not already working towards that.
They is actually quite dehumanizing. Most uses of it are used to refer to a group of people, like say, a government agency or a political party. In calling someone "They", you're essentially addressing them like they're part of a hivemind. (Granted, they all scream at cis people for walking around just the same, but that's a debate I'm going to leave for another day.)
Now, one exception is if you don't know the person's gender is. That would probably be an appropriate time to use "they", since their gender is ambiguous, thus, you don't know whether they're a male or female.
I'd much rather just bite the bullet and refer to someone *only* as he or she, since at the end of the day, we're all still humans, not mindless drones in a hivemind. If I'm going to refer to a group of people, I will use "they". For referring to one person, I will _never_ use "they" out of what little respect I have left for humanity.
i feel bad that you had to read these comments
Let's abolish pronouns and just refer to eachother in the third person
@@brrrrrr pronouns are third person…
People saying pronouns are confusing are gonna be shocked when they discover verbs
AHH YOU LIKE THE OWL HOUSE AND AMPHIBIA BE MY FRIEND I BEG YOU ALSO HAVE YOU WATCHED SHE RA???
and yes verbs are scawy
🥺
👉👈
@@ASS_ault pronouns are even less confusing .w.
Pero si los verbos del inglés tienen pocas variaciones y casi nunca se escriben de otra manera
@@echiko4932 using made up pronouns that are unnecessary is confusing
"what could be more grammatically incorrect than using a gendered pronoun for someone that doesn't match their gender?" As a nonbinary person, this is probably the greatest thing ive ever heard in my entire existence. Thank you.
Ok, that's not a gender.
@CharlieBruinsFilms Nonbinary is a gender for a lot of people.
@CharlieBruinsFilms Objectively incorrect
@@Dr_Mortis_SCP Ok, Mr. "I'm not gonna respond."
@ *Ms. “I’m not going to bother debunking you.” actually, but good try
Interesting to see the phrase "all genders" included in legal writing form the 19th century. Feels very progressive/accepting for the time
Or, well, you know "two" being the obvious part for ~everyone back then
@@mskiptr: Except that it's more than two so 'all genders' is the correct form to address 'everyone'.
That was their intent. At times in history, some people actually strive to be better than just what is required of them.
I mean, if one was to write anything that needed to be legally enforced, then of course it would be strongly preferable not to cut corners and include everyone you want to enforce the law onto.
“I don’t like the singular they because it disagrees with my political viewpoints about a certain group of people!”
Literally what far-left loonies are advocating...
@jimmoynahan9910 muh leftism
@@jimmoynahan9910 The "far-left loonies" love the singular they. Try reading the comment before you reply to it.
I like singular they but still don't think there's more than 2 genders...
@@alanaserm Because you want to segregate people? A political position?