"Everyone wants their cat to succeed."
3So, “singular they” is a thing now and I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about this.
Also, to help with the Fun fact count: fuck.
- 15 comments, 35 replies
- Comment
So, “singular they” is a thing now and I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about this.
Also, to help with the Fun fact count: fuck.
I’ve been using that forever.
“Everyone wants his or her cat to succeed” sounds wrong to me.
I guess I can’t be part of the grammar police.
/giphy "grammar police"
Jokes on them, English is a descriptive language therefore I can flip them off and keep my thon.
And I will continue to act smugly superior to any idiot who thinks they should be singular. I mean honestly, can we stop fucking overloading English words? We already have a long list of English words whose definitions are contradictory. Do we really need to make the problem worse?
English language doesn’t even have cool features like differentiating “we” including the listener and “we” excluding the listener. How about we try to make the language better, not worse?
@DrunkCat Yes! Descriptivists rule, prescriptivists drool!
Gender non-conforming/enby folks need pronouns too, and while new ones have popped up (and many make use of them), singular ‘they’ is really important and preferred by many because people already understand it without making a big fuss. Because, as has been noted, we’ve been doing this in English for quite some time already! To quote an M-W article on the matter:
@brhfl Thon is better in almost every aspect and just as easily understandable. None of this matters though because literally now means figuratively.
@brhfl I’ve been using singular they since the 80s in elementary school (and pissing off my teachers) because I didn’t like assuming gender.
@DrunkCat
Literally Figurative present and reporting for duty.
@HemlockTea It has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with making English suck less.
@DrunkCat It had everything to do with gender for me.
@DrunkCat Isn’t Thon one of the gods from some such place in one of comic book universes?
@HemlockTea
@HemlockTea They should no longer be plural then. Quick, someone find another plural pronoun.
@DrunkCat
Thon won’t do much with its virtues if almost no-one knows about it or uses it. If thon hits the streets …
@DrunkCat suprious reasoning, considering you (singular)/ you (plural)
@HemlockTea No. You is singular, y’all is plural.
@f00l You know about it now, and knowing is half the battle.
/giphy the more you know
every western language has a singular you tu sabe
Actually everyone is a plural as it is used to refer to an aggregate of individuals. Where as every one is a singular construct so you would not use the plural they or their. SO NAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
@cranky1950 Actually “everyone” is singular. But I am not the one to say that English isn’t crazy. It’s a mad, mad world out there, with a lot of illiterate people, who can’t spell or talk right. Illiterate people make me sad. Now I am a sad panda.
If I say f u c k, will the counter pick it up?
@MehnofLaMehncha
The q that refreshes
Funny, folks get all up in arms over grammar. Someone somewhere is getting in a fist fight over the Oxford comma.
And yet, no one gives two flips that so many words are spelled as inefficiently as possible.
Just count to 10. How many of them are spelled backward?
Won.
Too.
3’s probably ok.
For
5’s fine.
6
7
Ate.
9
10
40% ? No wonder we suck at math.
@MehnofLaMehncha
You forgot sex, you perve.
I want to make some kind of comment about using English as a programming language because it came up again recently and it seems relevant, but making that comment amusing is beyond me at the moment. So y’all get an almost run-on sentence instead.
@walarney
That made my day. Very well played.
Language is what I say it is.
Ha ha ha, you read that, didn’t you.
@f00l For this answer, I’d give you a C. Maybe a C+.
@rockblossom
Is that a C letter grade or a C hex grade? Sew confused …
@f00l Or a middle C. But mostly a C+: better than a C but not as “objective” (or perhaps “objectionable”) as a C++.
@rockblossom
See the middle sea? +
Btw, I want my cat to fail.
/giphy cat fail
I’m very disappointed this is not a thread about cats.
But anyway, place me firmly in the they-can-be-singular camp. It’s widely used enough that it should be official. That’s how language evolves.
@katylava
It’s not about cats?
I say it’s about cats.
/giphy Cheshire Cat
As others have said, singular “they” has been used in English for centuries. It’s not new and it fills a useful role (which explains why English speakers innovated it in the first place), so I don’t really see what the issue is.
Linguists in general tend to take a fairly negative view of prescriptivists (sometimes called grammarians) and their ideas. Unfortunately for prescriptivists, they pretty much always lose in the end. The only time a language stops changing is when it dies.
@PoopFeast420 So you’re saying the prescriptivists should go back to Latin if they want to be happy?
@baqui63 Why stop there? Might as well go back to Proto-Indo-European.
@PoopFeast420 Can I get ice cream with my PIE?
@baqui63 Keep up those jokes and you’ll fit right in in linguistics departments : >
@baqui63
I must correct your usage. That’s PI, not PIE. In this instance.
I am the ruler of PI vs PIE vs pH vs PHI vs PHY vs PSY vs wha-de-fuk-evah.
Please re-submit with corrections by the deadline.
@f00l There’s pie?
@mehbee
/image key lime pie
@PoopFeast420 I read this comment and thought “@PoopFeast420 would really like that.” I was right.
@baqui63
Technically, if more than one individual uses a language, even if only as an object of academic interest, the parties can disagree. Or the language can be under pressure to change, even if only from its original use to the modern (mis)conception of its original form.
So the parties (if prescriptivists) are more safe and secure in knowledge of correctness if they refuse to deal with language at all.
@f00l Wish I could eat this pie…it looks really good. I love pie.
I’m certain OldCatLady could resolve this issue…
@eeterrific
@OldCatLady is - ah - somewhat detained, possibly, at the moment.
@f00l I was. Thanks for covering for me.
I try to think of it as being analogous to the royal “we”.
@InnocuousFarmer
Technically, an ego - esp my ego - is not equivalent to the “royal we” because the “royal we” is minuscule.