This is great, thanks! I think I might not be understanding what you mean by the comment about Old English -- OE did have 3rd-person pronouns in 3 genders, but of course the genders were mostly arbitrary. Am I misunderstanding what you meant?
Anyway, any objections that people make to "they" on (supposedly) grammatical grounds are equally valid (invalid) for the use of "you" to refer to both singular and plural second persons. afaik, no one is objecting to that usage.
An interesting question is what the reflexive is for epicene "they" in reference to a single person: "When a person has finished, they can help [themself|themselves] to a cookie". There seems to be some fuzziness about this right now.
Very illuminating! I hope that they who read this article enjoy it as much as I did.
Fun fact: in Samoan, the word alii means "lord" and is used both to refer to "the Lord" as in, the man upstairs, and also chiefs of a high rank. However it's not exactly the same as the Latin alii, as there is a glottal stop between the i's.
I'm sure s/he will, Simon. Thanks for the thumbs up.
And for the info regarding Samoan alii. One of the things I love about sharing this newsletter is when I get feedback like yours from people who speak a language that I don't, or know something about what's being discussed that's new.
This is great, thanks! I think I might not be understanding what you mean by the comment about Old English -- OE did have 3rd-person pronouns in 3 genders, but of course the genders were mostly arbitrary. Am I misunderstanding what you meant?
Anyway, any objections that people make to "they" on (supposedly) grammatical grounds are equally valid (invalid) for the use of "you" to refer to both singular and plural second persons. afaik, no one is objecting to that usage.
An interesting question is what the reflexive is for epicene "they" in reference to a single person: "When a person has finished, they can help [themself|themselves] to a cookie". There seems to be some fuzziness about this right now.
One of the problems with the word "gender" in linguistics is that it doesn't refer to gender in the usual, non-linguistic sense (ie, male, female). He/him/his are also grammatical genders, which are defined as "classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words". Some languages have as many as 20 different genders. To avoid confusion, many linguists now prefer the term "noun class". More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender#:~:text=Languages%20with%20grammatical%20gender%20usually,other%20words%20related%20to%20it.
Very illuminating! I hope that they who read this article enjoy it as much as I did.
Fun fact: in Samoan, the word alii means "lord" and is used both to refer to "the Lord" as in, the man upstairs, and also chiefs of a high rank. However it's not exactly the same as the Latin alii, as there is a glottal stop between the i's.
I'm sure s/he will, Simon. Thanks for the thumbs up.
And for the info regarding Samoan alii. One of the things I love about sharing this newsletter is when I get feedback like yours from people who speak a language that I don't, or know something about what's being discussed that's new.