Misgender

[damoge]

"If the KJV was good enough for Peter and Paul..."

Philip, your wicked sense of humor shines again

Iain, thanks for the link about Lowth, had not heard of him. He must have had some powerful position to impose so much on so many. I admire even more the Dutch system of re-examining and re-forming the language on a regular basis even though I would not want it done to English. Adjusting spelling to match pronunciation would erase much of our understanding of the roots of and meanings of our words. So much depends on knowing where they came from.
However, I whole heartedly agree with your last sentence.
Not by a long shot indeed.

[Philip Hudson]

I applaud my hero, Winston Churchill, who said of not ending sentences with prepositions: "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put." I do not laud Churchill for all his actions and comments, but he was the greatest man of the 20th century, hands down. One of his most colorful repartees went something like this: Lady Astor: "Sir Winston you are drunk." Sir Winston: "And you, Lady Astor, are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober." There are various versions of this saying and I can't find authentication. Check out:
https://www.britishpathe.com/gallery/wi ... l-quotes/1

[damoge]

May I ask that you explicate your declaration that W.C. was the greatest man of the century?
Greatest wordsmith I would immediately concur... but greatest man?
That's a bit more complicated, isn't it?
Each of us humans has their own foibles, but few have positions that allow those foibles to do great harm or great good.
Some of W.C.'s mistakes were enormous, no?
I'm not given to making lists. Not of "greatest" or "best" or even "most", so I have no candidate to oppose yours. However, that having been granted, could we agree on "one of the..."?
I think many would grant standing to Roosevelt as well, no?

[tkowal]

This discussion became so heated that I decided to add a bit more. English is not my mother tongue and I always think about analogies in other languages. Gender distinction in English is basically limited to some pronouns. However in Slavic languages verbs and adjectives can have distinct forms depending on the gender. For instance Polish ja byłem and ja byłam both mean I was, but the first form is masculine and the second one is feminine.

Similarly in Latin languages most adjectives and some nouns change their endings: Spanish soy americano (m.) and soy americana (f.) mean I am American.

Lots of work for linguists.

[call_copse]

On the subject of greatest people, they are often the most flawed. Isaac Newton is a hero for anyone who, like me, is fascinated by maths. Horrible chap by many accounts, and wasted most of his life on occult studies. His interesting work was done over a couple of years while he was essentially on lockdown hiding from the plague I believe.

Churchill had similarly human flaws it's fair to say, depression and drinking gave him enough difficulties.

[David Myer]

So much to talk about here.

Thanks for joining the fray, Phillip. The KJV is surely the only worthy version. This is as undebatable as who was the greatest person of the 20th century! And who won the War anyway? Not Churchill, not Roosevelt, but Stalin. Perhaps we should just call it a team game. As I understand it, the Russians lost many times as many soldiers and civilians as the USA and UK put together. They also were responsible for the deaths of many many more Germans than the rest of the Allies. Does that make Stalin a great man?

Debbie, I do like your measured contribution on greatness. And I note your subtly slipped in: "Each of us humans has their own foibles." In this case, we barely notice the singular use of 'their'.

Iain, I enjoyed your Quora article, and I note that the premise and evidence the author offers are soundly debunked by the many people who have commented on it. I must say my guess is that the debunkers may be more erudite than the original author. Certainly they are better at Latin.

And back to the original issue: 'they' as a singular gender-neutral pronoun. I have followed the debate with great interest and noted the Good Dr's input, and am prepared to concede that there is a case for its use; but I contend the case is made weak by the inconsistencies of a singular them and a singular themselves/self. I now conclude in my arrogant way that there is nothing wrong at all with 'it' to serve the purpose. Some people decided, what, 40 years ago? that 'it' was impersonal and should only be used for inanimates. So we had the clumsy he/she (and arguments about which should come first). Then we developed this use of 'they' with claims that it goes back a long way in English as a singular. But it retains the baggage I have talked about with themself etc. But along the way, we have lost sight of the problem we are looking to solve. If the gender of the person is not known, that is one thing. If it is known but irrelevant, that is another. In the latter case, surely there can be no qualms about use of 'it'. We are clearly saying "What has this person's gender got to do with anything?" And so 'it' is fine. In the former case, I concede there is some argument that 'it' is a tad impersonal. But if that is the only difficulty with it, when all the alternatives have so many more and bigger issues...

In Debbie's example "Each of us humans has their own foibles" which as I said, now slips in more or less seamlessly, I would still prefer "Each of us humans has its own foibles." There are lots of workarounds of course - "Each of us has our own foibles", "We all have our own foibles", "all humans have foibles", "every human has foibles"... but they don't solve the problem.

So rather than wrestling to understand that 'they' can be singular, surely it is easier to simply acknowledge that 'it' can refer to people as well as inanimates.

[David Myer]

In reply to tkowal, you make a most interesting point. Soy Americano/Americana. But in these gender diverse times, even in Spain, we should perhaps not be specifying our gender. We are American (or Spanish) - our gender is irrelevant. How are Spanish speakers to remain unspecified? Is there a change in the Spanish language too? And if not, why not? Perhaps it is only a few English speakers who care about this stuff? And if that is the case, what's wrong with 'it'?

Incidentally, I hope the argument here has not really seemed 'heated' - passionate, maybe, forthright, probably but all in good humour I hope.

[tkowal]

This is a reply to David Myer. To be honest I don't know whether Spanish speakers care about this issue; probably some do but I don't know what they propose. I used Spanish as an example because it is more familiar in the English speaking world, and it shows that other languages may have more difficulties to adopt this idea. My Polish example is about gender dependent verb forms but the same applies to adjectives.

Going back to English there are some stylistic issues too. Take for instance the sentence: Mary and John go to school; he wears a black hat and she wears a brown one. How do you rewrite this sentence in a politically correct way without it being awkward? They or it don't solve the problem. I don't think that ...; the second one wears a black hat and the first one wears a brown one looks very pleasant.

[damoge]

tkowal,
in re: "... the second one wears a black hat and the first one wears a brown one ..."
Would "...the latter wears a black hat and the former a brown one...",
an older literary construct seldom used in common speech, create a more pleasant look to your eye?

Debby

[tkowal]

Deby, that's a nice way out and I'm sure it can be done in many situations. However it would be very cumbersome to police oneself all the time to use they instead of she or he in every conversation. Maybe our grammar checkers will be eventually modified so that our writing becomes politically correct .

[damoge]

tkowal,
while old habits are hard to break, they certain can be broken.
I think it a matter of choice.
While I would find it difficult to maintain a constant awareness, and as my short-term memory problems are clearly increasing, I would still make the effort, out of politeness, to accommodate someone for whom this was important.
I wear a mask when in public places for the same reason. It's uncomfortable for me to do so; I sometimes forget and have to go retrieve the thing from the car, but I believe it is not up to me to decide that someone else should suffer discomfort (that being the least risk) imposed upon them by me if I can avoid doing so.

[David Myer]

Yes, Debby, and appropriately sensitive - if only the rest of the world were so. And in your last sentence the 'them' cannot be replaced by 'it'. So I and the rest of the world will continue to muddle through this issue with a hotch potch of solutions, some more elegant than others.