Why do people waste so much time trying to find a PC gender neutral pronoun, when 2nd person singular would be so much more useful for the entire population?
Also: If no one gets insulted being called one plural pronoun (you), they shouldn't bitch about one more (they).
9 comments:
Hey Ry! I don't like to nitpick or anything but I think you might have done some mixing up of the pronouns.
Thou was the 2nd person singular informal pronoun whilst thee was the objective case of thou. You was the 2nd person formal pronoun whilst ye was the 2nd person plural pronoun.
But I agree that using 'they' instead of 'he' and 'she' shouldn't be a problem. I use it all the time and encourage my students to do like-wise.
I hope your day went well! :-)
Are you implying wikipedia lied to me?
plural or formal singular: ye http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou
...not like this'd be unbelievable or anything. I mean, it is wikipedia. What are the cases for 'ye', then?
Heem. That's strange that ye is listed as the nominative 2nd person plural and formal singular. I always thought of it as just the plural and that's how I use it.
It does say in the article however that the objective of ye - you - became the nominative 2nd person formal singular. Then in an interesting turn of events you became to be used as nominative 2nd person plural and singular whilst thou became seen as the formal singular.
Interesting things, languages.
Well if that article is correct it would be mo bhotún, or as I think ye say in the US my bad.
It makes sense ye and you got overlapped. Ye sounds like you with an accent. That's how it's treated nowadays, actually.
Somebody suggested thou's informal->formal happened because of the bible. It fell out of use, and since the bible uses it everyone assumes it's really high and fanciful and formal rather than "just how people talked back then". Not sure if it's true, but it kind of makes sense.
I don't know if Wikipedia speaks truth, but it'd seem weird to have two different pronouns that are identical accept for their nominative case. Then, Enlgish is Germanic, and German's worse- so it's possible.
I think "they" would be good if referring to someone you can point to, but what if you need to refer to someone who isn't in the room. Saying they would be too broad and the person may not know who you are talking about.
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Then use a name. "Oh, yeah, Margo did that painting. They're really good at stuff like that". I say that all the time. Or describe them "Um... they just left, they were wearing this cool green shirt with Led Zeppelin on it, long black hair, you should be able to catch 'em."
I use it a lot, especially in talking about people that may or may not exist in a "What if someone... they would..." sort of thing.
And if I said zir or whatever, well, most people would have NO FREAKING CLUE what I was saying.
Yeah, "they" works. I personally thing ze and hir work well, except nobody knows what the hell they mean.
.. I meant to say *think*. I can't type today!
Yeah, "they" works. I personally thing ze and hir work well, except nobody knows what the hell they mean.
Yeah, that's generally the problem. Hir I can usually figure out- but the other ones leave me going "Um... Okay. Is that english?" I'm good with syntax, that's the only way I have any idea what those people are saying.
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