Non-standard pronouns in writing

[Red Fel]

I'm sorry, "new"? "They" has been used as a singular pronoun for individuals whose gender is unknown (or in this case, both/neither) in English at least for 600 years. It predates modern English. It is hardly a modern development.

"And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come up…" ~Chaucer

GW

"New" in terms of "not in current use." Currently, in traditional English grammar, "they" is a plural. This usage, however, is a singular.

It is not "new" chronologically - as you have noted. Nor is it "new" unofficially - people have misused "they" grammatically for years. But this specific usage, at this specific time, is reasonably novel.

Not necessarily modern. But novel.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

"New" in terms of "not in current use." Currently, in traditional English grammar, "they" is a plural. This usage, however, is a singular.

Again, it is in current use, and has been for 600 years. If you cared to search, I'm sure you could find examples of "they" as a singular pronoun every year going all the way back. There is nothing novel or special about using "they" in this context.

people have misused "they" grammatically for years.

No, they haven't, because using "they" as a singular pronoun has never been wrong.

GW

[Fyraltari]

Yes, but that's because you are using formal language. In everyday conversation, you probably would use "tu" rather than "vous", which would give away that you're talking to a single individual rather than a group.

Depends on the person really, I wouldn't use "tu"with my boss, my teachers or a stranger, even in informal situations. Switching pronouns also have subtler meanings as indicators of a (strong) change in a relationship.

But really, I was exaggerating for effect. I know every language can be put in a position where context would be required to understand how many people are being talked to. Western languages, for example, do not have a way to distinguish between a group of two people versus three or more, as other languages do. Adverbs instead would need to be included in the sentence to give that context. English simply goes a step further and doesn't distinguish between one and many. It's hardly a difference.

Well you still have some conjugation, give it a century or two and then you will truly not distinguish noun numbers.

You wondered what it's like to talk to people that don't have a a gendered language. Now, English already being fairly ungendered (compared to, say, French), that might be hard to find. But, for example, you are completely used to verbs having a time-dependent conjugation system that you probably don't even realize that you are shackled by it. So if you want to test what it is like to talk to someone who has a language unshackled by such a limitation, find a Chinese speaker, and ask them about how that language manages without requiring verbs to be time-conjugated, and how that affects their overall view of the world.

There are endless ways in which your language, no matter which one you happen to use, limits your way of thinking, because you think in that language, and if the language lacks a way to form a sentence, you have a hard time to think about that. As was exemplified in the video, in English you can't form a sentence about a person and dancing that is not placed in past, present or future tense. Learning other languages is enormously helpful in examining these ideas that you couldn't otherwise. It is posited, with a certain degree of sense, that this is the reason why bilingual+ speakers are far less likely to suffer from Alzheimers: their brains are wired for multiple languages, which means they have multiple pathways to examine the same concepts, one for every language, which gives their brains a resilience against some of those pathways failing.

Grey Wolf

Speaking of aliens and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, have you (general you ) seen Arrival? It's really good.

[jayem]

Jekh was so taken aback at the crew's display of indiscipline. They were so flabbergasted, in fact, that for a second their formal overalls slipped from their crestal flumbars, which would have caused quite the shock, had they not caught it in time.

You do have a slight potential for confusion when then dealing with any groups.

This is of course true with he&a man, she&a lady, it&a lamppost, they(grp)&anything plural. However, at the point where normally context might make things clearer, the false reading may seem more dominant.

Example with a different pronoun (edited to rename famous 5, which rather spoils it).

As Anne returned the rat to Rick, he said "thanks for giving him back".
As Anne returned the rat to Rick, she said "thanks for giving him back".
As Julian returned the rat to Rick, he said "thanks for giving him back".
As Anne returned the rat to George, she said "thanks for giving him back".

The first is in theory clear, the second is counter-intuitive and the pronoun use over-rides the context, the third a bit ambiguous (but assuming the intuitive reading is meant, the reader will probably(!) guess correctly), the fourth is a little deceptive...

"And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, They wol come up…" ~Chaucer

I thought Chaucher used he/her/hem (which is really confusing)

[SirKazum]

"New" in terms of "not in current use." Currently, in traditional English grammar, "they" is a plural. This usage, however, is a singular.

Yeah... no. Sorry, I'm gonna have to side with Grey_Wolf_c here. And even if you discount the use of singular "they" for unknown or indeterminate persons (which a lot of people who rile against "they" seem to forget), and focus just on non-binary / genderqueer usage, that's hardly a novel thing I'm making up for my book. There's well-established usage, which is why I'm asking here rather than just deciding whatever. And, in either case (again, including unknown/indeterminate referents, which is a very mainstream and traditional usage), singular "they" has always conjugated the verb as plural. If you think that sounds strange... remember that you think that. It's not "you thinkest". Nor "you art", "you wast" and so on. "You" has been doing that "singular meaning, plural grammar" trick forever, and nobody bats an eye. Which is why I particularly like singular "they", in fact - it's a solution that's admirably well-supported by "mainstream" English grammar. Try talking about people without pegging them as either male or female in pretty much any Romance language, for example.

You do have a slight potential for confusion when then dealing with any groups.

This is of course true with he&a man, she&a lady, it&a lamppost, they(grp)&anything plural. However, at the point where normally context might make things clearer, the false reading may seem more dominant.

This reminds me, I've seen an article somewhere (haven't saved it anywhere, sadly) that says that grammatical gender basically exists in order to provide a resource to differentiate between persons being referred to - while hardly covering all situations, it does help. Coming from that standpoint, it makes sense that "gender", in a grammatical sense, has nothing to do with male vs. female, and other categories may be used instead. Hell, in English, you have a third gender with "it", although it has very little grammatical effect (especially since pretty much nothing other than pronouns flexes by gender in English). Other languages with stronger gendering (in common nouns, adjectives, even verbs etc.) may also have genders other than male and female, most commonly some form of neuter used for inanimate objects or animals (similar to "it"), but some languages have several grammatical genders for stuff like animals, plants, places and whatever.

Along these same lines, if/when I ever get around to creating languages for these fictional races (conlangs are another thing I like), I may also give genders to languages of species that have no "reproductive" gender. I'm thinking maybe distinguishing between people who are close by (or closer) vs. distant (or farther). That sounds like a good distinction to make for practical purposes. Maybe there would also be different "genders" for objects and places.

[Malimar]

Along these same lines, if/when I ever get around to creating languages for these fictional races (conlangs are another thing I like), I may also give genders to languages of species that have no "reproductive" gender. I'm thinking maybe distinguishing between people who are close by (or closer) vs. distant (or farther). That sounds like a good distinction to make for practical purposes. Maybe there would also be different "genders" for objects and places.

I recall once defining the several genders of a language, and they had separate genders for: people, weapons, food, qualia, and everything else. It was a plot point that a certain ancient artifact usually holds the weapon gender in ancient texts but in one important passage the artifact holds the people gender and its "user" holds the weapon gender.

[Ibrinar]

Not sure how well that works for differentiation purposes. If you talk about others situations where they are all at a similiar distance level to you are rather common.

Also that reminds me of the japanese works koko,soko, asoko first for something near me second for something near the person I am talking to third basically "over there".

[SirKazum]

Not sure how well that works for differentiation purposes. If you talk about others situations where they are all at a similiar distance level to you are rather common.

Also that reminds me of the japanese works koko,soko, asoko first for something near me second for something near the person I am talking to third basically "over there".

Japanese is an inspiration for that, yes

As for situations where you're talking about people who are all indeterminately distant (i.e. most cases when you're talking about people not present at the moment), I'm thinking those distance-based genders might acquire secondary meanings similar to "this" and "that", where their "distance" is relative to how recently they've been mentioned in conversation, or how close they are to the situation at hand in an abstract way, stuff like that. As long as there's a grammatical way to distinguish between any two given persons (and not, say, between a person and an object), because I imagine that's what's most necessary from a practical standpoint.

[JulieVarnell]

As far as I know, there are xe/xer pronouns. I am not very familiar with them but I know they are used nowadays.

[Ibrinar]

Imo xe xem xer are bad choices, they sound obviously artificial to me and if you want to add neutral pronouns they should sound more natural to have some chance of being accepted into normal speech. But english isn't my mother tongue so I might be misjudging it. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appen...utral_pronouns here is a whole list of such ideas. I kinda like per though per is a word already.

[Eldan]

That just reminds me of how I once read like three chapters of a Sci Fi novel wondering what the heck a Xe is, why the grammar is so weird and why the author was just introducing this alien or android or whatever else this was without explanation.