Gender neutral pronouns are just so much more convenient; I tend to use them even when I know someone’s gender. I do wish English had some common-use ones that were explicitly singular, though.
Dude is supposed to be gender neutral and singular.
Still, maybe don’t. Not everyone agrees with the gender neutrality of “dude”. How many dudes have you slept with?
Ahah, you changed it plural which genders it. It’s dudes and dudettes in that case.
Did you see that dude I slept with last night?
Totally different now that it’s a singular.
Yeah language sucks.
nah i still see “i slept with a dude” as “i slept with a man”, sorry
maybe it’s the article that makes it seem masc? A dude, vs “hey, dude!”
I think it’s the difference of referencing another person using the word “dude” vs talking to a person and calling them “dude”
Hey dude, don’t make it bad.
Take a sad song and make it better.
Well contextually you would know who the person was talking about…
If you saw a woman and confused it with a man because of word, that’s on you mate. There’s another gender neutral and singular term.
Four. Will be five if my Grindr match pans out tonight.
Whoah! That’s a personal question I don’t feel like would reflect accurately my life if someone knew. There’s more to me than my body count. I contain depths and multitudes outside of the number of people I have slept with!
280ish. But there’s more to me than that!
i think there is alot to be said about the influence of patriarchy on masculine words becomming applied to everyone. men being seen as the norm and all that…
You’re correct. But also it’s a nice word. Easy to say and very casual.
Oh man, I’ve slept with like 10 dudes, 4 guys and 6 gals.
In my area “dude” is really gender neutral in most cases.
Regional dialects and all that.
Funnily enough so is “man” in a lot of cases.
For example: “Man I don’t know what’s going on anymore.” In this case “man” is less a reference to anyone in any specific way and more like an exasperation (like fuck, shit, hell, etc) and is a really common usage.
Edit: As an example of it’s gender-neutralness, “Fuck man, chill it’s just the wrong order.” In this case “man” is often used in a gender neutral way when referring to a specific person. Also man in this case can be swapped with “bro” and “dude”.
Regional dialects can get really weird in some cases, we use the same words but the meanings can be so different.
Language is a beautiful tangled knot that depending on which side you’re looking at it from it can change so much.
“man” used to mean person, it was gender neutral. In fact the root “men” just meant “to think”, so a man could be any sapient being.
It was only changed several hundred years ago. “mankind” and other similar universals were meant to represent every human and became exclusionary only under patriarchal interpretation. “mankind” of course endures as universal, but we see lots of “firewoman”, “mailwoman”, etc., where the language becomes fundamentally gendered.
Totally agree. I think half the problem is that English is a stupid language at times. I have no problem with gender neutral terms but the plural nature of “they” makes my 54 yo brain hurt. I have the same issue with the word data. “The data are” sounds awkward to me.
You use singular they every single day or at most every single week and you have for your entire life and so did all of your English speaking ancestors including middle English.
'how far out is the pizza guy’s ‘they’re 15 minutes out’
‘my coworker was a pain in the ass today’ ‘what they’d do this time?’
‘i think my doctor is famous’ ‘oh what’s their name?’
They was singular before it was plural, and it’s singular use is still one of the most common pronouns in English.
Every example you provided was extremely unambiguous and without anything that might require distinction between singular and plural. Often language isn’t that simple. For example, “Fion had finally joined the party and they were happy about it.” Who does “they” refer to in that context? Yes, you can write/speak your way around it, but that adds extra difficulty that isn’t suited for casual speaking/writing. That is why people (who aren’t transphobes) don’t like it as a pronoun and would rather have a new word.
In your sentence they unambiguously refers to fion. It’s really not that hard for a fluent speaker. I’m not a native and this shit is simple, it’s unwritten but innately known like the order of adjectives when multiple are present.
When I was writting that, I assumed it was about the party, so clearly not so unambiguous. It could conceiveably refer to either - doubly so in casual speech where rules are bent. Fill up a books worth of text about a character using they/them pronouns (esspecially written by a bad writer) and you get confused often.
To be clear, in ideal English, its easy to use. Most English is not ideal, with words being changed, dropped, reordered, ect. based on the speaker or writer’s whim in the moment. All that is before factoring in regional varients of English.
Shitjustworks not knowing what they’re talking about and being transphobic, classic
Yes. Criticsm of the English language for not better supporting non-binary people. So transphobic. By advocating for the creation of a new non-gendered word, I’m not advocating for a more inclusive language, I’m actually part of a conspiracy with anyone who ever supported or used pronouns like “Xer”, “Zer”, and “Hir” to destroy trans rights.
Also, you’re accusing me of not knowing English, when its literally my first and only language. If that is your rebuttal, clearly you don’t have much to back up your beliefs.
Edit: and when I went to your profile to check for qualifications, literally the top one is admitting to being a hexbear user. You’re really singling out shitjustworks as problematic?
English being your first and only language isn’t much of a brag when half this country can barely read lol. And yeah I’ll happily call out your terrible instance, it’s full of transphobes that your admins refuse to do anything about.
Maybe you should just listen to the people that identify that way and use these pronouns in their lives and don’t have problems. I’ve read 2 trilogies recently, both worlds having an additional gender that uses they/them pronouns, one of the series has them as a POV character. Not confusing at all and one book of it makes you use to it real fast
“the data are” also sounded odd to me when I first heard it. After practice it became fine. Now I see it as a green flag that someone may be scientifically literate.
i think its mostly an issue with not being used to it. “you” is both singular and plural as well and we manage fine. “we” is plural but it does not distinguish between inclusive and exclusive “we”. arguably those cases are more rarely relevant, and honestly id prefer if all of them had solutions, but i think we can handle it once we are used to it, or solutions will develop.
btw not trying to be antagonistic here, just sharing my thoughts :3
No I totally agree. This really wasn’t a thing for my generation so it just feels weird. And I’m talking about the language aspect only. I’m totally cool with people being who they are.
I just wish there were better alternatives to convey the same meaning without these overloaded English terms. English is just an amalgamation of weird grammar and vocabulary from at least three major languages plus I’m old and change is hard.
I do wish English had some common-use ones that were explicitly singular, though.
In the long run I predict that “they” will follow the same path as “you” - it’ll become increasingly more associated with the singular, until it’s the default interpretation. I also predict that both “they” and “you” will eventually require a pluraliser to convey the plural.
“Vos” (you, singular) in Rioplatense Spanish followed a similar path.
If that’s correct, eventually there’ll be explicitly singular second and third person pronouns.
my prediction is for th’all and y’all or just thal and yal in the long run
I have a soft spot for ‘yous’, personally.
youse guyseses
My first bet is roughly in this direction, too.
I tend to use “mates,” as “y’all” just doesn’t really agree with me.
how does that work?
“could y’all please help me” -> “could mates please help me”?Could I get some help, mates?
you dont need the word mates in that sentence ?w?
and it wouldnt work in like so many situations.
not saying you cant use it, but it doesnt seem like an adequat plural you
Well, I guess the need for “y’all” may just may depend on the user’s desired level of informality when talking/writing. (To me personally, I just don’t like using it as it just sounds wrong to me.)
Not outside of the US…
Most people’s English is more closely linked to American English anyway, or otherwise follow their own development path
And especially in the age of the internet, where language changes quickly spread globally
Do we currently have an explicit pluralizer for they?
I think that “all” is evolving in this direction. It was already used as an explicit pluraliser for “you” (alongside “guys”, -s, and others); and now I’m seeing “they all” more and more across the internet, even in situations where the “all” clearly does not convey “every single one of them”.
Just keep in mind that this is anecdotal from my part, not backed up by hard data.
Theys
We can thank Harry for this one
(TV;DW: them’ll)
Yeah, I hate “xer” and “xe”
I tend to defer from using those when I can just use the person’s name or the ungendered pronouns. To me, when I see those besides someone’s name, it just means that they don’t want to be labeled as any gender.
Though, on that note. I honestly never really understood the purpose of people using zhey/zhem/zheir when they/them/their is already neutral.
I would totally use xe/xer if doing so wouldn’t be hugely distracting from whatever topic I’m actually talking about, those words have a nice scifi vibe to them.
If that is what we come to as a society I’m game. If I said that in public today most wouldn’t know what I’m talking about
xer/xes
The pronoun for when you’re a total game freak
I believe I read somewhere that the singular for “they” used to be “thy”, but that makes language sound terribly old. Doubt it’ll get picked up in the mainstream
‘Thy’ is the disused informal ‘your’. There’s ‘thou’/‘thee’ but that’s still second-person.
Interesting! Do you have any etymological sources that go into this more? I’d be curious to learn
This looks like an alright starting place:
I think “thy” is singular for “your”, “thou” would be singular “you”.
Familiar rather than singular. You wouldn’t use thee and thou on someone of higher station, you’d use singular you and and singular your (QE2 used singular “we” in the same mold)
I think you have it backwards. A lot of languages (including mine) use some form of plural to address people at a higher station, which isn’t really a thing in Egnlish any more since it uses “you” for both singular and plural, but “thy” and “thou” is 100% singular - you would never use these words when addressing a group of people, no matter how familiar or above them in station you are.
Yeah that is correct, I was only describing singular usage. It is commonly believed by English speakers that thee, thou, thine were formal or that you and your are newer
Really we dumped the informal words and started addressing everyone as if they were due respect of rank or station
I also make a point of saying y’all to include the 50% of humans without cocks.
What about the 99.99% of people who aren’t hillbillies?
