On Saturday, April 30, 2022 at 12:36:30 AM UTC-4, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I find the use of plural
> > pronouns to refer to singular individuals ugly and broken.
> Well, thou'rt wrong.

Interesting point.

Switching from the formal to the familiar form shouldn't
really change things, but it feels less wrong. Probably
because its use is rare, and most uses are singular,
while most uses of they/them are plural.

Pt

pete...@gmail.com <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Interesting point.
>
> Switching from the formal to the familiar form shouldn't
> really change things, but it feels less wrong. Probably
> because its use is rare, and most uses are singular,
> while most uses of they/them are plural.

It feels less wrong because you're _used_ to singular 'you.'
That's all there's to it.

Plural pronouns being used in a singular sense is a strikingly
common feature of many languages, English among them. It's fine
to _dislike_ particular forms of this pattern, but the pattern
itself is so well-established and so common that it gets silly
to argue against it as anything else than a personal sense of
aesthetics.

--
Leif Roar Moldskred

"pete...@gmail.com" <petertrei@gmail.com> writes:
>On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 7:12:03 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> In article <77f4f567-da21-4455...@googlegroups.com>,
>> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:=20
>> >On Friday, 29 April 2022 at 22:09:48 UTC+1, Wolffan wrote:=20
>> >> On 29 Apr 2022, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote=20
>> >> (in article<H3adnTAGqcJO2PH_...@giganews.com>):=20
>> >> > pete...@gmail.com<pete...@gmail.com> wrote:=20

>> And there's the old joke about the Yorkshireman saying to his=20
>> subordinate, "Don't tha thou me afore I thous thee!"
>
>Modern English is more or less stripped of formal/familiar forms.
>French still has vous/tu, and some other languages are far more
>elaborate, which makes it easy to unknowingly cause offense=20

Or knowingly cause offense.

Several languages have different verbs for 'to eat' (e.g. essen/fressen)
where one applies to humans and the other to animals, and are sometimes
used offensively.

On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:00:15 +0000, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:

> pete...@gmail.com <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Interesting point.
>>
>> Switching from the formal to the familiar form shouldn't really change
>> things, but it feels less wrong. Probably because its use is rare, and
>> most uses are singular, while most uses of they/them are plural.
>
> It feels less wrong because you're _used_ to singular 'you.' That's all
> there's to it.
>
> Plural pronouns being used in a singular sense is a strikingly common
> feature of many languages, English among them. It's fine to _dislike_
> particular forms of this pattern, but the pattern itself is so
> well-established and so common that it gets silly to argue against it as
> anything else than a personal sense of aesthetics.

My problem with it is it accentually strips they of all information. So
what is the point of even using it?

Magewolf <Magewolf@nc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> My problem with it is it accentually strips they of all information. So
> what is the point of even using it?

'Someone' contains even less information than 'they', since 'someone' might
also be me, or you (either a singular you, or a plural you, or a partition
of a plural you), so what's the point of using 'someone'?

--
Leif Roar Moldskred

On Saturday, April 30, 2022 at 2:13:00 PM UTC-4, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
> Magewolf <Mage...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> > My problem with it is it accentually strips they of all information. So
> > what is the point of even using it?
> 'Someone' contains even less information than 'they', since 'someone' might
> also be me, or you (either a singular you, or a plural you, or a partition
> of a plural you), so what's the point of using 'someone'?
>
> --
> Leif Roar Moldskred

What is the second or third person equivalent of the first person royal "We"?

"We are not amused!"
"I understand they are not amused"

John

John Halpenny <j.halpenny@rogers.com> wrote:
>
> What is the second or third person equivalent of the first person royal "We"?
>
> "We are not amused!"
> "I understand they are not amused"

The "institutional they"?

--
Leif Roar Moldskred

On 4/29/2022 2:59 PM, Wolffan wrote:
>> "Marion" may be ambiguous where you come from, but it's not in Oz, where
>> it's only a girl's name.
> how about Claire, Carroll, Jean, or Andrea?
>
>

I had a Carroll working for me once. He married a Carol. They had a
daughter, whom they named, of course, Carol.

On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 14:23:00 -0500, "Jay E. Morris"
<morrisj@epsilon3.comcon> wrote:

>On 4/29/2022 2:59 PM, Wolffan wrote:
>>> "Marion" may be ambiguous where you come from, but it's not in Oz, where
>>> it's only a girl's name.
>> how about Claire, Carroll, Jean, or Andrea?
>
>I had a Carroll working for me once. He married a Carol. They had a
>daughter, whom they named, of course, Carol.

Clearly child cruelty - what can of decent person deliberately
confuses their kid? My first name is my father's first name but my
mother insisted I go by my middle name (which in fairness was a
shortened form of HER father's first name though he went by his other
name)

For my brother's name they chose names completely out of the family.

With our children we kept all the names within the family though our
eldest got a double barreled name I told my wife (correctly as it
turned out) that she would likely want to use a variation of it by age
12 or 13 and that if so we should support her in that. Which is how
Mary-Beth became just plain Mary.

On 2022-04-30 9:59 a.m., Paul S Person wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:17:58 -0700, Dudley Brooks
> <dbrooks@runforyourlife.org> wrote:
>
>> On 4/29/22 7:40 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 10:04:59 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
>>>> On 2022-04-24 11:00 p.m., Robert Woodward wrote:
>>>>> In article <356cf0c5-8255-4326...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>>> Dudley Brooks <dudley...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 9:32:58 AM UTC-7, Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
>>>>>>> "Joy Beeson" wrote
>>>>>>>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2016 04:41:06 -0500, leif...@dimnakorr.com wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Wilst thou truly?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It has been centuries, but we still haven't learned how to use
>>>>>>> singular "you" without daily confusions and misunderstandings.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Singular "they" will be an even bigger disaster, and with less excuse.
>>>>>>> Jane Austen and her readers got on well enough (I dug out the quotations
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> Jim Baen).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Mike D
>>>>>> Yep. Singular "they" has a respectable 400-year history of use by the finest
>>>>>> writers of the English language. See Steven Pinker on this issue (and many
>>>>>> similar issues). We don't need to come up a "new" gender-nonspecific word
>>>>>> when we already have a time-honored one.
>>>>>
>>>>> IMHO, that is an indefinite "they". Example: "Everyone is welcome, but
>>>>> if they don't arrive early, we might not have room for them." "Everyone"
>>>>> might be treated as singular, but it can represent more than one person.
>>>>> The same is true with "everybody", "anyone", "anybody", "someone", and
>>>>> "somebody". My challenge (which nobody has answered) is an example of
>>>>> "they" being used for a specified named individual in a work written
>>>>> before 1970 (I might have used different dates, but none were for before
>>>>> my birth).
>>>>>
>>>> It is probably true that we can't find a named and specified individual
>>>> being called "they". Back then if a person personally knew a person and
>>>> still called them "them" it would be in a deliberate attempt not to
>>>> specify that they are a woman and that was a rare situation, and when it
>>>> arose, they would also avoid giving them a name that would be just as
>>>> big a giveaway. Science fiction authors would either settle for making
>>>> up a new pronoun (which was always annoying) or would go ahead and call
>>>> something that wasn't a man, a man. Or rarely a woman.
>>>>
>>>> But that's a big pile of "so what?". The leap from "unspecified person"
>>>> to "specified person of unspecified/absent gender" is not a big one.
>>>> It's the natural development of language as opposed to all the attempts
>>>> to make up new pronouns which have inevitably failed to gain traction. -
>>>> The argument that using a plural pronoun to refer to a singular
>>>> individual is a grammatical error in English is an automatic fail.
>>>
>>> Thus appears to be Proof By Vigorous Assertion. I find the use of plural
>>> pronouns to refer to singular individuals ugly and broken. We should do
>>> better.
>>
>> And what about Proof by Numerous Examples? Namely, Shakespeare, Jane
>> Austen, etc., etc., etc. did not find it ugly and broken.
>
> Let's see some quotes from "Shakespeare, Jane Austen, etc., etc.,
> etc." showing a single /named/ individual referred to as "they".
>
> They didn't find it ugly and broken because /they never encountered
> it/.

All individuals are singular, named or not. "Singular" and "individual"
are in fact synonyms.

On 2022-04-30 10:08 a.m., pete...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 11:18:03 PM UTC-4, Dudley Brooks wrote:
>> On 4/29/22 7:40 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 10:04:59 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
>>>> On 2022-04-24 11:00 p.m., Robert Woodward wrote:
>>>>> In article <356cf0c5-8255-4326...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>>> Dudley Brooks <dudley...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 9:32:58 AM UTC-7, Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
>>>>>>> "Joy Beeson" wrote
>>>>>>>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2016 04:41:06 -0500, leif...@dimnakorr.com wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Wilst thou truly?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It has been centuries, but we still haven't learned how to use
>>>>>>> singular "you" without daily confusions and misunderstandings.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Singular "they" will be an even bigger disaster, and with less excuse.
>>>>>>> Jane Austen and her readers got on well enough (I dug out the quotations
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> Jim Baen).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Mike D
>>>>>> Yep. Singular "they" has a respectable 400-year history of use by the finest
>>>>>> writers of the English language. See Steven Pinker on this issue (and many
>>>>>> similar issues). We don't need to come up a "new" gender-nonspecific word
>>>>>> when we already have a time-honored one.
>>>>>
>>>>> IMHO, that is an indefinite "they". Example: "Everyone is welcome, but
>>>>> if they don't arrive early, we might not have room for them." "Everyone"
>>>>> might be treated as singular, but it can represent more than one person.
>>>>> The same is true with "everybody", "anyone", "anybody", "someone", and
>>>>> "somebody". My challenge (which nobody has answered) is an example of
>>>>> "they" being used for a specified named individual in a work written
>>>>> before 1970 (I might have used different dates, but none were for before
>>>>> my birth).
>>>>>
>>>> It is probably true that we can't find a named and specified individual
>>>> being called "they". Back then if a person personally knew a person and
>>>> still called them "them" it would be in a deliberate attempt not to
>>>> specify that they are a woman and that was a rare situation, and when it
>>>> arose, they would also avoid giving them a name that would be just as
>>>> big a giveaway. Science fiction authors would either settle for making
>>>> up a new pronoun (which was always annoying) or would go ahead and call
>>>> something that wasn't a man, a man. Or rarely a woman.
>>>>
>>>> But that's a big pile of "so what?". The leap from "unspecified person"
>>>> to "specified person of unspecified/absent gender" is not a big one.
>>>> It's the natural development of language as opposed to all the attempts
>>>> to make up new pronouns which have inevitably failed to gain traction. -
>>>> The argument that using a plural pronoun to refer to a singular
>>>> individual is a grammatical error in English is an automatic fail.
>>>
>>> Thus appears to be Proof By Vigorous Assertion. I find the use of plural
>>> pronouns to refer to singular individuals ugly and broken. We should do
>>> better.
>> And what about Proof by Numerous Examples? Namely, Shakespeare, Jane
>> Austen, etc., etc., etc. did not find it ugly and broken.
>
> I see that we're addressing two separate questions.
>
> 1. Can you produce examples where an individual known to the speaker is referred to
> as 'them' or 'they'? I don't think you can, except in special circumstances.

I can produce examples where an individual known to the speaker is
referred to as "you" and that is no less the use of a plural pronoun to
refer to a single individual.

>
> 2. There are plenty of examples where the terms are used for a singular unknown
> or hypothetical person. I find that use infelicitous, since the number is ambiguous.
> I wish we had an agreed singular ungendered pronoun.

You would need two. One for "you" and one for "them".

In article <35e7ce93-3c7e-41e4-81ed-9f138e9ff221n@googlegroups.com>,
John Halpenny <j.halpenny@rogers.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, April 30, 2022 at 2:13:00 PM UTC-4, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
> > Magewolf <Mage...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > My problem with it is it accentually strips they of all information. So
> > > what is the point of even using it?
> > 'Someone' contains even less information than 'they', since 'someone' might
> > also be me, or you (either a singular you, or a plural you, or a partition
> > of a plural you), so what's the point of using 'someone'?
> >
> > --
> > Leif Roar Moldskred
>
>
> What is the second or third person equivalent of the first person royal "We"?
>
> "We are not amused!"

She who must be obeyed was not amused.
THEY were not amused.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com

On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:04:28 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

>"pete...@gmail.com" <petertrei@gmail.com> writes:
>>On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 7:12:03 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>> In article <77f4f567-da21-4455...@googlegroups.com>,
>>> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:=20
>>> >On Friday, 29 April 2022 at 22:09:48 UTC+1, Wolffan wrote:=20
>>> >> On 29 Apr 2022, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote=20
>>> >> (in article<H3adnTAGqcJO2PH_...@giganews.com>):=20
>>> >> > pete...@gmail.com<pete...@gmail.com> wrote:=20
>
>>> And there's the old joke about the Yorkshireman saying to his=20
>>> subordinate, "Don't tha thou me afore I thous thee!"
>>
>>Modern English is more or less stripped of formal/familiar forms.
>>French still has vous/tu, and some other languages are far more
>>elaborate, which makes it easy to unknowingly cause offense=20
>
>Or knowingly cause offense.
>
>Several languages have different verbs for 'to eat' (e.g. essen/fressen)
>where one applies to humans and the other to animals, and are sometimes
>used offensively.

Which can be hard to translate into, say, English, where both are
"eat".

Well, unless you go with, say, "pig out". But even that doesn't, in
English, convey the same insult.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 09:08:11 -0700 (PDT), "pete...@gmail.com"
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 11:18:03 PM UTC-4, Dudley Brooks wrote:
>> On 4/29/22 7:40 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>> > On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 10:04:59 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
>> >> On 2022-04-24 11:00 p.m., Robert Woodward wrote:
>> >>> In article <356cf0c5-8255-4326...@googlegroups.com>,
>> >>> Dudley Brooks <dudley...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> On Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 9:32:58 AM UTC-7, Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
>> >>>>> "Joy Beeson" wrote
>> >>>>>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2016 04:41:06 -0500, leif...@dimnakorr.com wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Wilst thou truly?
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>> It has been centuries, but we still haven't learned how to use
>> >>>>> singular "you" without daily confusions and misunderstandings.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>> Singular "they" will be an even bigger disaster, and with less excuse.
>> >>>>> Jane Austen and her readers got on well enough (I dug out the quotations
>> >>>>> for
>> >>>>> Jim Baen).
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> --
>> >>>>> Mike D
>> >>>> Yep. Singular "they" has a respectable 400-year history of use by the finest
>> >>>> writers of the English language. See Steven Pinker on this issue (and many
>> >>>> similar issues). We don't need to come up a "new" gender-nonspecific word
>> >>>> when we already have a time-honored one.
>> >>>
>> >>> IMHO, that is an indefinite "they". Example: "Everyone is welcome, but
>> >>> if they don't arrive early, we might not have room for them." "Everyone"
>> >>> might be treated as singular, but it can represent more than one person.
>> >>> The same is true with "everybody", "anyone", "anybody", "someone", and
>> >>> "somebody". My challenge (which nobody has answered) is an example of
>> >>> "they" being used for a specified named individual in a work written
>> >>> before 1970 (I might have used different dates, but none were for before
>> >>> my birth).
>> >>>
>> >> It is probably true that we can't find a named and specified individual
>> >> being called "they". Back then if a person personally knew a person and
>> >> still called them "them" it would be in a deliberate attempt not to
>> >> specify that they are a woman and that was a rare situation, and when it
>> >> arose, they would also avoid giving them a name that would be just as
>> >> big a giveaway. Science fiction authors would either settle for making
>> >> up a new pronoun (which was always annoying) or would go ahead and call
>> >> something that wasn't a man, a man. Or rarely a woman.
>> >>
>> >> But that's a big pile of "so what?". The leap from "unspecified person"
>> >> to "specified person of unspecified/absent gender" is not a big one.
>> >> It's the natural development of language as opposed to all the attempts
>> >> to make up new pronouns which have inevitably failed to gain traction. -
>> >> The argument that using a plural pronoun to refer to a singular
>> >> individual is a grammatical error in English is an automatic fail.
>> >
>> > Thus appears to be Proof By Vigorous Assertion. I find the use of plural
>> > pronouns to refer to singular individuals ugly and broken. We should do
>> > better.
>> And what about Proof by Numerous Examples? Namely, Shakespeare, Jane
>> Austen, etc., etc., etc. did not find it ugly and broken.
>
>I see that we're addressing two separate questions.
>
>1. Can you produce examples where an individual known to the speaker is referred to
>as 'them' or 'they'? I don't think you can, except in special circumstances.
>
>2. There are plenty of examples where the terms are used for a singular unknown
>or hypothetical person. I find that use infelicitous, since the number is ambiguous.
>I wish we had an agreed singular ungendered pronoun.

We have one: it.

Which may, I think, still be used when referring to, say, a baby of
unknown gender.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:57:47 -0000 (UTC), Magewolf
<Magewolf@nc.rr.com> wrote:

>On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:00:15 +0000, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
>
>> pete...@gmail.com <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Interesting point.
>>>
>>> Switching from the formal to the familiar form shouldn't really change
>>> things, but it feels less wrong. Probably because its use is rare, and
>>> most uses are singular, while most uses of they/them are plural.
>>
>> It feels less wrong because you're _used_ to singular 'you.' That's all
>> there's to it.
>>
>> Plural pronouns being used in a singular sense is a strikingly common
>> feature of many languages, English among them. It's fine to _dislike_
>> particular forms of this pattern, but the pattern itself is so
>> well-established and so common that it gets silly to argue against it as
>> anything else than a personal sense of aesthetics.
>
>My problem with it is it accentually strips they of all information. So
>what is the point of even using it?

It's actually worse: it /presumes/ to assign "they" to people who
might well prefer "he", "she", or something else.

It can be, IOW, quite offensive.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

On Sunday, 1 May 2022 at 16:05:24 UTC+1, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:57:47 -0000 (UTC), Magewolf
> <Mage...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:00:15 +0000, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
> >
> >> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Interesting point.
> >>>
> >>> Switching from the formal to the familiar form shouldn't really change
> >>> things, but it feels less wrong. Probably because its use is rare, and
> >>> most uses are singular, while most uses of they/them are plural.
> >>
> >> It feels less wrong because you're _used_ to singular 'you.' That's all
> >> there's to it.
> >>
> >> Plural pronouns being used in a singular sense is a strikingly common
> >> feature of many languages, English among them. It's fine to _dislike_
> >> particular forms of this pattern, but the pattern itself is so
> >> well-established and so common that it gets silly to argue against it as
> >> anything else than a personal sense of aesthetics.
> >
> >My problem with it is it accentually strips they of all information. So
> >what is the point of even using it?
> It's actually worse: it /presumes/ to assign "they" to people who
> might well prefer "he", "she", or something else.
>
> It can be, IOW, quite offensive.

Nonsense. If you or your wife parked your car there,
and they got a ticket, no offence arises. Except the
offence that the ticket is for.

On Sun, 01 May 2022 08:05:19 -0700, Paul S Person
<psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

>It's actually worse: it /presumes/ to assign "they" to people who
>might well prefer "he", "she", or something else.
>
>It can be, IOW, quite offensive.

Thereby proving what we all know which is that no good deed goes
unpunished...

On 4/30/22 12:23 PM, Jay E. Morris wrote:

> On 4/29/2022 2:59 PM, Wolffan wrote:
>
>>> "Marion" may be ambiguous where you come from, but it's not in Oz, where
>>> it's only a girl's name.
>>
>> how about Claire, Carroll, Jean, or Andrea?
>>
> I had a Carroll working for me once. He married a Carol. They had a
> daughter, whom they named, of course, Carol.

I knew a Sean married to a Shawn.

--
Dudley Brooks, Artistic Director
Run For Your Life! ... it's a dance company!
San Francisco

On 4/30/22 8:59 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:17:58 -0700, Dudley Brooks
> <dbrooks@runforyourlife.org> wrote:
>
>> On 4/29/22 7:40 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 10:04:59 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
>>>> On 2022-04-24 11:00 p.m., Robert Woodward wrote:
>>>>> In article <356cf0c5-8255-4326...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>>> Dudley Brooks <dudley...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 9:32:58 AM UTC-7, Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
>>>>>>> "Joy Beeson" wrote
>>>>>>>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2016 04:41:06 -0500, leif...@dimnakorr.com wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Wilst thou truly?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It has been centuries, but we still haven't learned how to use
>>>>>>> singular "you" without daily confusions and misunderstandings.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Singular "they" will be an even bigger disaster, and with less excuse.
>>>>>>> Jane Austen and her readers got on well enough (I dug out the quotations
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> Jim Baen).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Mike D
>>>>>> Yep. Singular "they" has a respectable 400-year history of use by the finest
>>>>>> writers of the English language. See Steven Pinker on this issue (and many
>>>>>> similar issues). We don't need to come up a "new" gender-nonspecific word
>>>>>> when we already have a time-honored one.
>>>>>
>>>>> IMHO, that is an indefinite "they". Example: "Everyone is welcome, but
>>>>> if they don't arrive early, we might not have room for them." "Everyone"
>>>>> might be treated as singular, but it can represent more than one person.
>>>>> The same is true with "everybody", "anyone", "anybody", "someone", and
>>>>> "somebody". My challenge (which nobody has answered) is an example of
>>>>> "they" being used for a specified named individual in a work written
>>>>> before 1970 (I might have used different dates, but none were for before
>>>>> my birth).
>>>>>
>>>> It is probably true that we can't find a named and specified individual
>>>> being called "they". Back then if a person personally knew a person and
>>>> still called them "them" it would be in a deliberate attempt not to
>>>> specify that they are a woman and that was a rare situation, and when it
>>>> arose, they would also avoid giving them a name that would be just as
>>>> big a giveaway. Science fiction authors would either settle for making
>>>> up a new pronoun (which was always annoying) or would go ahead and call
>>>> something that wasn't a man, a man. Or rarely a woman.
>>>>
>>>> But that's a big pile of "so what?". The leap from "unspecified person"
>>>> to "specified person of unspecified/absent gender" is not a big one.
>>>> It's the natural development of language as opposed to all the attempts
>>>> to make up new pronouns which have inevitably failed to gain traction. -
>>>> The argument that using a plural pronoun to refer to a singular
>>>> individual is a grammatical error in English is an automatic fail.
>>>
>>> Thus appears to be Proof By Vigorous Assertion. I find the use of plural
>>> pronouns to refer to singular individuals ugly and broken. We should do
>>> better.
>>
>> And what about Proof by Numerous Examples? Namely, Shakespeare, Jane
>> Austen, etc., etc., etc. did not find it ugly and broken.
>
> Let's see some quotes from "Shakespeare, Jane Austen, etc., etc.,
> etc." showing a single /named/ individual referred to as "they".
>
> They didn't find it ugly and broken because /they never encountered

You didn't specify "single *named* individual." You only said "plural
pronouns to refer to singular individuals."

--
Dudley Brooks, Artistic Director
Run For Your Life! ... it's a dance company!
San Francisco

On Saturday, 30 April 2022 at 16:25:59 UTC+1, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 30/04/2022 09.27, John Halpenny wrote:
> > On Saturday, April 30, 2022 at 12:29:09 AM UTC-4, grschm...@gmail.com wrote:
> >> On 30/04/2022 05:59, Wolffan wrote:
>
> >> I've met male Jean's and Andrea's, but they were all European first.
> >>
> >> Some became John or Andy or something completely different after a
> >> while, but not all.
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Gary B-)
> >
> > Jean is probably the most common man's name in Quebec. It is often modified, as in Jean-Phillipe or Jean-Luc.
> >
> > John ( the English version of Jean)
> In John Christopher's Tripods series:
> <http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?3098>
>
> The narrator is fleeing occupied England, heading towards
> Switzerland. As he's crossing France, he meets a French kid
> who joins him. The French kid is named "Jean-Paul", which
> the narrator pronounces "Bean-Pole". The only problem with
> that is they didn't introduce themselves by exchanging calling
> cards, so the narrator never saw the other kid's name in
> written form, he only heard it. As far as I know, a
> Francophone would pronounce "Jean" to rhyme with the English
> name "John".

I think it's a nickname, and not kind but it may
refer to his height.

In my schooldays, they called me "Carnage",
most unfairly but you weren't encouraged
to argue with teachers.

On Saturday, 30 April 2022 at 04:10:00 UTC+1, David Johnston wrote:
> On 2022-04-29 8:40 p.m., pete...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 10:04:59 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
> >> It is probably true that we can't find a named and specified individual
> >> being called "they". Back then if a person personally knew a person and
> >> still called them "them" it would be in a deliberate attempt not to
> >> specify that they are a woman and that was a rare situation, and when it
> >> arose, they would also avoid giving them a name that would be just as
> >> big a giveaway. Science fiction authors would either settle for making
> >> up a new pronoun (which was always annoying) or would go ahead and call
> >> something that wasn't a man, a man. Or rarely a woman.
> >>
> >> But that's a big pile of "so what?". The leap from "unspecified person"
> >> to "specified person of unspecified/absent gender" is not a big one.
> >> It's the natural development of language as opposed to all the attempts
> >> to make up new pronouns which have inevitably failed to gain traction. -
> >> The argument that using a plural pronoun to refer to a singular
> >> individual is a grammatical error in English is an automatic fail.
> >
> > Thus appears to be Proof By Vigorous Assertion. I find the use of plural
> > pronouns to refer to singular individuals ugly and broken. We should do
> > better.
> So what's your proposed substitute for "you" and how are you going to
> get people to use it? There aren't many attempts to prescribe "logical"
> speech that accomplish anything.

One?

Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> schrieb:
> On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:04:28 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
> wrote:
>
>>"pete...@gmail.com" <petertrei@gmail.com> writes:
>>>On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 7:12:03 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>> In article <77f4f567-da21-4455...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:=20
>>>> >On Friday, 29 April 2022 at 22:09:48 UTC+1, Wolffan wrote:=20
>>>> >> On 29 Apr 2022, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote=20
>>>> >> (in article<H3adnTAGqcJO2PH_...@giganews.com>):=20
>>>> >> > pete...@gmail.com<pete...@gmail.com> wrote:=20
>>
>>>> And there's the old joke about the Yorkshireman saying to his=20
>>>> subordinate, "Don't tha thou me afore I thous thee!"
>>>
>>>Modern English is more or less stripped of formal/familiar forms.
>>>French still has vous/tu, and some other languages are far more
>>>elaborate, which makes it easy to unknowingly cause offense=20
>>
>>Or knowingly cause offense.
>>
>>Several languages have different verbs for 'to eat' (e.g. essen/fressen)
>>where one applies to humans and the other to animals, and are sometimes
>>used offensively.
>
> Which can be hard to translate into, say, English, where both are
> "eat".

I've read one novel where the difference was actually explained
in English.

It also works the other way around - I tink it was in "Snow Queen"
where somebody says "Fate sends me" and the reply was "I hope not"?
That got a footnote from the translator explaining the pun.

On 28/04/2022 23.19, Dudley Brooks wrote:
> On 4/28/22 8:47 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Apr 2022 23:32:08 -0700, Dudley Brooks
>>
>> <dbrooks@runforyourlife.org> wrote:

>>> I have at least one friend who is a "they/them" and I respect *their*
>>> wish.  Or try to.  I do find it somewhat difficult.  But not because
>>> it's "ungrammatical" ... since I don't think it is.  Rather, because it
>>> means having to remember yet one more piece of information about
>>> (potentially) everyone you know.  It reminds me of a late eccentric
>>> friend of mine who had three different email addresses, all of them
>>> merely personal ... but his correspondents were supposed to remember
>>> which one was for discussing which subjects (and the addresses
>>> themselves gave no clue).
>>
>> Well, I suppose we could adopt the military approach -- name tags. Or,
>> rather, Preferred Pronoun Tags.
>
> Ha-ha!
>
> Once we get the electrodes installed in our brains, the Preferred Pronoun and everything else about the person will show up the moment we look at them.

Vernor Vinge had a much better, and less intrusive, idea that he
showcased in _Rainbows End_.

Contact lenses that worked as graphical displays for your portable
device. Combine them with a virtual keyboard, and you can discreetly
do a quick search on somebody and see that they prefer "ze" or
something.

(To be clear, this particular use case was not shown in _Rainbows End_,
only the hardware.)

--
Michael F. Stemper
What happens if you play John Cage's "4'33" at a slower tempo?

On Sun, 1 May 2022 16:52:54 -0700, Dudley Brooks
<dbrooks@runforyourlife.org> wrote:

>On 4/30/22 8:59 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
>> On Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:17:58 -0700, Dudley Brooks
>> <dbrooks@runforyourlife.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On 4/29/22 7:40 PM, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Friday, April 29, 2022 at 10:04:59 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
>>>>> On 2022-04-24 11:00 p.m., Robert Woodward wrote:
>>>>>> In article <356cf0c5-8255-4326...@googlegroups.com>,
>>>>>> Dudley Brooks <dudley...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 9:32:58 AM UTC-7, Michael R N Dolbear wrote:
>>>>>>>> "Joy Beeson" wrote
>>>>>>>>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2016 04:41:06 -0500, leif...@dimnakorr.com wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Wilst thou truly?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> It has been centuries, but we still haven't learned how to use
>>>>>>>> singular "you" without daily confusions and misunderstandings.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Singular "they" will be an even bigger disaster, and with less excuse.
>>>>>>>> Jane Austen and her readers got on well enough (I dug out the quotations
>>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>>> Jim Baen).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> Mike D
>>>>>>> Yep. Singular "they" has a respectable 400-year history of use by the finest
>>>>>>> writers of the English language. See Steven Pinker on this issue (and many
>>>>>>> similar issues). We don't need to come up a "new" gender-nonspecific word
>>>>>>> when we already have a time-honored one.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> IMHO, that is an indefinite "they". Example: "Everyone is welcome, but
>>>>>> if they don't arrive early, we might not have room for them." "Everyone"
>>>>>> might be treated as singular, but it can represent more than one person.
>>>>>> The same is true with "everybody", "anyone", "anybody", "someone", and
>>>>>> "somebody". My challenge (which nobody has answered) is an example of
>>>>>> "they" being used for a specified named individual in a work written
>>>>>> before 1970 (I might have used different dates, but none were for before
>>>>>> my birth).
>>>>>>
>>>>> It is probably true that we can't find a named and specified individual
>>>>> being called "they". Back then if a person personally knew a person and
>>>>> still called them "them" it would be in a deliberate attempt not to
>>>>> specify that they are a woman and that was a rare situation, and when it
>>>>> arose, they would also avoid giving them a name that would be just as
>>>>> big a giveaway. Science fiction authors would either settle for making
>>>>> up a new pronoun (which was always annoying) or would go ahead and call
>>>>> something that wasn't a man, a man. Or rarely a woman.
>>>>>
>>>>> But that's a big pile of "so what?". The leap from "unspecified person"
>>>>> to "specified person of unspecified/absent gender" is not a big one.
>>>>> It's the natural development of language as opposed to all the attempts
>>>>> to make up new pronouns which have inevitably failed to gain traction. -
>>>>> The argument that using a plural pronoun to refer to a singular
>>>>> individual is a grammatical error in English is an automatic fail.
>>>>
>>>> Thus appears to be Proof By Vigorous Assertion. I find the use of plural
>>>> pronouns to refer to singular individuals ugly and broken. We should do
>>>> better.
>>>
>>> And what about Proof by Numerous Examples? Namely, Shakespeare, Jane
>>> Austen, etc., etc., etc. did not find it ugly and broken.
>>
>> Let's see some quotes from "Shakespeare, Jane Austen, etc., etc.,
>> etc." showing a single /named/ individual referred to as "they".
>>
>> They didn't find it ugly and broken because /they never encountered
>
>You didn't specify "single *named* individual." You only said "plural
>pronouns to refer to singular individuals."

You mean, of course, whoever posted that statement.

It wasn't me.

But you are right -- I wasn't paying /close/ attention.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

On Sun, 1 May 2022 10:27:34 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, 1 May 2022 at 16:05:24 UTC+1, Paul S Person wrote:
>> On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:57:47 -0000 (UTC), Magewolf
>> <Mage...@nc.rr.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Sat, 30 Apr 2022 17:00:15 +0000, Leif Roar Moldskred wrote:
>> >
>> >> pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Interesting point.
>> >>>
>> >>> Switching from the formal to the familiar form shouldn't really change
>> >>> things, but it feels less wrong. Probably because its use is rare, and
>> >>> most uses are singular, while most uses of they/them are plural.
>> >>
>> >> It feels less wrong because you're _used_ to singular 'you.' That's all
>> >> there's to it.
>> >>
>> >> Plural pronouns being used in a singular sense is a strikingly common
>> >> feature of many languages, English among them. It's fine to _dislike_
>> >> particular forms of this pattern, but the pattern itself is so
>> >> well-established and so common that it gets silly to argue against it as
>> >> anything else than a personal sense of aesthetics.
>> >
>> >My problem with it is it accentually strips they of all information. So
>> >what is the point of even using it?
>> It's actually worse: it /presumes/ to assign "they" to people who
>> might well prefer "he", "she", or something else.
>>
>> It can be, IOW, quite offensive.
>
>Nonsense. If you or your wife parked your car there,
>and they got a ticket, no offence arises. Except the
>offence that the ticket is for.

Now try it with /named/ individuals.

And a better example: the "they" is superfluous; it is clear who got
the ticket (whichever of "you and your wife" did the deed) without it.
And, since it is "your car" that is ticketed, "you" would be the
better choice if a pronoun where needed. Switching person from 2nd to
3rd can give you whiplash!
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."