If you’ve ever used the English language, you’re probably already aware that the word they is most commonly used as a third-person plural personal pronoun to refer to multiple entities as a collective. You may also be aware that this same word is sometimes also used as a singular third-person personal pronoun to refer to a person of unspecified gender or a person who identifies as non-binary.
English teachers have been vocally condemning the use of the pronoun they to refer to a singular antecedent for years and most people who have gone through the United States public education system have probably been told at some point that using the pronoun in this manner is “wrong.” In this article, however, I intend to argue that it is (and should be) completely grammatically acceptable to use the pronoun they to refer to a singular individual.
How English teachers drilled it into me that using singular they is “wrong”
When I was growing up, whenever someone in my home wanted to refer to a singular person of unknown gender, that person would use the pronoun they to refer to the person. Naturally, I accepted this as proper English and adopted this usage myself.
Then, when I was in sixth grade, my teacher gave us a grammar quiz where, for each question, we were given a sentence with a blank in the middle and we were supposed to complete the sentence by circling one of four multiple choice options. Only one of the four options was considered correct. One of the sentences we were given involved a scenario in which we were supposed to choose the correct pronoun for a singular person of unspecified gender. One of the options was “they” and one of the other options was “he or she.” Naturally, I circled the option “they.”
After the quiz, the teacher had us switch papers with one of our fellow students. Then she told us the answers so we could grade each other’s papers. The student whose paper I was grading had also put “they” as their answer to the question. When the teacher got around to this question, though, she gave a long, impassioned lecture about how using the pronoun they to describe a singular person is absolutely wrong, because they is plural and can only ever be plural.
She declared that, back in the good old days, people used to just use the pronoun he to refer to a person of unspecified gender. Then she said the feminist movement came along and people starting saying this was sexist, so now people have started using “he or she.” She said that this sounds clunky and that she still prefers to just use “he,” but she was willing to count “he or she” as correct. Thus, I had to mark the student whose paper I was grading’s answer as incorrect and, when I got my paper back, I saw that my answer had likewise been marked as incorrect.
At the time, I was determined to be good and follow the rules. I therefore internalized it as an unbreakable rule that the pronoun they could only ever be plural and that it was wrong to use it to refer to a singular person, because that is what my sixth-grade teacher had drilled into me. My subsequent English teachers only further inculcated this notion.
When I was a freshman in high school, my honors English teacher gave her own lengthy lecture about how using the pronoun they to refer to a singular person is absolutely wrong. She went on to declare that using they as a singular pronoun goes completely against all the rules of the English language and that it is only done by frivolous modern people who have no understanding of how the English language is supposed to work. When we were writing our papers for that class, the teacher gave us a list of “mega mistakes” to avoid in our writing at all costs. One of these mistakes was using they as a singular pronoun.
How I eventually came to accept singular they
I really did not like using the pronoun he to refer to a person of unspecified gender—even though this was the usage that my sixth-grade English teacher actually preferred. Thus, for a while, I became an ardent user of the phrase “he or she,” because I believed that this was the only sensible, grammatically correct option that at least acknowledged the possibility that the person in question might be a “she” rather than a “he.”
Then, when I think I was a sophomore in high school, I was at my cousin’s house and we were together in his basement and we got into an argument over the use of singular they. I don’t remember exactly how the argument started, but I do remember that I insisted that it was “wrong” to use they as a singular pronoun, because this was what all my English teachers had taught me. My cousin, on the other hand, maintained that it was perfectly acceptable.
The argument got very intense and, at the time, I honestly couldn’t understand why my cousin so stridently supported a grammatical usage that I earnestly believed was objectively wrong. He pointed out to me that phrases such as “he or she,” “she or he,” and “s/he” are exclusionary, because they don’t include people who identify as non-binary. This was something that I had never previously considered. In fact, I think that may have been the very first time I ever heard of the concept of non-binary gender identities.
I’ll be honest that I continued to use the phrase “he or she” for a while after that conversation, but, after that, I felt a lot less comfortable using it. What finally convinced me to stop using “he or she” and start using singular they was actually reading about the history of singular they. As it turns out, the pronoun has been widely used to refer to singular antecedents in colloquial English speech for nearly seven hundred years and it has been used as singular at some point or another by nearly every one of the most admired authors in the English language.
Introducing the long, illustrious history of singular they
The pronoun they did not exist in Old English. Instead, the third-person plural personal pronoun in Old English was actually hie. The pronoun they is actually derived from the Old Norse plural demonstrative pronoun þeir. It was first introduced from Old Norse into Middle English sometime around 1200 CE or thereabouts. Over the course of the next two hundred years, they gradually came to replace hie.
Almost as soon as they started being used as a personal pronoun in English, it started being used to refer to singular antecedents. It was also around this same time that English-speakers started to use the second-person pronoun ye, which had previously been an exclusively plural pronoun, as a singular pronoun in some cases.
The earliest use of a form of the pronoun they with a singular antecedent listed in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from the Cursor Mundi, a Middle English poem written sometime before the year 1325. The poem is a summary of the history of the world from a medieval Christian perspective. It begins with a prologue, which describes God’s creation of the universe. Lines 388–389 read as follows:
“Bath ware made sun and mon,
Aiþer wit þer ouen light.”
In case you’re having troubles understanding the Middle English orthography, here are the same two lines written with modernized English spellings:
“Both were made sun and moon,
either with their own light.”
The antecedent of their in this passage is the word either, which is singular.
ABOVE: The Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted c. 1511 by the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo
Technically, their is the possessive form of the pronoun, but use of the nominative form with a singular antecedent is attested nearly as early. The earliest occurrence of the nominative form they used to refer to a singular antecedent listed in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from The Romance of William of Palerne, a Middle English poem in alliterative verse that was written sometime between 1350 and 1375 as a translation of a poem in French that had been written a few centuries earlier. The relevant portion of the poem reads as follows in the original Middle English:
“þan hastely hiȝed eche wiȝt on hors & on fote,
huntyng wiȝt houndes alle heie wodes,
til þei neyȝþed so neiȝh to nymphe þe soþe,
þere william & his worþi lef were liand i-fere.”
This means, in Modern English:
“Then hastily hied each person on horse and on foot,
hunting with hounds all [through the] high woods,
till they approached so near to tell the truth,
there William and his worthy friend were hiding together.”
The antecedent of they in this passage is “eche wiȝt” in Middle English (i.e., “each person” in the Modern English translation), which is definitely singular.
ABOVE: Woodcut illustration from a French version of The Romance of William of Palerne dating to the sixteenth or seventeenth century
All the famous authors approve!
Now, chances are, unless you are a really hardcore fan of late medieval English literature, this is the first you’ve ever heard of either the Cursor Mundi or The Romance of William of Palerne—but singular they is also used in a few very old works of English literature that you’ve probably heard of at some point.
Today, the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (lived early 1340s – 1400) is one of the most famous authors ever to write in the English language and, believe it or not, he used the pronoun they to refer to a singular antecedent. In The Canterbury Tales, “The Pardoner’s Prologue,” the character known only as “the Pardoner”—a corrupt clergyman who uses forged credentials, swindles people by selling them fake relics, and is also heavily implied to be gay—describes how sinners come up to him and beg for forgiveness, saying in lines 97–100:
“And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame,
they wol come up and offre a Goddés name,
and I assoille hem by the auctoriee
which that by bulle y-graunted was to me.”
This means, in modernized English:
“And whoever finds himself out of such blame,
they will come up and offer a God’s name,
and I absolve him by the authority
which by that edict was granted to me.”
This passage is interesting because it uses generic he and singular they interchangeably.
ABOVE: Illustration produced in 1810 by the artist William Blake, depicting the Pardoner from Geoffrey Chaucer’s long narrative poem The Canterbury Tales
William Shakespeare (lived 1564 – 1616), who is probably the most revered author in the English language, uses the pronoun they to refer to singular antecedents in multiple places throughout his plays. For instance, Shakespeare most likely wrote The Comedy of Errors in either 1594 or 1595. At the beginning of Act IV, Scene 3, the character Antipholus of Syracuse walks on stage and declares:
“There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me
as if I were their well-acquainted friend;”
Shakespeare also uses singular they in his more famous plays. For instance, he does so in the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, which he wrote at some point between 1591 and 1595. In Act III, Scene 3, Romeo is with Friar Lawrence when an unknown person knocks at the door. Friar Lawrence says: “Arise; one knocks; good Romeo, hide thyself.” When the unknown person knocks again, Friar Lawrence says: “Hark, how they knock! Who’s there? Romeo, arise;”
Ironically, the same freshman honors English teacher who gave the lecture about how singular they is absolutely wrong also taught us Romeo and Juliet. One wonders if maybe she should have read the play a bit more carefully.
Although these examples from The Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet are the most often cited examples of instances in which Shakespeare uses singular they, they are certainly not the only instances. If you search his works, you’ll find plenty of other examples that are less often cited. For instance, he wrote the comedy Much Ado About Nothing in either 1598 or 1599. In Act III, Scene 4, the character Margaret declares: “God send every one their heart’s desire!”
ABOVE: Screenshot of Leonard Whiting as Romeo and Milo O’Shea as Friar Lawrence in the 1968 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zeffirelli
Chaucer and Shakespeare aren’t the only ones who have used they to refer to a singular antecedent. The King James Version (KJV) of the Bible, which was first published in the year 1611, also uses singular they. For instance, in the KJV’s translation of the Book of Deuteronomy 17:5, God commands:
“Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.”
The KJV also presents Jesus as using singular they. In its rendition of the Gospel of Matthew 18:35, Jesus says:
“So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”
Many English teachers are devout Christians and even those English teachers who are not generally have a great deal of admiration for the language of the King James Version. The fact that the KJV uses singular they therefore means quite a lot.
ABOVE: Illustration by the French artist Gustave Doré (lived 1832 – 1883) depicting Jesus and the disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath
Proscription of singular they
At this point you may be wondering: “If singular they has been around for nearly as long as the pronoun they has existed in English and it is used so routinely by so many different authors, how and when did people ever come to consider it ‘wrong’?”
The answer to this question is that, starting in the eighteenth century, a bunch of extremely stuffy, elitist grammarians who had been extensively schooled in the Latin language started trying to impose a bunch of prescriptivist rules onto the English language from the top down, based on what they thought was “rational” and “logical.”
These grammarians naturally took great exception to the use of singular they, because they believed that it was wrong to use a grammatically plural pronoun to refer to a singular antecedent (even though these same grammarians generally had no problem with using the grammatically plural pronoun you to refer to a singular antecedent).
These grammarians therefore insisted that, when talking about a person of unspecified gender, instead of saying “they,” people must always say “he.” Grammarians explicitly justified their preference for the masculine singular pronoun he over the feminine singular pronoun she and the neuter singular pronoun it by asserting that the masculine gender is inherently “more worthy” than the feminine and neuter genders and that it therefore supersedes them.
The very first person to write a comprehensive manual on rhetoric in the English language was the grammarian and rhetorician Thomas Wilson (lived 1524 – 1581). Wilson complains in The Arte of Rhetorique, which he published in the year 1553, about people who are so ignorant and unmindful that they sometimes list a woman before a man when speaking. He writes (on page 193 of this edition):
“Some will set the cart before the horse, as thus: ‘My mother and my father are both at home,’ even as though the goodman of the house did wear no breeches, or that the grey mare were the better horse. And what though it often so happeneth (God wot the more pity), yet in speaking at least let us keep a natural order and set the man before the woman for manners’ sake.”
This passage should give you some impression of just how obsessed early modern English grammarians were with justifying and upholding the patriarchal social order in all matters.
ABOVE: Portrait of Thomas Wilson, the author of The Arte of Rhetorique
Later statements about the nature of grammatical gender grow, if anything, even more explicitly sexist. For instance, the later grammarian Joshua Poole writes in The English Accidence, published in 1646:
“The Masculine gender is more worthy than the Feminine.”
This statement that the masculine gender is “more worthy” than the feminine soon became a standard line in English-language grammar books for both English and Latin. For instance, the Latin textbook The Catechism of Latin Grammar, Consisting of the Eton Accidence, with Easy Questions and Familiar Exercises for the Use of Junior Classes in Schools, published in 1815, makes a point to establish early on that the masculine gender must always be listed first, because it is “the most worthy.” The textbook states on page 67 in a question-and-answer format:
“Q. Which gender is the most worthy?”
“A. The masculine gender is the more worthy than the feminine, and the feminine is more worthy than the neuter.”
Even into the twentieth century, many students were taught that the masculine gender supersedes the feminine, using mnemonic phrases with sometimes creepy undertones, such as “the male embraces the female.”
ABOVE: Screenshot of the front cover of the textbook The Catechism of Latin Grammar, Consisting of the Eton Accidence, with Easy Questions and Familiar Exercises for the Use of Junior Classes in Schools
Non-binary they
Now, of course, the rules that grammarians tried to impose never reflected the way ordinary people actually spoke. In reality, even long after grammarians started proscribing singular they, most people continued to use it, despite the grammarians’ insistence on using he instead.
Now, traditionally, the pronoun they has been used to refer to a singular antecedent in cases where the antecedent’s gender is unspecified and it would therefore be misleading to use a gendered pronoun. The use of the pronoun they to refer a known, specific, singular person who identifies as nonbinary (i.e., neither female nor male) is a relatively recent linguistic development, but, contrary to what I’m sure my English teachers would insist, this does not mean that it is an illegitimate one.
All languages naturally and inevitably change over time. This is perfectly normal and there is nothing wrong with it. The English language in particular has changed drastically over the course of its long history. Geoffrey Chaucer himself, whom I quoted earlier, wrote in his poem Troilus and Criseyde, Book II, lines 22–28
“Ye knowe ek that in fourme of speche is chaunge
with-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
that hadden pris now wonder nyce and straunge
us thenketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so
and spedde as wel in loue as men now do
ek forto wynnen loue in sondry ages
in sondry londes, sondry ben usages.”
This means, in modern English:
“You know also that the form of speech is change;
within a thousand years, words, lo,
that had currency now wondrous, odd, and strange
we think them: and yet they spoke them so
and fared as well in love as men now do,
and to win love in sundry ages and
in sundry lands, sundry usages.”
As society changes, we are allowed to develop new uses for words to suit our new social and historical contexts. The new use of the word they to refer to a singular non-binary person is a natural extension of the word’s previous use to refer to a singular person whose gender is unspecified.
ABOVE: Portrait of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who agrees that languages can change over time
Growing acceptance of singular they even among stuffy grammarians
Now, in the twenty-first century, the use of the pronoun they to refer to a singular antecedent is starting to become grammatically acceptable again. Some of the most influential manuals of style are now starting to endorse singular they. In 2017, the Associated Press updated the AP Stylebook to say that it is acceptable to use the pronoun they as singular in some cases to refer to a person of unspecified gender or to refer to a person who identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.
In that same year, the seventeenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style was updated to say that it is acceptable to use the pronoun they to refer to a person who identifies as non-binary. The seventeenth edition of The Chicago Manual of Style also recognizes that singular they is widely used in colloquial speech to refer to a person of unspecified gender, but it still discourages authors from using the pronoun in this manner in formal writing.
The company Merriam-Webster is probably the best-known publisher of dictionaries in the United States and they’ve had the use of the pronoun they to refer to a singular person of unspecified gender listed in their dictionaries for years. In 2019, Merriam-Webster announced that they have added the definition of the pronoun they as a singular pronoun used for non-binary people to its dictionaries. The company explained this decision in a statement, which says:
“All new words and meanings that we enter in our dictionaries meet three criteria: meaningful use, sustained use, and widespread use. Nonbinary they has a clear meaning; it’s found in published text, in transcripts, and in general discourse; and its use has been steadily growing over the past decades. English speakers are encountering nonbinary they in social media profiles and in the pronoun stickers applied to conference badges. There’s no doubt that it is an established member of the English language, which means that it belongs in Merriam-Webster’s dictionaries.”
The Modern Language Association (MLA) held out for the longest time in its refusal to accept the use of singular they, but, finally, on 4 March 2020, they posted a statement on their website officially endorsing both the use of they to refer to a singular non-binary person and the use of the pronoun to refer to a singular person of unspecified gender. In reference to the latter use, their statement explains:
“Because it lacks grammatical agreement, this use of singular they has been considered a less desirable option than revising to use the plural or rephrasing without pronouns. But it has emerged as a tool for making language more inclusive (see ‘Guidelines’), and the MLA encourages writers to accept its use to avoid making or enabling assumptions about gender.”
“The following principles and examples show some techniques that can help writers avoid the unnecessary and discriminatory use of gendered pronouns. For generic uses, writers should not use he or she alone or alternate he and she.”
It seems that Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Merriam-Webster, and the Modern Language Association all agree that the pronoun they can be used as singular. If these authorities aren’t enough to persuade even the most stubbornly conservative English teacher, I don’t know who else I can cite.
ABOVE: Photograph from ABC News of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: Eleventh Edition, along with a phone displaying the online Merriam-Webster website, both of which now include the non-binary definition of singular they
Neopronoun alternatives to singular they
As a final remark, I feel I should note that singular they is not the only gender-neutral pronoun that is currently in use. Notably, many people have started using the gender-neutral neopronoun xe/xem/xyr. This pronoun follows a similar declension pattern to they/them/their, but it is grammatically singular and takes the singular verb form is. It is most commonly used by non-binary people. Other non-binary people prefer other neopronouns, such as e/em/eir, ze/hir/hir, fae/faer/faer, and ne/nem/nir, but these are generally more obscure.
Some people object to gender-neutral neopronouns, insisting that they are ridiculous, but I don’t think that this inherently the case. Many people who think that singular they is confusing because they is normally a plural pronoun and it takes a plural verb form may quite reasonably find xe to be a more appealing alternative. In fact, it was initially much easier for me to accept xe as a gender-neutral pronoun than singular they precisely for this reason.
Many people assume that gender-neutral neopronouns are a recent fad that originated within the past decade or so on Tumblr, but, in reality, they’ve been around in various forms for well over a century at least and the first neopronouns were actually not invented specifically for non-binary people at all.
In 1884, the American lawyer Charles Crozat Converse (who is otherwise known for having composed the music for the well-known Christian hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”) proposed the now-obscure gender-neutral neopronoun thon/thon/thons as a portmanteau of the words that and one.
ABOVE: Photograph of Charles Crozat Converse, an American attorney who coined the early gender-neutral neopronoun thon in 1884
In January 1890, a certain James Rogers wrote an editorial titled “That Impersonal Pronoun” in The Writer, a Boston newspaper, in response to Converse’s proposal of thon. In this editorial, Rogers proposed the gender-neutral neopronoun e/em/es. This neopronoun has been reinvented several times in various forms since then and some non-binary people still use variations of it today.
The pronoun xe, which is now the most commonly used neopronoun, has not been around for nearly as long as singular they, thon, or e, but, for a modern neologism, it actually has a fairly long history. The earliest recorded use of the pronoun xe was by Don Rickter in the Unitarian Universalist journal UU World, published by the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1973. This means that the pronoun xe is already nearly half a century old.
For comparison, the earliest version of the rainbow flag that is now universally associated with LGBTQIA+ rights was designed by the artist Gilbert Baker and first flown in 1978, meaning that the pronoun xe is actually five years older than the earliest version of the rainbow flag.
In short, people can have perfectly rational motivations for inventing neopronouns, they have been doing it for over a century, and there’s nothing inherently wrong about using them. Generally speaking, when talking or writing about a non-binary person, you should use whichever set of pronouns that person prefers. If the person in question prefers singular they, that’s what you should use. If the person prefers xe, e, thon, fae, or some other pronoun, then you should use that one.
I don’t think this is a convincing argument for the singular “they” as much as it is working backwards from the conclusion to find a justification. Languages constantly evolve and while etymology is interesting and enlightening, language is utilitarian and what matters is how clearly and effectively we can transmit information. For the vast majority of my life it has been understood by all that “They got into the car” means more than one individual entered a car. These days, not so much. In fact I recently read an article with similar language and I couldn’t understand if there was a typo, if multiple individuals entered the driver side, or if the gender of the “man” who entered the driver side was in question.
“He or she” was a fantastic win for my generation. It was gender-neutral (back when gender and sex were synonyms) and it was grammatically comfortable. Perfection until gender became a transcendental number. So now we have a clear need for a new pronoun and I think that is the best argument for… something… new. I don’t think that regressing to an archaic definition and overloading one of our most used words is a good path forward.
Finally the idea that everyone gets to pick their own pronoun and we must all be beholden to it is, in my opinion, unlikely to withstand the test of time. It is not practical nor is it comfortable for most people. What is more likely is that some small subset, possibly n=1, will become comfortable and be the accepted pool to draw from. Until then I think it’s worth considering that to some it is just as injurious to be forced to refer to another by an awkward and unnatural pronoun as it is for the other to be referred to by an accepted binary gendered pronoun.
A fact of life I have noticed and that not all seem to appreciate is that youth will get to create the world they live in during their twilight years but until then they must coexist with others who are the product of a different iteration of the culture. You won’t be able to change every mind and that’s not necessarily intolerable. We used to use the uncensored “n-word” in literature and quotations and roll our eyes at old grandpas who said they were going to n-rig whatever random broken essential thing in the house. You bide your time, teach your children differently, and eventually there is no one left saying things the old way. But leave space for old people to be their authentic selves which may authentically not be hateful, racist, and whatever-phobic even though they use words in ways the younger generations no longer feel are appropriate.
As an amateur linguist: in linguistics, pretty much anything that it’s used by (native) speakers is grammatically acceptable. Since singular ‘they’ is used, that makes is grammatically acceptable.
Agree with all your points, by the way.
Thanks for your input! I think that, if more English teachers knew about linguistics, many of them would teach grammar very differently. Unfortunately, English classes (or at least those here in the United States) are nearly always extremely prescriptivist and focused on “laying down the law,” rather than on promoting clear communication and understanding.
I will try to explain better what I mean (sorry, not native speaker): I really enjoyed your explanation of ‘singular-they’s history (I knew it dated back to the Middle English period, but I had only heard of Chaucer using it), but, in the end, the history of a term’s usage doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that it’s used. If people starting using, say, ‘raccoon’ as a first person pronoun, and it was a widespread and solidified use of the term, that would be a ‘correct’ word in linguistics, even if it hadn’t been used for a while, and its origins are ludicrous.
In fact, many etymologies are ludicrous or based on mistakes, like ‘bad’ coming from an Old English word for ‘effeminate man’, ‘Jerusalem artichoke’ being a misinterpretation of Italian ‘girasole’ (sunflower), totally unrelated to ‘Jerusalem’, and ‘ginkgo’ being a misspelling of ‘ginkyo’, but that doesn’t mean these words are not valid.
Also, I have quite an interest in Old English language and literature, so just a tip: if you use vowel length macrons in Latin, for the sake of consistency I would spell the third person plural pronoun as ‘hīe’ ^^
I grew up happily using the singular indefinite “they” in the 1960s. I don’t recall being taught it was wrong, though my wife does (Canadian school system), so I guess I’ve just forgotten. Anyways, nothing to with feminism; that part is a lie. And why am I not surprised to learn that the prohibition is another arbitrary rule foisted on us by the same Victorian Latinists who deprecated split infinitives and terminal prepositions? I’m surprised that the prohibition is still with us; I would have thought that grammatical prescriptivism would have been dumped in favour of a more linguistics-informed pedagogy by now (I mean, there was even a move to normalize Ebonics a couple of decades ago). Also, I want to normalize “themself” rather than “themselves” for the singular indefinite.
I’m not sure “they” works for non-binary people, though: in that case, there’s a definite individual, and it sounds wrong to me. It seems like one of the neopronouns might wind up winning out, but the social situation is still in flux, so in the meantime I’ll just try to respect people’s preferences.
You may very well become the youngest person to be declared a national treasure. They next time there is a call for nominations, I will nominate you.
Aw, thank you so much! That is so very kind of you!
I remain unmoved. “… each by their on light…” Neither one is masculine or feminine, unlike 90% of the cases we find in ordinary usage.
This whole tempest in a jam-jar came about because we were lectured that gender pronouns are the roots of all grammatical evil.
There are certainly cases where ‘their’ may be stretched (compressed) to the singular, but I believe a better approach would be to rewrite the sentence.
Etymology of ‘their’:
“Middle English, from their, pronoun, from Old Norse theirra, genitive plural demonstrative & personal pronoun;
Hi Spencer, I want you to know that I love your articles about linguistics, they may be my favourite ones. I’d love to see more of these in the future!
Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoy my work.
I generally don’t write as much about linguistics because I am not a linguist. The degree I am currently working on is in history and classics and, so far, I have only taken one class in linguistics at the university level. (It was a very introductory-level course my freshman year.) I do, however, have an interest in linguistics, so I do write about it occasionally.
What about using ye? A change of meaning but vaguely familiar to many people.
On another issue referring to this sentence. in c18th
a bunch of extremely stuffy, elitist grammarians who had been extensively schooled in the Latin language started trying to impose a bunch of prescriptivist rules onto the English language from the top down, based on what they thought was “rational” and “logical.”
Does this include Webster who I think removed the u from colour for no good reason.
Should it be acceptable in America to spell this word, and other missing u words according to preference?
Thanks for this Spencer–another fascinating journey into both the past and the future. I have a non-binary child and strangely enough, I’ve found that training my 60 year-old brain to use “they” to refer to that child really helped me see them differently. I could look past the gendered expectations I had about them and see them more objectively.
I understand what Rick is trying to say–no doubt most of us who struggle with new language are well-intentioned. But we are also perhaps overly sensitive. We act as if we’ve been accused of a crime, when perhaps all we’re being asked to do is make a slight adaptation. For me using “they” is like working to pronounce an unfamiliar name correctly. Both are tasks of civility that seem important to me.
It’s strange that people, even professional linguists, try to legitimise something they consider correct by digging into the history of a language. Why not just say: I think the word X in the sense A is apt, and there is some currency there—therefore we should be allowed to use it as such.
In languages that have a long written history (like English) one can find grounds for myriads of linguistic positions by choosing the “correct” examples to buttress one’s view. There is nothing wrong if one likes the singular “they”. Just use it, and if the topic arises in conversation, say that you think it’s a good word to be used like this and many other people use it so as well. Then continue using it in such a way. End of discussion.
But winnowing out examples to support positions one happens to like, as if to prove something, is silly. I could pick many examples from even good writers, such as Shakespeare, that vast majority of English speakers today are very likely to dislike. The only reason for doing a dig into the history of a language should be interest in the history of a language.
Whether “they” is a good word to describe a non-binary person or not, your arguments have some weight. Nevertheless, my automatic correction program insists that I should change “they is” by “they are” unless I explicitly surround “they” with double-quotes.
But, I would like to suggest an even more precise description of the person we are talking about in these sentences:
The woman-woman is going to the movies. Here, woman-woman means someone that was born a woman and remained a woman.
The woman-man is going to the movies. You got the idea.
Good work! Keep going!
Celso, taking what you say at face value, there is already term for a person whose gender matches their biological sex: “cis-gender” (as opposed to “trans-gender”). So in your example, “woman-woman” would be “cis-woman”. It makes me think of “Cis-Alpine Gaul” vs “Trans-Alpine Gaul.”