Pronouns

[servodude]

But.... if we're fixing English can we have a negative yes?

"You, have a nice day now!" ?

That's an interesting interrogative termination to an apparently phatic emission don't you think?
"yes".. you might say!
but is that a positive or negative yes? we can't tell )

Many moons ago I had an obligation as a student (to get funding for a trip) to learn Swedish.. in a class of two (excluding the one legged lass that taught it)
As a language it has about a quarter of the words of English, many of which are the same and many others overlap with my traditional Scots dialect: braw, bairns, flytting, spewing, stenhousemuir (or stone house wall as it would translate)
It also has an almost identical grammatical construction "I heard that you have been sick" is a word for word translation to "jag hörde att du har varit sjuk".. (simpler really because their verbs don't have declensions)

but in that fraction of the space their language finds a use for a negative "yes"
or more precisely they have a one word answer that qualifies the positive position to a negatively framed question.

For example:
"Are you not bothered about the reuse of a plural pronoun as an epicene singluar?"
Ja! = Yes! i.e. "I am bothered"
Jo! = Yes! i.e "I am not bothered"
Nei! = No! i.e "I am not bothered"

now they wouldn't really do that in practice - they'd normally qualify it with "that I am"
unless they were a character with peculiar quirks in a noir crime drama; Saga Norén from the Bridge being a particular case who would lob the occasional one syllable grenade and leave the viewer (and whomever was trying to do the Englsih subtitles) trying to catch up

I suppose not having declensions in verbs removes part of the conceptual problem around "they" as a pronoun (as the plural and singuar antecedents are the same) Perhaps that is part of why the Scandi sphere seems more ready to embrace this kind of thing?
Is that Whorfianism?

- sd

[roger4]

Isn't the whole point of all this "correctiveness" simply a way of imposing a minority viewpoint on the majority?

This seems to be along the lines of the "if you disagree, you are part of the problem" form of logic.

Can it be that the proposers of this "correctiveness" have so little to concern them that they have to invent something? Here on my island in the Indian Ocean, people are more concerned about having food to cook and the fuel to cook it with.

Roger

[AWOL]

I heard an academic on explaining that it's easy we all just need to carry a database on our phones and check pronouns before engaging in conversation. Having tried to follow a recounting of events involving a friend's former daughter and her pals I draw the line at the cultural appropriation of "they". "No longer she" is "they" her friends are collective "they".

Confusingly "they's" former sister has gone this way too and adopted a pronoun as new name and a different pronoun as pronoun.

I reserve the right to play the "too old for this" card. I have sympathy for people who have identity issues but that doesn't mean I need to share their grammar views.

[XFool]

I heard an academic on explaining that it's easy we all just need to carry a database on our phones and check pronouns before engaging in conversation. Having tried to follow a recounting of events involving a friend's former daughter and her pals I draw the line at the cultural appropriation of "they". "No longer she" is "they" her friends are collective "they".

Confusingly "they's" former sister has gone this way too and adopted a pronoun as new name and a different pronoun as pronoun.

I reserve the right to play the "too old for this" card. I have sympathy for people who have identity issues but that doesn't mean I need to share their grammar views.

Yes. I think that is my view too. I may sympathise with your 'issues' but at the end of the day they are YOUR issues, not mine. You need to own them and sort your own **** out, don't lay them off onto me.

Then again - although it is inherently impossible to know of another's subjective experience, as Lootman pointed out - I do wonder about the meaning and even the reality of some of these matters. How can a person possibly be a "They"? I cannot even begin to form any kind of imaginative concept for this - I think I might find it easier to try and imagine what being a cat feels like. This leads me to wonder if some people with this issue might even be making a kind of mistake, interpreting some real issues they may well be experiencing in life through a current 'model' of reality, that exists as a social construct, so as to 'explain' their issues.

[XFool]

Here on my island in the Indian Ocean, people are more concerned about having food to cook and the fuel to cook it with.

Are you in Sri Lanka? A Tamil refugee woman I knew returned home earlier in the year - possibly a mistake?

[tjh290633]

I heard an academic on explaining that it's easy we all just need to carry a database on our phones and check pronouns before engaging in conversation. Having tried to follow a recounting of events involving a friend's former daughter and her pals I draw the line at the cultural appropriation of "they". "No longer she" is "they" her friends are collective "they".

Confusingly "they's" former sister has gone this way too and adopted a pronoun as new name and a different pronoun as pronoun.

I reserve the right to play the "too old for this" card. I have sympathy for people who have identity issues but that doesn't mean I need to share their grammar views.

Yes. I think that is my view too. I may sympathise with your 'issues' but at the end of the day they are YOUR issues, not mine. You need to own them and sort your own **** out, don't lay them off onto me.

Then again - although it is inherently impossible to know of another's subjective experience, as Lootman pointed out - I do wonder about the meaning and even the reality of some of these matters. How can a person possibly be a "They"? I cannot even begin to form any kind of imaginative concept for this - I think I might find it easier to try and imagine what being a cat feels like. This leads me to wonder if some people with this issue might even be making a kind of mistake, interpreting some real issues they may well be experiencing in life through a current 'model' of reality, that exists as a social construct, so as to 'explain' their issues.

I have to confess that I get increasingly confused. If someone wants to be referred to as they or them, then surely to them/itself they are we or us. How can a plural apply to a single person?

My feeling is to address "them" as "you lot", or perhaps "that one".

TJH

[bungeejumper]

A former English teacher writes:

There's no point in denying that language is constantly evolving, and that usages are always on the move. I will still walk out of a shop if the sales assistant calls my wife and me "guys", and I really can't comprehend why groups of girls accept the same form of address in the pub. But I do appreciate that some of us are old farts, and that we refuse to connect with changing language patterns at the risk of becoming more and more isolated from the norm. You can count me among that number. See if I care?

There are also situations where words really do go out of fashion more or less by edict. I doubt that any good is to be achieved by resurrecting the n-word, which did nothing but humiliate a sector of society, so RIP to that.

BUT.......

The point about linguistic shifts, it seems to me, is that they're fine if they happen by common consent. We now know what Strictly means, or bad (as in good). or and some of us don't bridle any more at the fashionable resurrection of the word queer, even though we remember all too well how it used to be such a foul and abusive term that we might have expected to see it drowned forever like the n-word. Nowadays the q word turns up in lessons at primary schools, which makes me feel like a right old irrelevance.

So tell me, is this "they" business happening by spontaneous common consent? Or is it being forced on us by law, or by mandatory conditions at work? (Apparently, yes.) One of the things we will realise, in future decades perhaps, is that the steady curtailment of our linguistic heritage in favour of an "it's all about me" culture is a curtailment of liberty itself. If it's enforced with threats of sanctions for those who don't comply, it can also feel just a little fascistic. With the best of intentions, perhaps, but just a little.

BJ

[CliffEdge]

My niece recently declared that she wants to be known as "They". Because some days she feels like a man and other days she feels like a woman.

She has two sets of clothes in her wardrobe so that she can always dress appropriately to the gender she feels like that day.

I presume you meant:

My niece recently declared that they want to be known as "They". Because some days they feel like a man and other days they feel like a woman.

They have two sets of clothes in their wardrobe so that they can always dress appropriately to the gender they feel like that day.

It doesn't seem difficult or offensive to adjust the way of speaking to fit in with their desire to be recognised in that way.

For some reason on first glance I thought oyveyowza said " dress appropriately to the gardener she feels like that day"

[didds]

shrug.

I dont really have an issue with it. many things change in life tghat we have to adapt to. Wearing facemasks of late beoing one example. seatbelts back in the 70s/80s/whenever it was.

Its only an issue if i am somehow supposed to be telepathic and know what pronoun someone requires without that prior knowledge. But its still not an issue as its that person's bag to carry, and having been appraised I just go along with it. If they really go off on one despite that realignmnet I'll treat them the same as anybody else that isn't cutting me any slack for not knowing something in advance.

Its not a big deal for me.

[XFool]

shrug.

I dont really have an issue with it. many things change in life tghat we have to adapt to. Wearing facemasks of late beoing one example. seatbelts back in the 70s/80s/whenever it was.

But these are readily comprehendible and make sense - objectively.

i.e. By their nature such things are definitely not analogous to the pronoun matter, whatever you think of that.

Clearly, one way or another, applying a plural descriptor for an objectively single entity is problematical - at least it is to those of us who have our strong subjective ideas and feelings about correctness of expression and meaning!

(Then there is the matter of understanding...)

Its not a big deal for me.

Lucky you!

[vrdiver]

It seems most of the posts on here have been about how using gender neutral pronouns makes us feel, rather than how using gender specific pronouns affects the other person

I read an article recently (sorry, no link) where a young woman was constantly reminded, through the use of language stereotyping, of everything she wasn't. All our cultural references appeared (to her) to promote delicate little ladies or sweet little things as "good", whilst, in her mind, she was associated with the galumphing, heavy, clumsy attributes that gave her no self esteem at all. To make matters worse, she was quite good at a few things traditionally seen as "male" skills. Instead of being able to take pride in her skills, they just emphasised her lack of womanliness.

She started using gender neutral pronouns when referring to herself, and discovered that for her, it was a relief to break the connection with female stereotypes.

Just a thought. Some of those pushing the change might be uber-woke, but for some, in an in-your-face social media world, it might just feel better not being labelled and judged for lack of compliance to that label.

VRD
(He/it/oi you/)

[XFool]

It seems most of the posts on here have been about how using gender neutral pronouns makes us feel, rather than how using gender specific pronouns affects the other person

Sure! Of course - it is the subjectivity of all this, as opposed to the objectivity - that is what it is all about.

I read an article recently (sorry, no link) where a young woman was constantly reminded, through the use of language stereotyping, of everything she wasn't. All our cultural references appeared (to her) to promote delicate little ladies or sweet little things as "good", whilst, in her mind, she was associated with the galumphing, heavy, clumsy attributes that gave her no self esteem at all.

OK. But what does that mean? Is the issue everybody else, or her? I don't know, I can't tell from the above, I don't understand it. Why did she feel
she was "associated with the galumphing, heavy, clumsy attributes that gave her no self esteem" ?

It becomes apparent we really cannot get to grips with, or even understand, these matters without some pretty in-depth conversations with actual individuals who experience these things - otherwise it is all just abstractions. Then one might understand and agree, or still disagree.

To make matters worse, she was quite good at a few things traditionally seen as "male" skills. Instead of being able to take pride in her skills, they just emphasised her lack of womanliness.

She started using gender neutral pronouns when referring to herself, and discovered that for her, it was a relief to break the connection with female stereotypes.

Yeah but then is that not her issue, in her mind, rather than everyone else's?

Some people can't spell: Should we all have to adopt a simplified English to help them feel better?
Some people are bad at arithmetic: Should we abandon numbers so they do not feel left out?
I don't have stereoscopic vision: Should everyone go around wearing an eye patch in sympathy?

Just a thought. Some of those pushing the change might be uber-woke, but for some, in an in-your-face social media world, it might just feel better not being labelled and judged for lack of compliance to that label.
(He/it/oi you/)

XFool

(Yes, him again!)

[vrdiver]

Some people can't spell: Should we all have to adopt a simplified English to help them feel better?
Some people are bad at arithmetic: Should we abandon numbers so they do not feel left out?
I don't have stereoscopic vision: Should everyone go around wearing an eye patch in sympathy?

There's a difference between applying stereotypes and poor education or disabilities as exemplified in your text. I don't see the harm in being asked not to use language that's redolent with association, if those associated stereotypes are outmoded or not applicable to the individual.

When, for example, we teach children the ditty about what little girls are made of, we start to create stereotypes for gender. Not confirming has a price. Perhaps it would be better for society as a whole if we challenged ourselves about the sort of stereotypes that are still useful, Vs those whose time has been and gone.

Not an easy task!

VRD

[XFool]

Some people can't spell: Should we all have to adopt a simplified English to help them feel better?
Some people are bad at arithmetic: Should we abandon numbers so they do not feel left out?
I don't have stereoscopic vision: Should everyone go around wearing an eye patch in sympathy?

There's a difference between applying stereotypes and poor education or disabilities as exemplified in your text. I don't see the harm in being asked not to use language that's redolent with association, if those associated stereotypes are outmoded or not applicable to the individual.

When, for example, we teach children the ditty about what little girls are made of, we start to create stereotypes for gender. Not confirming has a price. Perhaps it would be better for society as a whole if we challenged ourselves about the sort of stereotypes that are still useful, Vs those whose time has been and gone.

That sounds fair enough, in relation to outmoded and derogatory terms. But to me, the example you gave of a woman who lacked self esteem seemed to me existential: This is the way the world is; this is the way you are.

We can't arrange all of reality around the desires of a minority. Apart from anything else, there would be too many competing realities! *| e.g. I'd feel 'offended' by someone expecting me to abandon my whole life's understanding of grammar in order to soothe their bruised egos. What about my feelings?

I'll see your gender sensitivity and raise you a visual handicap!


* This rather reminds me of an incident quite a few years ago now when I had an extended interaction, where I live, with a group of 14 year old boys. IMO they were causing a nuisance (skateboarding - they didn't live here). I can't now recall the exact details but, given their age, they were much into "my/our rights" etc. So I played their card right back at them - "So what about my rights?". Anyway, they've never been back.