My own, certainly. I'll be the first to admit that my public school education did not guide me well in the ways of grammar. Sure the basics, but once you get past the basics, there's a whole lot left.
I started really learning grammar when I started taking foreign languages. I write intuitively with English, mostly picking up tips and tricks from reading. But other languages? There's no intuition to be had (for me at least), so it becomes more of a scientific pursuit. Everything with a genus and species, connected with sure laws of that language, which once mastered can be flexibly ignored.
In my continuing quest to finally learn the English language, I've run into problems that aren't so nicely settled. They're not my problems. It's not me. It's English.
For instance, English lacks a generic singular. We have a neuter: it. But, when I'm trying to talk about a general person's ideas or behaviors, it's not nice to say, "It may think." We're not robots! "He may think," would suffice, but maybe I want to include the ladies. "She might think," maybe, but that might lead Instapundit to give it a #waronmen tag.
The old standby was to assume the masculine. Everyone is a he unless otherwise noted, and, like with the Greek, a group of guys could mean all guys or a mix of guys and gals. Mankind, for instance, isn't just for men, but everyone "man-like" in a genetic/clinical sort of way.
You don't even need a kind, just Man suffices. "How to serve Man" was a cookbook for how to eat people, not just humans with penises.
That's not acceptable anymore. We say humanity now, or the tortured 'humankind', instead of mankind.
"All men are created equal" isn't allowed, as we want to say everyone has equal rights no matter what parts they have below.Did you notice what I did in that last sentence? Each person (a generic singular) has rights, no matter what... what....
What pronoun is appropriate to press on in that sentence?
If you're old-fashioned you use just the "he" or if you're enlightened just the "she." Some use "he or she," but that's a sign of indecisiveness, and that's something I will not abide. Which is it?!
Admittedly, in our contemporary world "he or she" might even be an appropriate label for a specific subset of people. We're not talking about hermaphrodites, however, in our generic sentences, we're trying to talk about a specific, yet not specifically gendered, person.
Picking one or the other satisfies the need for a singular pronoun, and we all know a person isn't limiting the discussion to one gender. But this brings its own problems.
So, I've gotten into the habit, along with many others, of using the plural "they" as a singular. Which doesn't fit any rule but does fit how language has adapted itself to fill in missing gaps. Like with memory, it may not be correct but it does allow us to function.
A number of people disagree. But they're wrong.
32 comments:
I suggest using "s/he" (s slash he). It's what people demand and it indicates the nice current divorce/war between the sexes.
There is a difference between (a) one using "they" simply because they grew up with it and don't care about what the grammar nazis say, and (b) one using "they" because they are too wimpy to stand up to the whiny PC crowd who refuses to accept that "he" is the neuter in English.
Why does man fight? He fights for food. Sometimes there must also be beverage.
You can't stuff they in there.
"He or she" goes in okay.
"She" alone would be academic speak. "Against all instinct you can see I am being fair."
Fingertips!
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the impersonal "he." Using a plural pronoun ("they") to mean a single person brings the reader's attention to a screeching, confused halt, while he (ha!) gets out his Newspeak decoder ring to figure out what is actually meant. This is death to effective writing.
If you must avoid it at any cost, use "one" instead, and sound like a 19th Century essayist. There are worse things to sound like.
And yes, learning a foreign language is when you learn that your own actually has rules, not just ways that things "sound right."
"nothing wrong with the impersonal "he." Using a plural pronoun ("they") to mean a single person brings the reader's attention to a screeching, confused halt"
See, here's an important issue. Why should a plural be more confusing than a masculine. If we are including the possibility of a woman, then it's only convention that leads us to think that "he" is less annoying than "they." Both are filling in the gap of language.
And yes, precision is the key here, not convention. "He" is masculine. So a writer who has in mind the possibility of a man or a woman does not want to implant a limited scope within the mind of the reader.
This isn't just PC, this is a changing assumption of what is noticed. Some notice the plural distinction, some notice the gender distinction, but both are missing precision. If the goal of language is to communicate, there's a snag here, one way or the other.
I usually use the masculine singular. I also use "one."
I am a woman, and that's what I prefer. I'm not going to sacrifice style for... for what? What are the people who demand an explicit multi-sex reference going for? They want everyone to talk down to women like we're a bunch of children. They've managed to establish it so that any writer who doesn't is suspect.
Unless he is a woman.
My sister:
So Billy and Sue got married and Tom and Sis were there, we call her Sis but she isn't anybody's real sister, so they were there and the reception was at another place, so first me and Gill went too and then they caught up and went there and saw them and decided they wanted to meet back at her house but the two guys wondered what was taking so long so the two of them decided to go to his house leaving us at the reception so we decided to go with him.
Poor thing. She is visualizing the people and places in her little head and thinks I can visualize it too based on her craptastic him/her they them description. And then later she'll say,
"We talked about that already."
The biggest grammar issue of all time revolves around the definition of "is".
That's a good point, Paddy O, and well made. I guess I'll have to fall back on aesthetics.
"The reader may interpret this as they like" sounds really, really ugly to me, where "as he likes" does not.
Well, it's a living language, and the benefits of that outweigh the costs.
It's he if there's one; they if there's more.
So there.
PS You want to know how important the little things in grammar are?
Try proctoring a paper written by somebody whose first language has no articles.
Like Russian.
Why should a plural be more confusing than a masculine
Because "he" is NOT limited to the masculine, but also includes the neuter. Only those who swallow the radical feminist PC insist on seeing "he" as referring only to males.
Not surrendering to the radical feminists in that way should be a matter of principle.
Drive by comment...I mean like I am not a writer:
Problem is we've abandoned the KISS Principle and Ockham's Razor in our use of language. We insist on re-defining things to elaborate. That word should tell us something...Elaborate? Why?
This picking of imaginary nits tendency is why today we have things like Penalty = Tax, and mass confusion on what is is.
For example [historically]:
Penalty = Sanction or fine for Non-Performance of something, or disobedience to rules, etc....non-performance in accordance with said rules.
Tax = A fee assessed on the products of performance [not non-performance].
However, today they are the same thing...for both performance and non-performance. An unelected man told us so, so it is...If is is what is is.
I have a rule that is pretty clear in my head. If it's tortured I won't do it. Some things are easy in the sex roles vis a vis writing. Firefighters instead of firemen. Worker's compensation instead of workman's compensation. Then there's Congressman. I'm not going to say Congresswoman or Congress member, the later being confusing. A Senator is also a Congress member. Our vernacular for those in the House is Congressman. Tammy Baldwin was my Congressman...wait, bad example.
I'll be the first to admit that my public school education did not guide me well in the ways of grammar. ...I started really learning grammar when I started taking foreign languages
This. I remember when I started a foreign language, and thinking why didn't anyone teach me any of this about English?.
I have a math/science sort of brain. Most English teachers and elementary school teachers do not know how to teach to those sorts of brains.
Ignorance, A good teacher can adapt to different hard wiring. Unfortunately, too many are ham n' eggers and don't have a clue.
English was a blue collar language. Back when English was evolving, the court aristocrats spoke French and the educated people wrote in Latin. English was used to tell people where to plant the beets and how to unload the hay. English was not used to express elevated feelings or subtle forms of courtesy. It was just used for getting the point across. As a result, English is said to be one of the easiest languages on earth to learn. It's certainly one of the most democratic. There's no social anxiety when using the second person and, if a foreign language has a neat word, it finds its way into English muy pronto and without a lot a academy types bitching about how the language is being debased......OK, there's a bit of awkwardness about the second person plural, but it's possible that you all are making too big a deal about it.
Paddy O's article is good, but I disagree with using they, them, their as a singular.
The premise--that using the masculine as a generic is unacceptable--is overstated.
Yes, there are strident folks about this, and others who don't know how to go through life without feeling guilty about their very essence.
But many more folks, male and female, just don't care. Thankfully, there are a fair number of women who are sensible enough to know that their sense of worth is not threatened by such things.
As far as how English usage changes: it's true that these things evolve. But another way to put that is to say that each of us has a vote; and the outcome is nudged, a little bit here and there, by what each of us does.
So my "vote"--my "nudge," will be against a singular "they."
As you may have noticed in this little essay, several times I constructed a sentence without having to use either the generic masculine, or a singular "they." Other expedients, if needed, are available: "s/he," "him or her," "his or her," or simply alternating using female pronouns from time to time.
But again, I think most people don't care.
"They" is fine. It bugs me, though.
I've been known to use "she" or "he" somewhat randomly in statements where an individual would be one or the other but the principle is still meant to apply to people of both sorts.
My grammar text from last spring defines the "singular they" but states that it's discouraged in formal writing even though it's common in speech.
In writing there will usually be other options, such as the possibility of being specific instead of using a pronoun in the first place.
I'd simply use "he or she" "his or her" each time but my professor doesn't like that. So long as it's not in every sentence I don't think it would be too annoying.
How to explain... okay... if I were writing an example meant to be extrapolated to more people I might simply use "she" or "he".
"A writer has to use her emotions to write fiction that is relevant but must keep her distance as well."
But if I were addressing a mixed group directly I'd probably used "he or she" instead of one or the other.
"Everyone must take his or her break at the time scheduled or it will mess us all up."
("Everyone" is one of those subjects that are inherently plural that take a singular verb which is why the grammar nazis don't like to pair it with "they".)
I should say... the singular they only bothers me when I bother to think about it. I use it all the time, just like everyone else does.
Oh, and I forgot the other expediency, if using "they" is so important:
Recast your sentence in plural:
People love living in glass houses, but when stones fly, they dive for cover.
I'm not seeing a good rationale for a "singular they."
Harumph!
Here is a link that has examples of the so-called "singular they" from the late 1300s through the 19th century, including its use by Chaucer, William Caxton, Thomas More, Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, Lord Chesterfield, John Ruskin, William Thackeray, Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and C. S. Lewis. I've heard that Milton also employed it, though I haven't come across an example yet.
It's always been a normal and acceptable usage, up until prescriptive English grammars began to be written in the Victorian Age. The new class of *professional* grammarians (a surprising number of whom were parsons, btw) decided that the rules for *proper* English should reflect Latin grammar.
Thus we get ludicrous rules like Don't SPLIT an Infinitive (which is de facto forbidden in Latin because it's impossible, the Latin infinitive being a single word, unlike in English, where it's often two, e.g. "to split"). And Don't End a Sentence with a Preposition, something again that Latin doesn't do --- ergo, the new, self-identified *experts* insisted that English shouldn't do it either. Because!
Thus we get ludicrous rules like Don't SPLIT an Infinitive (which is de facto forbidden in Latin because it's impossible, the Latin infinitive being a single word, unlike in English, where it's often two, e.g. "to split"). And Don't End a Sentence with a Preposition, something again that Latin doesn't do --- ergo, the new, self-identified *experts* insisted that English shouldn't do it either. Because!
Those are the be ignored. Definitely. <---Yikes! What would they make of that?
I like the idea of creating a new word. I've seen "ze" as a suggestion. Might work: "If a person doesn't want to eat pizza, ze should be able to order something else." Has a Teutonic ring to it, which may or may not be a plus.
But many more folks, male and female, just don't care. Thankfully, there are a fair number of women who are sensible enough to know that their sense of worth is not threatened by such things.
The thing is -- if we were to use "she" as the neuter/generic, then we would have people all up in arms that we are equating a woman with an it.
As it is, we already have people who object to calling a ship "she," saying that we treat women like objects that way.
I mean, we have some people so twisted up that they get offended by the letters M-A-N being in the word for those with XX chromosomes. Hence the silly word "womyn."
Basta:
Fair enough, but the history you recount doesn't really address the merits.
After all, if we agree that language is not frozen in amber, but develops, why can't that include development of greater rigor and structure?
I think use of "they" (3rd person generic plural) makes sense because the assumption that a hypothetical or subjunctive, common scenario would only involve one person is odd and often incorrect. In most cases you're describing something that is not an unusual or singular occurrence with the word "they".
After all, if we agree that language is not frozen in amber, but develops, why can't that include development of greater rigor and structure?
Because, our exploration of what we come to know about life over the course of time and history doesn't bestow it with greater "rigor and structure". What we come to know becomes richer and broader, with more exceptions, not simpler and more easily parsed down to a bunch of rules. That's actually exactly the wrong approach to take if one hopes for an accurate understanding of life.
In fact, linguistics makes a distinction between agglutinating languages and isolating languages - and I think that distinction can reflect their utility. The former string particles of speech together into complex words, and that tends to be what you see in languages that have a rich number of cases types of conjugating to do with your nouns and your verbs. Isolating languages, OTOH, don't care for different forms of verbs depending on speaker, or different forms of nouns depending on case, and might only modify them for tense and number, respectively.
An example of isolating languages would be English and Chinese, languages whose speakers are much more numerous than those who speak an elaborately conjugated one like Russian, or Finnish.
Perhaps this is a coincidence, but it seems that powerful empires need a vehicle of communication that that doesn't waste time trying to figure out esoteric ways of fitting parts of speech into your verbs and nouns that are already obvious from the context. Whereas simpler folk (indeed, ancient tribes) living in the forests of Siberia or the plains of Central Asia might have a lot of time on their hands to putz with making their languages much more complicated than need be.
Fr. Fox,
It's true, I didn't address the merits per se. I was trying to show that such usage has a long history, is natural and proper for English, and that the later prescriptive grammars were trying to cram English into a structure that doesn't suit it.
I think perhaps the main problem was trying to make a language that no longer has "grammatical gender", such as English, ape one that does (Latin).
I'm positive you're aware of what I'm about to say, but I'd like to be clear, so please excuse the long and I hope not too rambling post.
Many languages (including English 6-7 centuries ago) divide all nouns into 2 or 3 categories, which any modifying adjectives or substituting pronouns then have to match by category. Instead of calling these inflectional categories something like a, b, and c, terms that aren't already pre-loaded with some other meaning, the experts decided to classify this categorization as "gender" --- an infelicitous choice that engenders confusion about what is actually going on, I think.
So, for example, the French word for leg is "feminine gender", and if you substitute a pronoun for it you have to use the "feminine" one: elle. But even though "elle" is the "feminine" pronoun, we wouldn't think of translating it as "she", since English grammar reflects only biological gender --- for us, "she/her" means an actual female only (barring a few idiomatic uses, like ships), "he/his" an actual male.
Likewise, the French words/phrases for "everyone" and "no-one" are categorized grammatically as "masculine", so any coordinating words have to match that category. For example "Personne ne le fait lui-même" is literally "No-one does it himself". But the masculine pronoun "himself" isn't used because the unspecified or default person is considered male, it's because the word for no-one in French is of masculine grammatical gender. It's exactly the same thing that's going on with using "she" for leg. The coordination-by-gender in both examples is strictly a feature of French grammar, having nothing to do with the actual sex of the referent --- whether that's no sex as with things, or indefinite/unspecified sex in relation to people.
It's interesting that it was right about the time that English did away with grammatical gender as means of inflecting nouns --- and thus also of the requirement to "sex" all pronouns, etc. --- that we see the earliest written examples of the so-called singular they.
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