"You! You ... two!"
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:46 (four years ago) link
xp - as long as you don't refer to them as Thing 1 and Thing 2?
― sarahell, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:47 (four years ago) link
I’ve understood and used “singular they” since I was a very small child, without knowing anything about nonbinary gender - feel like ppl who say it’s confusing are either lying or thick
― YouGov to see it (wins), Friday, 13 September 2019 20:48 (four years ago) link
It is IMO a giant nontroversy
― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, 13 September 2019 20:48 (four years ago) link
it's def a nontroversy, just an odd language thing. my mind unconsciously/automatically goes to they/them as plural (guess I'm thick, sorry), although obviously as pointed out there's a long history of singular usage in the language.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:50 (four years ago) link
using the pronouns people tell you are their correct pronouns is p. basic common decency and respect, etc. seems like a noncontroversial no-brainer to me at this point. maybe if you'd asked me in high school or something, i'd have been uptight about grammar and "words mean things, man!" but i feel like that whole line of thinking has been debunked in so many other capacities anyway.
anyway i'm not sure i even understand the challenge ostensibly posed by the twin case. what's an example of a sentence where (1) it's essential that you use a pronoun and not the person's name, (2) you're speaking about them in the third person, (3) it's not immediately clear from context that you're talking about a single person and not the pair of twins?
― weird ilx but sb (Doctor Casino), Friday, 13 September 2019 20:51 (four years ago) link
well, with my kids the sentence "I told them to put their pants back on" could very easily be singular or plural
― brigadier pudding (DJP), Friday, 13 September 2019 20:52 (four years ago) link
I kinda get what Shakey is trying to figure out -- the plural/singular confusion -- like I am in a volunteer group with two people who are roommates, one is a woman and one is non-binary, and one of the group's projects involves the house where these two people live. I have to think about phrasing in a way that I wouldn't if "they" obviously referred to both roommates, as opposed to just the singular non-binary roommate.
― sarahell, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:52 (four years ago) link
Yeah we use singular they/them all the time in life when we dont know the gender,extending it to be also used when we know the person doesnt identify as male or female doesnt seem a lot.
My issue is being a dumbass and using feminine pronouns when referring to the assigned female at birth mon binary people I know which I thankfully dont do very often and they (plural) haven't been too upset about
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, 13 September 2019 20:54 (four years ago) link
And I will either use both their names, or "they and female person's name" or "they and she" or "she and they" or "they plural"
― sarahell, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:54 (four years ago) link
here's an example:my daughter discussing the twins at her school and it not being clear if she was referring to one or both of them when saying that they were upset about something
xp
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:54 (four years ago) link
When we use "you" when addressing two people it is uncertain as to whether we are talking to one or both
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, 13 September 2019 20:55 (four years ago) link
the assigned female at birth mon binary people I know which I thankfully dont do very often and they (plural) haven't been too upset about
heh, my non-binary fellow group member was FAAB and gets pissed when they are mis-gendered as "she"
― sarahell, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:55 (four years ago) link
my daughter discussing the twins at her school and it not being clear if she was referring to one or both of them when saying that they were upset about something
You couldn't just ask her "who was upset? was it nb twin or both of them?"
― sarahell, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:58 (four years ago) link
well yeah there's where the conversation went
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 20:59 (four years ago) link
so? I mean, that's normal? Imagine if she had three friends named Chris, and said, "The Chris-es were mad" ... you might want to know if it was all three or just two of them or ...?
― sarahell, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:00 (four years ago) link
so...
― prorogue mahone (||||||||), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:00 (four years ago) link
Agree "they" has long been an acceptable gender-neutral pronoun, but there are still situations in which it is ambiguous or confusing (and in which it wouldn't likely previously have been used as a singular). E.g. I was recently with friends who have a non-binary teen and there were a lot of times when I couldn't tell whether the parents were discussing the teen or the teen plus one or more other people (e.g. a friend). A relatively harmless but mildly confusing example: after the parents picked me up at the train I heard them say "They asked us to pick up food for them on the way home." I wrongfully assumed they were referring to the teen having a friend or friends over. I mostly just use the teen's name though and it's basically all good.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:00 (four years ago) link
This is why English has words like "youse" and "y'all" (though "y'all" can be singular, thus creating the need for "all y'all").
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:01 (four years ago) link
guys i think we sorted it out!
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:01 (four years ago) link
yes we should all just speak scouse
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:02 (four years ago) link
Which is why we have 'youse' in Scotland, eh Jim?
― The Inner Mounting Phlegm (Tom D.), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:03 (four years ago) link
guys
was this really necessary
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:03 (four years ago) link
(though "y'all" can be singular, thus creating the need for "all y'all").
haha yeah ... all y'all being another good usage to avoid the dudes/guys problem where previously it had been "acceptable" to use in a gender neutral way, but now it's not
― sarahell, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:03 (four years ago) link
this is how I break it down to an extent - trans and non-binary people are some of the most marginalised people in our societies. any accommodation we can make to make their lives easier, however small, should be investigated and employed, notwithstanding the edge cases which may make our lives marginally more ‘difficult’
― prorogue mahone (||||||||), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:04 (four years ago) link
yeah I agree w that
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:05 (four years ago) link
again I'm not making out like this is a huge problem or unbearable burden, I just a) didn't understand/hadn't thought about why they/them was the most common usage (this was quickly answered in this thread - thx all!) and b) like to puzzle out grammar/language stuff and this came up recently
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:07 (four years ago) link
“I'm intrigued by the pronoun they came up with ("hen" as opposed to "han" or "hon")” doesn’t this make hen faps confusing?
― akm, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:09 (four years ago) link
I am pretty good about pronouns and they/them these days, but it is proving very difficult to break myself of "guys". It's really in there as my go-to plural when addressing a group (of any gender).
― change display name (Jordan), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:10 (four years ago) link
― The Inner Mounting Phlegm (Tom D.), Friday, September 13, 2019 2:03 PM (seven minutes ago)
aye, i use youse
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:11 (four years ago) link
but most speakers of british english don't have such a term
won’t be saying fkn “guys” because not from the west end
― prorogue mahone (||||||||), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:12 (four years ago) link
maybe i'm really dense but i have no clue what it is about twins that makes this extra difficult.anyway tho, sure, in the abstract 'they/them' may seem stranger than the attempts to create new, exclusively singular pronounces like ze, etc., which wouldn't present even these fairly minor hurdles of clarification. but the very fact that they/them's become so widespread suggests that these pronouns work very well for a ton of nb folks. and that they, at least, hit these singular/plural confusion points, likely much more often than cis people do, and are able to surmount them. so as a cis dude i feel like i can roll with that.
― weird ilx but sb (Doctor Casino), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:14 (four years ago) link
― prorogue mahone (||||||||), Friday, September 13, 2019 2:12 PM (two minutes ago)
troops
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:14 (four years ago) link
Also always defaulting to they/them/neutral options is easier so you don't assume the gender of someone's partner/spouse. I have found it also annoys people who are really into being "not gay" and that it always fun.
― Yerac, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:15 (four years ago) link
since (a) singular they is a kludge, (b) but it can surely be fully naturalized given time since language dgaf, (c) point-by-point dialectics about whether it's juuuust right or whether there might not be soooomething else that serves better seems idle, (d) as does moral scorn directed at doddering dinosaurs like shakey who are trying to be cool but just aren't quite sure, (e) although obviously deliberate misgenderers can and should be hounded from all forae.
i think really misgivings about the kludginess of proposed alternatives stem from the sense that language is basically being de-naturalized, which there are evident reasons for (it is in concert with the coercive binary gender system being denaturalized so it can be seen as coercive / so that a possibility of permitting the recognized exercise of autonomy over one's gender is freed up), but also understandable bridling at, since speakers rely on a presupposition of 'fit' between their language and the way the world is articulated.
― j., Friday, 13 September 2019 21:15 (four years ago) link
doddering dinosaurs like shakey
tried to be clear that this thread was well intentioned but
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:19 (four years ago) link
yes that's why i portrayed you as a kindly huggy dinosaur
― j., Friday, 13 September 2019 21:20 (four years ago) link
such little arms, such big love
doyouthinktheysaurus
― YouGov to see it (wins), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:21 (four years ago) link
I didn't see nothin
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:22 (four years ago) link
sorry i came in with guns blazing shakey, i've just heard the "aagh my precious grammar" argument (which is not what you were saying but you can understand how i made the mistake) from a lot of secret bigots
― american bradass (BradNelson), Friday, 13 September 2019 21:55 (four years ago) link
no apology necessary c'mon now
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 21:58 (four years ago) link
My preference would be to use singular they/them for everyone
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Friday, 13 September 2019 22:01 (four years ago) link
but yeah while some people choose neologistic pronouns (for reasons I am essentially uninformed about) they/them is accessible to every native speaker and really only sounds weird if you are thinking about it harder than you would in an ordinary circumstance
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Friday, 13 September 2019 22:04 (four years ago) link
maybe a non-English speaker can answer this - is there a push against the gendered nouns of other languages (thinking French here with it's la/le/les)?
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 22:05 (four years ago) link
that kind of thing always struck me as a step beyond the gendered pronouns/possessive pronounes in English, in terms of embedding gender binaries into the language.
― Οὖτις, Friday, 13 September 2019 22:06 (four years ago) link
In Chinese 'he' 'she' and 'it' sound exactly the same, though they do use different characters.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 13 September 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link
you will see people write lxs or l@s en castellano for that purpose from time to time
― Seany's too Dyche to mention (jim in vancouver), Friday, 13 September 2019 22:08 (four years ago) link
How does this work in gendered languages?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 13 September 2019 22:09 (four years ago) link
LL, many relationship-showing words are inherently gendered, e.g. niece, nephew, aunt, uncle. There is no standard non-gendered equivalent for these words, so it's impossible to reflect a relationship without gendering a person who is simply not of that gender.
"Nibling" is an ungendered niece/nephew child-of-siblings word.
Have heard a few for siblings-of-parent but don't much like any of them. Any other suggestions?
― Branwell with an N, Monday, 18 November 2019 19:35 (four years ago) link
the siblings of your parents are your 0th cousins once removed. (your siblings are your 0th cousins.)
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Monday, 18 November 2019 19:38 (four years ago) link
oooooh duh i forgot about that bc i don't have siblings and my aunts/uncles are not a part of my life bc we haven't spoken in years
silly mistakenevermind! sorry
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, 18 November 2019 19:39 (four years ago) link
your siblings are your 0th cousins
whoa
― a passing spacecadet, Monday, 18 November 2019 20:20 (four years ago) link
they's all kin
― j., Monday, 18 November 2019 20:34 (four years ago) link
Huh, I didn't know the current usage of 'sibling' was so recent.
1903, modern revival of Old English sibling (“relative, a relation, kinsman”), equivalent to sib + -ling. Compare Middle English sib, sibbe (“relative; kinsman”), German Sippe. The term apparently meant merely kin or relative until the 20th century when its necessity for the study of genetics led to its specialized use. For example, the OED has a 1903 citation in which "sibling" must be defined for those who don't know the intended meaning.
The word 'sib' or 'sibling' is coming into use in genetics in the English-speaking world, as an equivalent of the convenient German term 'Geschwister' [E.&C. Paul, "Human Heredity," 1930]
― jmm, Monday, 18 November 2019 20:37 (four years ago) link
Iceland came up with an official patronym for nonbinary folks this year (-bur):
https://www.icelandreview.com/news/icelandic-names-will-no-longer-be-gendered/
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 18 November 2019 20:48 (four years ago) link
so parents still have to petition to give a girl a "boy" name and vice versa unless they identify the child as gender-neutral? weird progressive/regressive juxtaposition there.
― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Monday, 18 November 2019 20:54 (four years ago) link
No, all first names are available to everyone now irrespective of gender "claimed" on birth certificate, but your choice on your birth certificate determines the suffix you must use for your surname (-son, -dottir, or -bur).
― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Monday, 18 November 2019 21:32 (four years ago) link
I feel like it's a significant enough thing to have a non-gendered term for, but Nibling makes me think of gifs of cute rodents eating carrots, or cute rodents eating carrots in Viking helmets singing Wagner
― sarahell, Tuesday, 19 November 2019 16:17 (four years ago) link
Family words are so confusing for me — tbh I wish we could all just go by our first names instead of foregrounding the family relation. Pronouns are necessary syntactically but to constantly refer to someone as their familial relation is different and not syntactically necessary.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 19 November 2019 16:55 (four years ago) link
https://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2018/10/12/election_2018_utah_senate_fact_check_24824_c0-233-5568-3479_s885x516.jpg?9568f5f5f6044ba51ec7d024630fbd9c34c30ce5
well said, friend
― j., Tuesday, 19 November 2019 18:40 (four years ago) link
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/12/05/teens-argentina-are-leading-charge-gender-neutral-language/
In Spanish, a language in which all nouns are assigned a gender, the word for soldiers is masculine: “Los soldados de Perón.”The lyrics Mira sang were different: “Les soldades.”To most Spanish speakers, the “e” in both words would sound jarring — and grammatically incorrect.But here, teenagers are rewriting the rules of the language to eliminate gender. In classrooms and daily conversations, young people are changing the way they speak and write — replacing the masculine “o” or the feminine “a” with the gender-neutral “e” in certain words — in order to change what they see as a deeply gendered culture.
The lyrics Mira sang were different: “Les soldades.”
To most Spanish speakers, the “e” in both words would sound jarring — and grammatically incorrect.
But here, teenagers are rewriting the rules of the language to eliminate gender. In classrooms and daily conversations, young people are changing the way they speak and write — replacing the masculine “o” or the feminine “a” with the gender-neutral “e” in certain words — in order to change what they see as a deeply gendered culture.
― j., Friday, 6 December 2019 06:30 (four years ago) link
this whole entryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Universal_Friend
― Οὖτις, Monday, 9 December 2019 20:09 (four years ago) link
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/amia-srinivasan/he-she-one-they-ho-hus-hum-ita
Ethics requires that we embrace a practice of naming that makes people’s passage through the world more bearable. But ethics is not exhausted by such a practice. A true ethical relation requires that we see the other, just as we see ourselves, as ultimately beyond names and categories: not because (as liberals like to say) we are ‘all human’ or ‘all persons’, but because each of us exists, finally, beyond the reach of mere words. We all know this instinctively in our own case: that feeling of exceeding, bursting beyond, all the words that can be truly applied to us. What does it take for us recognise that this is true, too, of everyone else: of him and her, of them, of you?
― j., Monday, 29 June 2020 17:17 (three years ago) link
Reading this now..
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 29 June 2020 19:09 (three years ago) link
is this ... meta-woke?
― assert (MatthewK), Monday, 29 June 2020 19:28 (three years ago) link
It's a very good essay on language and politics and better than Sharkey's concern trolling.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 30 June 2020 09:18 (three years ago) link
I was just kidding, it seemed like an overreach to start with pronouns and blast through to “why is language dealing with the ineffable anyway?” Spose I’d better read it now.
― assert (MatthewK), Tuesday, 30 June 2020 09:49 (three years ago) link