Grrl Power #1084 – Suprarenymer
In defense of whoever comes up with the codenames (or, supranyms) for Galytn supers, they do speak at least eight languages over there (at least they do in Mozambique) and that’s before introducing Alar and Chiktr. Presumably English is also spoken, as it is the official language of Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania, which are all neighbors. Someone in that environment might not understand all the subtleties of English, or at least, not all the subtleties of American English. Likely they have their own double meanings and word play.
It does make me wonder if in an environment where English is just one of many languages spoken, if it develops the same level of depth and word-play. I mean if everyone speaks 2-6 languages, and there’s a better way to say something in another language, it would mean that people aren’t trying to wring every last drop of utility out of their one and only option. I do wish I knew more than one language. I’ve made several attempts to learn Japanese because I’m a proper nerd, but without the immersion of being around other speakers, it was too much of an uphill battle for me. That said, what very little I do know about it is super interesting and really expands my understanding of how language can shape or limit our thinking. Think about the most obvious example. In English, we “love” our parents, siblings, pets, domestic partners, video games, cake, spending the weekend laying on the couch binging Swedish serial killer shows on Netflix, organizing tiny screws, etc. But those are all different kinds of love. At least, hopefully the way you love your favorite kind of desert is different than how you love your pet or all brunette women that remind you of your mother, or else there might be a Netflix special about you one day. I think English would be better if we had separate words for familial love and romantic love and culinary love etc, etc. Having only one word for all those concepts limits our thinking. As good as English is about roughing up other languages and shaking them down for spare verbs, we ought to keep an eye out for opportunities like that. Apparently Sanskrit had 96 words that meant “love” in one form or another. Let’s get to pilfering!
Oh, and also, we need a gender neutral pronoun besides “it.” Yes, I know, “they,” but personally I’m not impressed with they since it’s both singular and plural and that can lead to confusion. I’m sure the collective efforts of the English speaking world can come up with something better. We make up new words all the time and embiggen ourselves in the process.
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If you are not in an english class teaching , you dont need to correct people about proper usage of pronouns.
Its as obnoixous as pointing out wrong phrases that are often gotten wrong, such as “i could care less” etc.
Well, speaking as someone for whom english is his 2nd language, “i could care less” is a particularly obnoxious example because it was super confusing for a long time. I mean, it literately means the opposite of what you say.
That’s a side effect of another thing we english speakers often do, which is shorten words and phrases for one reason or another. (See Refrigerator -> Fridge is the best poor example i can think of off the top of my head.) It’s actually “I couldn’t care less.” but time and movies have widely spread the wrong usage for years.
That one is of particular disdain, especially for Aussies and Brits who have a history of shortening words and phrases, yet then the Americans go hatcheting off the important bits. (Of words… I mean, definitely of words.)
When Aussies and Brits do it, there’s a colloquialism, yes, but there’s also some sense to it. The American trope about dumbing down the language is only proven right by this example.
What the hael is wrong with ‘fridge’?
My kids razz me for calling it an icebox.
… Isn’t that the freezer part? o_O
Icebox was what refrigerators used to be called because the food was kept cold with huge blocks of ice instead of freon. Like on The Honeymooners.
Always thought that that was specifically for, well, freezing things, then they discovered that things placed near, but not in, kept cool without, well, freezing, and they eventually built a box around it to keep flies and aminals out
Nope, it was just for keeping things cool and preventing spoilage for a little longer where you didnt have a lot of electricity or access to freon.
Refrigerators were only invented for home use in 1913 (even though they were actually first invented for commercial use in about 1834 for making ice).
Freon wasn’t discovered until the late 1920’s, and at that point I’m guessing a lot of people couldn’t afford a home refrigerator. It wasn’t until the 1950s and 1960s that refrigerators started getting mass-produced. :)
You occasionally still see then in antique stores, at least in the southern US. It is often a large oak cabinet with three or four latching doors. They are insulated and often lined in porcelain or zinc. Even though they don’t serve the original purpose the oak cabinet and nickel plated hardware make an attractive piece of furniture. Well past WWII every small town had an ice house or ice plant where block ice could be purchased. At least in Southern Oklahoma there were places where you could buy block ice into the 1980s. I grew up hearing the word icebox from my parents. Growing up in rural Okalahoma in the 1930s my parents knew people who had refrigerators but out in the country electricity wasn’t common and iceboxes were.
Well, I COULD care less…but I rarely bother to….
As someone for whom English might as well be his 2nd language, but has spent a lot of time at it and has spoken with a ridiculous number of people trying to hone his language game, “I could care less” is a particularly egregious case because some people say it to mean that they actually have a capacity for less care than they currently have. That is, that they do care, at least a little. Maybe even enough.
Also, it’s a case of leaving out a not, which is one of the worst words to accidentally. It’s probably even worse to deliberately it out.
Communication is important, and I really wish people wouldn’t care less about it.
(◕_◕)
Don’t get me ^started^ on the misuse of the double_negative❗
you don’t need to have a degree to know things and be allowed to express opinions and share knowledge. your arguement is equivalent to telling someone not to teaach their homemade recipe because they are not a 5* chef.
you don’t need a degree to have knowledge and be able to share it or state your position.
your argument is the same as telling someone they are not allowed to share their cooking recipes because they are not an officially trained chef.
did i say you arent allowed to correct someone on grammer? I am just saying you are being obnoxious.
Using your example, i could be sharing my grandmas cookie receipe and you try to correct me by stating what a 3 star michillean cook would do.
Using phrases that make no sense (cake and eat it is another one) is *far* more obnoxious!
FINALLY!
That phrase is backwards anyway: you can’t eat your cake (or, original translation, bread) and still have it
actually, it’s ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too’ in that order, because in order to be able to eat a cake, you must first have a cake to eat.
But seriously. unless it’s a Black Forest cake, wouldn’t you rather have pie? :)
That’s why it makes no sense: because you have to have it in order to eat it, but once you have eaten it, you no longer have your cake
That is the point the phrase is making. Or is there some mangled version that has become common that you’re referring to?
This is correct. The whole point of this is you cannot possess a bright sparkly untouched treasure, and eat/consume/use it, too. The phrase makes perfect sense if you think of it in the manner it is meant to be used. You first have to have the billion dollars to spend the billion dollars, but you cannot spend the billion dollars and still have them.
Well, not without taking out some loans you might not pay back. The rich are evil that way.
By putting the cake first, and saying you can’t have it, gives the impression you can’t have a cake to eat it
For one thing, the cake doesn’t even have to be yours for you to eat it
“and” does not always mean “and then”, sometimes it means “and at the same time”, though even then the phrase only works if a partially eaten cake is not the same thing as “cake” (in the first part). Either way, at the very least the phrase is missing some words.
@damancy, no you did not and neither was I.
my point still stands though. even if what you know isn’t a field where you possess deep knowledge doesn’t make what you know any less irrelevant nor does it take away your right to disseminate your knowledge.
my point is that even though it can be annoying, it is technically not illegal nor wrong to impart information.
but that, of course is only a matter of opinion and i get the impression we are arguing about two different things…
So it’s obnoxious to:
Point out to someone that they’re about to crash and need to slow down if they are still going sixty and they’re WAY too close to the stationary car immediately in front? I thought it was called “saving your life and theirs”?
Say that your grandmas cooking recipe has so much salt in it, even though an Aussie raised on Vegemite alone would find it unpalateable and that your family enjoys it so much is because they were trained to enjoy it from birth?
Yeah, nah.
You don’t need to have a degree to know things, but if you’re trying to correct someone on the pronouns THEY use you’re not knowing things, you’re just being an obnoxious ass.
Don’t restrict learning to class, it is unhealthy and not how humans actually learn.
There are tons of gender-neutral pronouns beyond “it” and “they.” Nobody uses them because the ecological niche is already filled and there’s no reason to learn any of the new options that various people made up.
thon (third-person singular, gender-neutral, possessive thons, reflexive thonself)
1. (nonstandard, rare, see usage notes) they (singular). Gender-neutral third-person singular subject pronoun, coordinate with gendered pronouns he and she.
2. (nonstandard, rare, see usage notes) them (singular). Gender-neutral third-person singular object pronoun, coordinate with gendered pronouns him and her.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thon
I’ve always been fine with just he and she. And if I don’t know the gender, they (which can, in certain circumstances, denote a singular person). Such as if I don’t know if I should refer to someone as a he or she when relaying information, I use they because using they CAN be singular if you do not know/are not sure of the gender of the person to whom you are referring when trying to relay information. In general, linguistically speaking in a broader context of language in general, one can’t even always base it on the noun involved, because plenty of languages have gendered nouns without it meaning something bigger about that noun.
In french, table is feminine. La table.
Although table, when used for a different meaning, like a mathematical table, is masculine. Le tableau.
But that does not mean that tables are ACTUALLY females or mathematical tables is actually males. It’s just a naming convention to make a language understandable.
I’m not even sure WHY the different nouns have different genders. When I was learning French, the teacher didn’t actually have any explanation for that. You just had to memorize it. Same for when I learned Spanish or when I knew hawaiian. Hawaiian has two genders in language as well, not based on biological sex – the kino ‘o class and the kino ‘a class. As with French I have no idea why different nouns have different genders.
Technically speaking, ‘they’ can work for a singular if the speaker is not sure whether the person is male or female. It only defaults to he or she when you KNOW if the person is male or female. The confusion for people usually comes in when someone says they are one gender, so that (grammatically speaking at least, taking the politics and social issues out of it for the moment) the speaker should technically ‘know’ that they are that gender when referring to the pronoun. At which point it should default back to the he or she pronouns. From what little research I’ve done on the subject, stuff like ‘zey and ‘zem’ has been attempted to be used as a ‘third party gender neutral singular pronoun’ instead of they or them, which could work fine along the basic rules for english grammar, but then people who didnt seem to understand the underpinnings on why grammar works start overcomplicating it by adding stuff like ze and zer (which seems to miss the entire point of a third party gender neutral singular pronoun because now you’re just adding words in place of he and her for no logical reason). Then all those additional pronounds that have seemed to pop up on tiktok and reddit and other places. It makes things too complicated for the average person to just be able to deal with, where just adding a single example of a ‘gender neutral single person pronoun when you DO know the person’s sex’ that doesn’t seem dehumanizing (like ‘it’) would work much more understandable.
Again, from a political and social perspective on grammar. It seems like it would be easier to grasp for people who are not particularly involved in the whole gender.
I’ve never heard of ‘thon’ but upon checking, it basically means ‘being the one yonder’ – or simply put … ‘That.’ Which again sounds a little dehumanizing, just like ‘it’ sounds dehumanizing, at least in English. Because unlike a lot of languages, english does not have a masculine and feminine form for most words. Whereas English, like I think almost every other language, does have a gendered form for people (ie, pronouns). So in English, there’s a difference between referring to a person and referring to an object (people have pronouns, objects usually do not). While in other languages, pretty much everything has a ‘pronoun’ (la table, le tableau, la biblioteque, le musee, etc).
I know there are sometimes exceptions to this though, like how most ships and vehicles tend to be referred as she (“She’s a real beauty, aint she?”). I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head of objects being referred to as he but I’m sure there are some.
At the very least, either adopting a SINGLE word (organically, like most language evolves) for a non-gendered third person singular pronoun would make it a lot easier for people who are learning English when they come from a language which has a lot of gendered objects in the language. All the extra pronouns are overcomplicated even for people who already speak English (because it doesn’t feel like an organic evolution of language), and it does get confusing to relay information if you’re just using ‘they’ as the substitute when the speaker knows the people involved and is trying to relay information to a third person (unless the speaker just always assumes they do not know – like I did right here since I don’t know the gender of the fictional speakers that I’m referring to).
I remember knowing someone who generally referred to cars and planes as ‘he’, but ships as ‘she’. I seem to recall them saying this pronoun usage was just how things were done in their country. This wasn’t a native English speaker. I vaguely remember their accent, but I have no idea what language it’s associated with.
I’ve also known some particularly weight-sensitive people who were bothered by people referring to them with singular ‘they’. “I’m not that fat”, or maybe “I’m not *that* fat”, or “Oh god, am I really that fat?”, and even “Fuck, I *am* that fat! I am such a mess, I don’t know how you put up with me.” (Regarding the last of those, I hope she’s in a better place now. I didn’t ever really know her, I met her at a con one time, then learned she was gone at the next one. She wasn’t ever that fat. We just didn’t know her pronouns.)
As someone who’s not really ever fit in anywhere well, I’ve known a lot of trans spectrum people. This whole pronoun business is profoundly complicated and incredibly important to people. But a lot of them have admitted, if pronouns were limited to just indicating first, second, or third person, singular or plural, and formal or informal, with no genders or personhood indicated by *any* of them, they wouldn’t feel the need to complicate them. It’s less “I need a pronoun to express who I am” and more “these pronouns that I’m aware of as options all feel like they indicate things that I am not.”
Of course, my three dimensional array of gender neutral pronouns still have issues. Multiples would still want to be referred to with the plural versions of pronouns. There would still be people who would bristle about the existence of formal pronouns, or of informal pronouns, or people using the wrong formality to refer to them. If we simply didn’t have that axis, there would be people who would be bothered by the lack of that distinction.
But trying to move to such a system would not go over well. Using any of the current third person pronouns would be met with resistance from at least one group. Using any new third person pronouns wouldn’t be accepted by anyone happy with the “current” “two gender” system. Also, hopeless monoglots such as myself would struggle with it even if we wanted to embrace it.
In a sane world, it really shouldnt matter what pronouns are used to the subject, since in a third person communication, they are literally almost never involved. It’s the relay of information from the narrator to the listener, not from the narrator to the subject (that would be second person pronouns, and like others have mentioned, there isnt any real argument about second person pronouns since the 14th century when you took over for both singular and plural representations of ‘ye, thee, and thou’ (and your took over for thine) in both singular and plural subjects (the listener).
It’s one of the reasons I don’t understand the big deal about just having a third person singular pronoun that can be used when the narrator wants to indicate that the gender of the subject is known to the narrator. It legitimately is less confusing than using they incorrectly, and less cumbersome than saying the person’s name repeatedly. Everyone gets so tied into politics and social activism, instead of understanding the BASIC point of language, which is, and always has been, to relay information from the narrator to someone else in a coherent fashion that is understandable to the listener.
If someone didn’t want to use the new ‘third person pronoun for when the subject’s gender is known’…. fine. They don’t have to. It’s not about the subject relaying information – it’s about the narrator relaying information. If the listener winds up not getting a relevant piece of information (ie, that the subject identifies as non-binary), that’s on the narrator and a choice the narrator made. If the narrator wants to add clarity, they can use the new pronoun to relay that information.
I’m just arguing from a standpoint of what makes the most sense linguistically to relay information in a coherent fashion. And from what I’m seeing, a new singular substitute for they, when used ONLY for when the subject identifies as non-binary, seems to be the easiest and most coherent ‘fix’ to this grammar problem, so long as it’s adopted organically instead of forced. It and That don’t work because it’s not as clear, since those words imply an object and not a person. They doesnt work because it can only be used as a singular pronoun when the gender of the subject is unknown, so as to not make the narrator have to use ‘he or she’ or the subject’s name instead. That leaves having a new substitute pronoun for they. Relatively simple, if people didnt keep getting politics and activism involved on both sides.
Coming from a place that has eleven official languages.(the Republic of South Africa.) It can vary broadly, overall theres less depth of wordplay, but its offset by bilingual wordplay, words in one language that can pun with another. The Vtuber Calliope Mori is particularly talented at working bilingual wordplay into her rapping being fluent in English and Japanese. Also, local slang tends to become a bit of a multi lingual melting pot. In much the same way as parts of america use the odd throwaway spanish word. Especially around things that dont translate as well.
American English uses throwaway words from all the languages. And not just the throwaway ones. I can think of words from German and Yiddish right off the top of my head. Spanish French and Italian aren’t that big of a stretch. I bet that at least 5% of American English words are stolen from somebody else.
Technically correct. You said American English, how many of our words are stolen from British English?
Minus American slang? Basically all of it that wasn’t stolen from other languages.
Even some stuff that’s officially American slang was stolen from British English. It just looks like it’s ours because they responded by changing their language and we didn’t steal their updates.
English is pretty much a hodgepodge of a LOT of other languages. I wouldn’t say ‘stolen’ though. Because that’s not how language work. You adopt different elements of different languages in the formation of new languages.
English, both British and American, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, are all ‘Romantic’ languages. And not because they’re the language of love. It’s because they’re all languages that are derived from Vulgar Latin within a certain historical time set. But you wouldnt say French ‘stole’ words from Latin. It just evolved that way when people start using words from other cultures as a description and it gains popularity within the new culture.
Even slang eventually becomes incorporated into the mainstream language.
Bruh.
Dope.
Woke.
Shook.
Gucci.
etc, etc, etc.
Plus other words fall OUT of the mainstream (and sometimes entire letters do as well).
For example. Ye. It isn’t pronounced ‘ye’ – it’s actually pronounced ‘The.’ All those ‘Ye olde tavern’ signs…. It just is saying The Olde Tavern. It’s not ‘You.’ And people who say it’s You and write that it’s you do not understand the origin of the word.
There used to be another letter in the English alphabet, brought over from Old English and Norse and Swedish and Gothic called ‘thorn.’ It ws actually from the runic alphabet of Futhark originally. It looked like this – Þ, þ (capital and lower case versions). It was pronounced like ‘th’.
Eventually the letter evolved in English to look a lot more similar to y in shape, and because most printing presses did not have the ‘thorn’ letter, they started using y in substitute of Þ. Eventually they just dropped the y all together from being used as a substitute for ‘th’ because of the confusion it caused in people thinking it was pronounced ‘Ye,’ instead of ‘The.’ And they just wrote ‘The’ instead.
There are actually several letters from old english that got lost along the way like yogh, Ezh, Eth, the original sound for J and certain sounds like the voiced velar fricative. Also the ampersand – & – I believe used to be the 27th letter in the English language. It’s the reason etc is used for ‘et cetera.’ It used to be just &C.
Ezh – uppercase: Ʒ, lowercase: ʒ
Eth – uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð
Thorn or þorn – uppercase: Þ, lowercase: þ
yogh – uppercase: Ȝ, lowercase: ȝ
Ash – uppercase: Æ, lowercase: æ
Wynn – uppercase: Ƿ, lowercase: ƿ
Eth – uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð
Insular G (gah) – uppercase: Ᵹ, lowercase: ᵹ
Long S – uppercase: ſſ, lowercase: ſ
The other languages you mention are Romance languages, but English is a Germanic language.
Yes and no. Mostly yes. You are technically correct. Which is the best type of correct.
Okay you’re also literally correct as well:)… mostly. Although moreso for old english than what we understand as modern english.
English is not an official romance language. This is true. Like you said, it’s a Germanic language (like Yiddish or Dutch). But unlike those languages, English ALSO significantly was influenced by Vulgar Latin, which is the basis for the Romance languages. Many of the runic letters (from the Germanic languages) did not survive into modernity in English. All the letters at the bottom which I mentioned were removed from English were germanic/swedish/norse/gothic runic alphabets.
It’s one of the reasons that old english looks so drastically different than modern english. Old English was MUCH more heavily germanic and runic-based before the language adopted so much from latin.
Consider German and English to be linguistic siblings, while the Romance Languages are close cousins. :)
Just a question for you, since you seem to be a strong worditarian, can you provide some insight into how the letter W in the English language became double U, when as far as I can tell, it was originally double V?
No idea.
It came in during the 8th century and was mostly written as uu (sometimes joined, sometimes not) although there was also the wynn symbol from runes used at times
When the printing press came about in the 15th century there was a dedicated “w” block but it wasn’t always there and they often used 2 “v”s to look more like old roman carvings…
Oh that’s actually a very simple answer. W was created during the roman alphabet, and the romans did not have a v or w in their alphabet. When English evolved (partially out of latin, mostly out of german and some gothic and a hodgepodge of other languages), around the 7th century for Old English, they used a uu to denote the sound, and used called it ‘double u.’ There was no ‘v’ at the time, and w literally looked like two u’s together. IT did NOT look like two v’s until much later. They did also try using the wynn letter ( ƿ ) to denote the uu sound but it didnt survive past the 11th century.
I’m also pretty sure it changed to LOOKING like two v’s in the 15th century because of the printing press. Putting two u’s together on the printing press did not look like a single letter, but putting two v’s together did. So that’s what they started doing, and when the printing press added a w, they just carried over what was familiar from the earlier printing presses for the appearance of w.
Btw to be clear, when I say ‘w’ was created during the roman alphabet, I mean using two u’s to denote the sound that w makes. The actual letter did not get created until much later.
I was reading over my post and realized I forgot to mention that, since I say later in the same dang sentence that the romans did not have a w in their alphabet. They also did not have a v, like I mentioned, although u was written AS v, which is part of the reason why vv was actually uu, which then was vv again because of early printing press limitations. Oh and they also did not have a Y in their alphabet, and J was written as an I. Which you probably can guess if you watched Indiana Jones 3 (“But, in the Latin alphabet, jehovah begins with an I.”)
in english, W is called double u, but in french, it is double v , because, hey, it looks like both or either, depending on how it’s written.
You do realize that “Gucci” was somebody’s name, right? Gucci the brand belongs to the Gucci family.
As for “ye,” that very much depends on context. In the context of “Ye Olde Booke Shoppe” or whatever, the “Y” is, as you noted, a corrupted or very sloppily written “Þ” which as you noted later in your post represents the sounds currently represented by “th.” In other contexts, “ye” actually does mean “you.” In fact, it’s properly used for the subject of a sentence while “you” should be used for objects. Have a video about second person pronouns; I queued it to the usage of “ye” vs. “you,” not that “ye” is part of standard English anymore. It does crop up in a few, typically rural, regional dialects thoush.
“You do realize that “Gucci” was somebody’s name, right? Gucci the brand belongs to the Gucci family.”
Yes I’m aware of that. I mentioned Gucci as a slang word though because it IS a slang word as well. A brand name that has become so synonymous with a description that people just use it as the word. Just like when you say you want to xerox something, you mean you want to copy or duplicate or mimeograph something. Or when you say you need a kleenex, you mean you need a tissue. Or when you say you are using a band-aid, you might be using something that’s not a Band-Aid brand and just mean any sort of adhesive bandage.
In other contexts, “ye” actually does mean “you.”
Ye only meant you prior to the 14th century (as the second person plural personal pronoun). My post was mainly talking about how it’s seen on most signs in ‘old english.’ Sorry if I was not more specific on what I was referring to, but it was a very long post, written on a phone. If I was writing on a computer I would have corrected a lot more stuff that I had written, like saying English was a Romance language, when it’s a Germanic language which was just heavily influenced in modern english BY romance languages. That’s something I would have likely edited before hitting reply on a computer. :)
Those signs are not from that long ago (not from the 14th century or before). And those signs are NOT saying ‘You Olde Tavern.’ Which was the point of my explaining Ye (which is how most people view the word, incorrectly, not realizing it was replacing thorn).
Simply put, at the time when ye was usually used for ‘you’ (along with thee and thou), there was no ‘you’ in the first place. It was back when second person pronouns were not mostly condensed down to mostly ‘you’ whether singular or plura (unless paired with a noun – yourself/yourselves – or a determiner noun afterwards – you all). Most of this goes back to when English was written with a runic alphabet instead of the more modern english alphabet (which is heavily influenced by the Roman alphabet as well).
“It does crop up in a few, typically rural, regional dialects though.”
This is true. I’m assuming you’re referring to groups like the Amish and Mennonites, both of whom still have VERY germanic ties in their linguistic style compared to other English-speaking cultures.
Sorry for not being more specific in my post.
I like to describe the New Mexican accent as “the ability to include Spanish words without sounding like you’re afraid they’ll bite.”. Up in the NW where I live now, people tend to pause and get a run-up to any word that isn’t food.
Oh, there are a lot of fun things that can be done with bilingual wordplay. For example, I once heard (as a comedy skit, one guy providing the original Afrikaans and the other the “translation”) a tale about about a man and his clean son (“skoon seun” -> “skoonseun” -> son-in-law) who went to hunt a lazy horse (“lui perd” -> “luiperd” -> leopard). The entire thing was _full_ of that sort of wordplay.
one of my favourites was the rubber chicken with a pulley in it from The Secret Of Monkey Island, because pulley sounds like poulet, or pullet, and it was an audible pun.
“It does make me wonder if in an environment where English is just one of many languages spoken, if it develops the same level of depth and word-play. ”
Speaking multiple languages has a certain je ne sais quois. And once you know more than one, you’ve crossed the Rubicon and alea act est. There’s a certain schadenfreude in wordplay other people miss, though it takes a certain chutzpah to flaunt it, and in fact flaunting it would be positively nekulʹturnyy.
There’s often more languages spoken than commonly realised, the UK has 14 indigenous languages: English, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Scots, Ulster Scots, Irish, Cornish, Angloromani, Beurla Reagaird, Shelta, BSL, NISL, ISL, and SSE. Pictish, Cumbric, Norn and Old Kent SL are sadly extinct. And while Anglo-Norman and Latin have ceremonial roles, they aren’t really day to day languages. If you include the Crown Dependencies (Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) then that adds Manx English, Manx-Gaelic, French, Guernesiais, Jerriais, Jersey Legal French and Serquiais, though Auregniais is now extinct.
Admittedly some of these are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, but they still have speakers.
Wasn’t Cornish literally raised from the dead? (I like what you did there, btw. And didn’t even know nekul’turnyy, so learning that is another plus.)
Yes, Cornish is a revenant, but it never completely died out in terms of having people who could speak some Cornish, and as it was mutually intelligible with Breton revival has a better claim to being the real language than with a completely dead language revived just from it’s written vocabulary.
So this it the new and improved version of “Fly Guy” from WAY back in the beginning!
How bout we stop tying to invent new pronouns or using the wrong ones and just use the persons name with out any prefix?
or would that just be to simple?
“Drew and Drew entered the ladies room. Only one was supposed to be there.”
it Drew suspicion from Sam and Sam, who also weren’t both supposed to be there. Avery and avery were there, one putting on their binders, and the other not wanting to say anything for fear of mis-labelling them.
Robin and Robin were also there, with one feeling happy enough to sing about it, and the other feeling apt to mug the rest of them.
Taylor and Taylor stood there silently, sizing everyone up…
Ashley stood there, still as a tree, while Ashley was ready to clear out…
Kasey and Kasey were by the door, keeping vigilant.
That requires you to know the names of everyone you may need to mention in a sentence.
That actually is one way to deal with it actually – ie, doing away with pronouns entirely. Although it makes sentences read very amateurishly and repetitively, and makes sentence structure both more difficult and unnecessarily longer.
Using no pronouns at all:
“Tom got io Tom’s car and then Tom drove to Tom’s house.”
“Tom and Susan got to Susan’s car and then Susan drove Tom and Susan to Susan’s house.”
“Ellipses and Susan got to Ellipses’ car then Ellipses drove Ellipses and Susan to Ellipses’ house.” (for this example, let’s assume that Ellipses identifies as non-binary)
The sentences are rather cumbersome, amateurish, and repetitive. It just doesn’t read well, does it?
Now with pronouns of he, she, they (using they for non-binary):
“Tom got to his car and then he drove to his house.” Very understandable relay of information from the narrator to the listener. The car and the house belong to Tom, and he was the only one who drove in the car.
“Tom and Susan got to Susan’s car and then she drove them to her house.” Also very understandable relay of information from the narrator to the listener. The car and the house belong to Susan, and they both were in the car that Susan drove to her home.
“Ellipses and Susan got to their car then they drove to their house.” Not a good relay of information. We do not know if both Susan and Ellipses got into the car, or if Ellipses was the only one who got into the car. We do not know if the car belongs to Ellipses, or belongs to both of them. We to not know if the house belongs to Ellipses, or belongs to both of them. The only thing we can guess correctly at for sure is that Ellipses is the one who drove, since two people cannot drive a car at the same time. Although it might be that they took turns driving if the house was far away. Many different possible outcomes for this relay of information, and it’s very nebulous.
Now… if there is some sort of third person singular pronoun when you DO know the person’s gender is identifying as something other than male or female, the sentence could be written in a more understandable manner. For simplicities sake, lets say it’s zeir, zey, and zem (as a singular alternative to the plural unknown gender pronoun of their, they, and them)
Using some sort of singular version of they/their/them when used to describe a singule person who is not identifying as either male or female:
“Ellipses and Susan got to zeir car then they drove zem and Susan to zeir house.”
More understandable relay of information. We know that both of them got into the car (because ‘they’ was used). We know that the car belongs to Ellipses (because zeir was used). We know that Ellipses drove (because zem was used). We know that the house belongs to Ellipses (because zeir was used).
Now the only challenge is to figure a way to organically get this ONE substitution, not hundreds with more popping up daily, to get into the population’s vernacular in common usage. But at least that’s just one challenge instead of many, and it’s grammatically more sound and relays information MUCH better than using ‘they’ for everything, singular and plural.
I don’t think the issue is using pronouns in writing,as you said no pronouns make writing cumbersome.
using they or them in a sentence to identify more then one of something is perfectly fine because it may not actually reference a human. “Drew Loaded 2 broken appliances in a trailer and took them to the dump”
to me it only seem to cause an issue when addressing a human person directly and that individual wants a certain pronoun.
As for something to organically to crop up for use, probably not, to many are trying to force something in to the grammar for this to happen. just give it a couple more election cycles and this will go the way of the bathroom laws, put in place to rile up the voters before an election but other wise ignored in the real world as unenforceable.
“using they or them in a sentence to identify more then one of something is perfectly fine because it may not actually reference a human. “Drew Loaded 2 broken appliances in a trailer and took them to the dump””
In grammar, there are different rules in english for referring to objects as opposed to people, because in English, objects tend to not have a gender in the first place, so it falls under the rule of ‘unknown.’ But if the object, for some reason, had a gender, then the word ‘they’ would not be as good a fit. Still better for objects than people, but still poor grammar and lacking clarity in sentence structure.
“to me it only seem to cause an issue when addressing a human person directly and that individual wants a certain pronoun.”
I’m not sure why the subject should matter to the use of a pronoun when used in the third person. The fact that it’s being used as a third person pronoun means the subject isn’t actually involved most of the time – it’s a communication between a narrator and a third person. I think the reason the bathroom issue keeps coming up is it’s one of the VERY few examples in which the subject matter might wind up being also the listener, while the door sign is the ‘narrator.’ Most of the time, this does not happen. Again, easily solved by having a ‘third person pronoun that is for non-binary identifying people’ instead of ‘they.’ Although most bathrooms do not say ‘he’ and ‘she.’ They tend to say ‘men’ and ‘women’ or ‘boys’ and ‘girls.’ Which I guess can also be solved (and probably will be if this turns out to last a long time) by one of three methods, as far as I can see:
1) Have a third bathroom for non-binary people. Unlikely to be a widespread solution since it adds cost to businesses.
2) Ignore it and just keep doing ‘men’ and ‘women.’ Possible but would be a problem for people who believe strongly on the issue of pronouns, which could lead to lawsuits (whether frivolous or valid) which will add cost to businesses.
3) Just have one or multiple unisex bathrooms, with a lock on the door. This will be less efficient and cause longer lines, but would also be less cost for businesses and is the most likely route that most businesses would take.
None of this really has anything to do with pronouns though It’s a distraction from the main point of pronouns which is, like I’ve said many times, just a linguistic method forf a narrator to relay information to a listener, whether spoken or in writing.
“As for something to organically to crop up for use, probably not, to many are trying to force something in to the grammar for this to happen.”
It doesnt matter if people are trying to force it. If anything, forcing it is self-defeating. It makes people double down. The best route is always to try to go a route which gets the population to accept a new word organically. This does take a lot longer, but it is FAR more likely to have a lasting effect on the evolution of language than dictating it by law, which especially brings up a lot of problems in any culture which values free speech.
I agree with you that a lot of this has been taken up to just rile up people before an election (which I find incredibly dumb from an etymological point of view), and that it’s very difficult (and self-defeating in the long run) to try to enforce in the real world unless the population accepts it on their own accord instead of it being handed down from on high.
“I agree with you that a lot of this has been taken up to just rile up people before an election (which I find incredibly dumb from an etymological point of view), and that it’s very difficult (and self-defeating in the long run) to try to enforce in the real world unless the population accepts it on their own accord instead of it being handed down from on high”
again that’s why it’s eventually going come about naturally in the language while at the same time ignoring the attempts to force something. Again like the bath room laws, the smaller business like restaurants fixed the problem quickly buy just changing the sign on the door to say rest room, gender neutral, handicap accessible, usually 2 of them, which to be honest i think a a better situation the specific gender ones if there’s a line for one or the other. the bigger places like schools and stadiums with many multiple use facility’s couldn’t do that if they wanted too, so they pretty much ignored the laws and continued on the way it was, and after a bit time no one was riled up about it any more, mostly they took the cheapest course.
“I’m not sure why the subject should matter to the use of a pronoun when used in the third person”
mostly that was from a gender awareness training video i watched for work. were the interviewee said
“thank you for asking for my correct pronoun”
of course they didn’t have the interviewers actual statement to this person, or the pronoun he wanted to use which might have actually clarified things a bit for me. then again sometimes these training videos have 0 clue.j
Ok, now how do you deal with situations in which multiple people share the same pronouns?
The same way you do with he and she.
All your examples use people with different pronouns, to demonstrate the supposed usefulness of gender-specific pronouns. But in a situation where multiple people share the same pronoun, it’s no longer useful for distinguishing between those people. That is why I am questioning the value of gender-specific pronouns.
Which is why i suggested we just use peoples names. It avoids the need to even know or ask which of the now many gender’s a person belongs to(or doesn’t) belong to. at least when interacting with a person directly.
Um you can still do that. Pronouns do not replace the ability to use names instead. It just gives the option of a less cumbersome way to relay information.
Just like in the examples I presented.
“All your examples use people with different pronouns, to demonstrate the supposed usefulness of gender-specific pronouns.”
Yes, because the point of language is to make things easier to communciate to another person. Especially with third parties that might not have seen the initial information.
“But in a situation where multiple people share the same pronoun, it’s no longer useful for distinguishing between those people. ”
Then in those cases, you use the persons name, just like you would with he or she, if you wanted to distinguish between the two people more specifically.
If you have two ‘he’s’ and want to distinguish one he from another he, you’re obviously going to use a person’s name. Same as if they’re a she, or if they’re identifying as non-binary.
I’m not sure where your confusion is coming from. This is just basic sentence structure, with the single addition of a third person singular pronoun in case the gender is unknown. It’s not going to be telepathy – it’s just going to make relaying information simpler than if you use ‘they’ repeatedly, and is going to be less cumbersome than if you KEEP using names repeatedly.
“That is why I am questioning the value of gender-specific pronouns.”
The value of gender-specific pronouns is rather well described in each of the examples I presented.
So why don’t we have pronouns for other differentiators, say, height, or skin color, or hair color? Or, since gender is an invisible property, why not others, such as religion, favorite food, or personality traits?
If it’s not clear, I’m against gendered pronouns entirely. I see no good reason for them, and suspect their existence is harmful.
Because gendered pronouns as a basic part of most languages, including English, already exist. So and gender neutral pronouns only exist for objects or when the subject is unknown. So adding one more pronoun type does not overcomplicate the language.
Pronouns based on race, religion, personality traits, etc are not a basic rule of the english, or any, language. There is not such concept as ‘racial pronouns.’
Plus thats what adjectives are for.
And it doesn’t occur to you to question why, whether it’s good or bad, or whether things could be better. You don’t think it harms you, so you just ignore and disregard the experiences of others, the people claiming that it does harm them. They’re just wrong, and should just do things the way they’ve always been done, and stop trying to make everyone else change. That’s how you come across.
I have literally presented an option thats better than using ‘they’ (which doesnt sound completely uneducated) which apparently has been in use since 1890. Stop strawmanning.
In Brazil we would probably call him Bonde, or maybe Busão.
Better than “Cargador” cause someone would drop the first “r” and it’d catch on.
“Operador” is just one possible translation (semantic fields, yay), although “Carrier” is not an easy word to translate. It all depends on the context.
English has, and has had for a long time, a single person neuter pronoun: “E”. Or sometimes Zie, Sie, Ey, Xe, Zhe, te, and so on. It’s just it never got the spelling formalized pre-internet. My personal preference for spelling is E/em/eir/eirs/emself. (There are also some out there ones like ou and thon.)
wiki has more about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun
I have never heard of this before. Seems very new, but considering one variant is from the 1890s, I guessits not.
It does sound like a reasonable solution. Not ‘thon’ though, since ‘thon’ is basically ‘that’… which seems as dehumanizing as ‘it.’
Singular “They” has been around for 500 years. It wasn’t until the 19th century that grammarians tried to stamp it out in favour of gender-neutral “He”.
What is new is using “they” for a known, concrete singular subject, rather than an uncertain or abstract one. (i.e. “When someone is wealthy, they…” and “When they arrive, …” as singular uses are 500 years old. “When Pat arrives, they…” is now.)
As for “it”, I’ll avoid using it to refer to people whenever given a choice. It rarely even feels right to use it for pets. To me, it carries too many connotation of being an object with no feelings or rights.
I still think it was mistake to let “thou” get out of use.
Um how or when is “he” ever gender neutral?
In this case “was” is the proper word.
as in the how:
It’s a sad story about snooty patriarchs and lazy writing that let to a lot of “male” words obtaining gender neutral staultus around the early 3 th century.
This causes all kinds of linguistic anomalies over the centuries inbetween then and now.
Female kings, “mankind”, at least germanic languages using their “male” and “female” words for secetary for two totally different positions or gender specific markings, dictionaries calling words male/non-gendered and way more and surprised new internet users who get called out when they use “male” pronouns for everyone and the riddle about the doctor who operated their son.
I should pint out though this contrary to the recent “they” trend didn’t come out of a need for inclusivity, but a simple lazyness. Specifying gender par word was often unneeded, since societal expectations already provided that information. Kind of like how we always have to specify by games if they’re “strip”, but specify nothing if they’re not.
No, no i mean how is or was ‘he’ ever gender neutral?
The word ‘He’ is literally an example of gender. Same as with ‘she.’
Also, man is actually just a proto-germanic name that means ‘person’ and could refer to either man or woman.
This is something people often get confused about because English does have an origin in germanic runic alphabets.
Man derives from Proto-Germanic and it meant literally “person”, that is, it could refer to both man and woman. Woman, on the other hand, derives from Wif or wifman. What was used to refer to man with its sense of today is wer or werman. That this hits the right spot is confirmed by the survival of wer in werewolf (literally man-wolf).
Wifmen, in the course of language development, lost the “f” and became wimman until it reached us as woman. werman, didn’t just lose the “r”, like what happened with the “f” in wifmen. Following the Norman conquest, the whole “wer” was gone, and it became man, and it gradually narrowed down to refer to male men only.
In short, man always meant both men and women. But it used to be wer and wif man. Then they just got rid of the wet altogether got rid of the f, and that’s how we got man and woman, but the rest of the language stayed the same.
The word ‘Mankind’ has nothing to do with gender or sexism or misogyny, in fact. If you say ‘mankind’ you are not being sexist. You’re just using the English language as it was meant to be used – if anything, the only word that REALLY got changed was male man – they lost an entire half of the word, while ‘female man’ (wifman) only lost one letter. :)
He was never, as far as I could tell, a non-gendered word.
As for ‘female kings’ that depends on what the culture sees as a king. In European history, saying a female king makes no real sense because there is an actual word used for a female king – ie, a queen. In European history, queens had the same governing ability as a king if there was no living king in the feudal government.
But lets say you were in a government where king and queen had completely different duties culturally, even if there was no king. In that case, the ‘king’ title would be something that might be legitimately conferred upon a person regardless of their sex. It didnt happen often, but it’s at least conceivable because a queen was not necessarily synonymous in all cultures with the word ‘ruler’ unlike ‘king.’
I think you’ve answered your own question, though you don’t realize it.
Um…. no I did not. I mean this with NO disrespect Torabi, because I do think highly of your posts even if we disagree, but I don’t know where you’re getting your views on linguistics from. Or at least where you’re getting your rules on sentence structure from. It’s usually something learned in elementary school or junior high school english classes. Again I’m not saying this to mean any offense because I know you’re intelligent.
However…
I think you’re having confusion about the difference between gendered pronouns and simply nouns which can sometimes relate to men or women.
Again. Apples and oranges. Completely different sets of rules.
‘Female kings’ is not a gendered pronoun. A king is a noun, not a pronoun. Female is also not a pronoun – it’s usually a noun, but in the case of ‘female king’ it’s an adjective.
Nothing I said explains how ‘he’ (which is a pronoun) can ever be gender-neutral. He/him/she/her are gendered pronouns. It’s a substitute for a noun, which denotes the noun’s gender. That’s literally what a gendered pronoun is. I do not see how ‘he’ can EVER be a gender-neutral pronoun.
King, on the other hand, is a noun, and CAN be gender-neutral if the rules in that culture denote ‘King’ as a title that either men or women can hold, or if ‘King’ and ‘Queen’ have completely different definitions, where King means ‘ruler’ and Queen means something else, or if there is no word for Queen in a certain language.
So King, while it CAN be considered to be a position held by men, does not HAVE to be a position held by men, in certain circumstances.
The wikipedia page on Singular they is full of useful information, and even includes a section on ‘he’ as a gender-neutral pronoun.
Why do you think ‘werman’ became ‘man’, while ‘wifman’ became ‘woman’, rather than say, retaining the unique part of each word?
The common pattern here is an androcentric worldview, in which ‘male’ is the default, and ‘female’ is special. Special might be better, or it might be worse, but it doesn’t receive the kind of consideration the default does.
“ Why do you think ‘werman’ became ‘man’, while ‘wifman’ became ‘woman’, rather than say, retaining the unique part of each word?”
Literally had nothing to do with sexism. It was the sway from proto germanic to vulgar latin influences. ‘Mann’ was not a unique part of the word. The patriarchy is not hiding behind every corner of etymological history, Torabi.
Also, the ‘he’ section was an example of informal slang which was never formal grammar, where people would default to using he when those people were supposed to be using ‘they.’ Again you might as well say that ‘aint’ or ending sentences in a preposition are grammatically correct language.
Can we be done with this argument now because we are already on the next page and you dont seem to acknowledge my previous posts carefully anyway when responding, which makes me have to keep repeating the same things over and over.
If you have a tiny screw collection, it’s very important to keep it well organized. Preferably in one of those tiny clear plastic cases with at least a dozen tiny compartments. My tiny screw collection is just the stuff left over from building my PCs over many years. There’s the ones for the case, the ones for the case fans, the ones for the mobo, the ones for hard-drives, the Other ones for hard drives, the ones for M.2 drives (boy, those are tiny), the little brass risers for mobos…It just goes on and on.
I’m ashamed to admit all my tiny screws are in the same little container, there just aren’t enough to sort. My regular screw collection however is segregated pretty well in a bunch of random mis-matched containers.
“We make up new words all the time and embiggen ourselves in the process.”
We do. However, we do it by the utterly democratic process of launching each new word as slang. It’s then taken up by the community or not, by simple use or neglect. A new adjective faces a high hurdle–most new words are verbs and nouns, and most of them are derivations that are obvious in their connotation, like “embiggen.”
I haven’t been able to come up with a new gender neutral pronoun that’s both derivative and connotatively obvious, and I use words for a living. Not that the attempt hasn’t been amusing. Crunching he/she/it together so letters from all three meet in one word gives us “hit” or “shit.” Already used and . . . kinda funny. “Hit’s over there.” “Shit’s over there.”
“Wit” might work. Yes the word’s taken, but it’s rarely used today in common speech. But that still doesn’t get us over the adoption hurdle. People are notoriously libertarian when it comes to language; just look at the Hispanic revolt over “Latinx.”
At least English got “they”.
Languages like German just DON’T have a gender-neutral pronoun at all (and no, “es” doesn’t count in this context because it’s used for objects and sometimes animals, so using it for people would just rub people the wrong way).
One thing that is kinda annoying is whenever you see people “hurr durr stop making up new words” etc – because humanity’s done that stuff all the bloody time. We constantly make up new words, twist existing ones and so forth. Some of them are non-starters and disappear within a short time, others become popular enough to make it into the language as a staple over time.
While you can’t really force a word to enter the collective consciousness, trying to prevent a word from doing so is just as futile (which is basically what a fair lot of those people who complain about pronouns are trying to do).
It’s especially bad in something like French. It’s not just that we don’t have gender-neutral pronouns, but our entire language is gendered! Most adjectives and about half the verbs have to be one way or the other. And what do you do, then? It’s not like you can just reinvent the entire language to fit an extra tense on everything. Singular ‘they’ is so easy in comparison. And it’s not like English doesn’t already have a plural pronoun that’s also commonly used as a singular.
(So is German)
So in German does a person whose gender is unknown default to masculine?
I’m not sure, I do know that in German all children are simultaneously gendered and genderless.
The little girl = Das Mädchen
Das is neuter, i.e. genderless.
I get the strong impression that a person’s gender and a word’s gender are completely unrelated concepts that just happen to be spelled the same.
As someone who learned gernan at school.
Mostly and I islike it. German is super reliant on these “gendered words” for its grammar and although in general the follow a system for gender reliant things they sometimes make an exception.
Family Guy Consuela Sydney: No…no…you Flotilla now.
Gunship: But I’m Ca-
Family Guy Consuela Sydney: No…no.
+1 internet gor you
Who let that guy in the Keyhole Club without a keyhole?
Either he has the right key or has a lockpick technique that got him in.
It’s probably run by Keyhole Girl (aka Heavenly Sword).
Given the side eye the Alari is giving him in that imagine spot… it looks like some STD’s are truly universal?
You mean… Sydney’s imagination spot?
Yeah, that has always been accurate
As noted, it’s an imagine spot, accuracy is kind of beside the point. I was just noting the funny event.
Why does Sydney look like that in the last panel?
Good question, I was about to ask the same thing.
She’s doing the closed-eye nodding all-wise “Uh huh, Uh huh!” (r ‘yup, yup’) thing agreeing with his new decision.
Flotilla should have worked just fine since a flotilla is a fleet of ships or boats, and they kept naming off different types of ships.
My brain keeps insisting that “flotilla” should rhyme with “tortilla”, which naturally forces the connects to this shirt about endangering a tortilla flotilla.
Your mind is sometimes a glorious, precious thing, brichins. :)
Never change. ;)
‘Carrier’ Would be hilarious during current covid times.
especially if you said it in pidgin.
Don’t worry, you’ll get it in a minute.
So Carrier and Sydney would make a perfect gunship.
No. Carrier, plus two other supers, equal one Galatian budget knockoff of Halo.
There is subtle but important distinction. Odds are Flotilla is paired up with Halo specifically so he can get an up close and personal view of what she do, how she do it, and hopefully an understanding of why she do what she do. With the express intention to duplicate Halo’s efforts in the future.
At least that is the goal. The only way you can get another Sydney is if this world exists within a multiverse.
I just meant they would not need Carrier and 2 other supers to make it work.
just those 2
what language do they use in gatlyn?
Apparently a combination of four different languages, from what I remember earlier in the comic.
English
Xhosa (probably the native language of the people in the area prior to or during the reign of General Indinge)
Alar (the Alari language, duh)
Chiktr (the language used by some of the demons in Tom’s mercenary army)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1019-rosetta-brain/
Should have made him a Hun. Flotilla the Hun seems exactly the kind of pun Sydney would get demerits for…
“Oh, and also, we need a gender neutral pronoun besides “it.” Yes, I know, “they,” but personally I’m not impressed with they since it’s both singular and plural and that can lead to confusion.”
It doesn’t, though. People use “they” in the singular all the time. They do it completely unconsciously. It only leads to confusion when people start overthinking it.
Same with ‘you’ being both singular and plural, it all depends on context
Or, at least, it use to, but now days everyone wants to be ‘unique’ and have unique words exclusively used to describe them only and no one else
I’ll be honest: At this point I mostly see the uneducated or the transphobic advocating non-binary invent new words because how can they possible understand how to use they as a singular term? Their minds can’t handle that as normies who’s only ever used they as plural! And singular just like I did. But they just don’t geeeeeeeeeeeeet it.
“At this point I mostly see the uneducated or the transphobic advocating non-binary invent new words because how can they possible understand how to use they as a singular term?”
Not sure how it’s transphobic to say that using they as a singular pronoun, when the person is known, is incorrect grammar. Because linguistically, it is incorrect grammar, plus a terrible way to relay information, which is the point of language in the first place. Which is why having a new pronoun to denote a singular pronoun when the person is known, but where you do not want to use he or she, seems like the best compromise. Not 100 different pronouns, and not ‘they’ (unless the person arguing concedes that in all cases, the person’s gender is unknown).
It doesnt seem uneducated either. If anything it’s VERY educated to point out that the usage of ‘they’ as a singular where the subject is known is grammatically incorrect. There are ilterally grammar rules which are being ignored, which lead to confusion in sentences in many cases. It also does not make any sense to use stuff like ” and ‘ze/zim and zhe zer’ or ‘xe/xim and xhe/xer’ because you are just duplicating he/him and she/her, which is just repeating the binary language that non-binary are trying to remove themselves from when relaying information. However, something like Zey/Zem or Xey/Xem or some other set of words which refers to a known person, who the speaker is wanting to relay to a third person, but where the speaker wants to acknowledge the subject’s non-binary identification (I would really prefer Zey/Zem if I HAVE to choose one because Xey/Xem feels like bad sci-fi writing) DOES meet the needs for relaying information for a person who is non-binary and a speaker wanting to relay the non-binary identification of that person in a sentence to another person, even if all parties involved know the subject. It’s just two additional pronouns, instead of 100 or whatever amount, and instead of changing an established word in a way that would create confusion in relaying information.
Take your last sentence for example. That would be a proper use of the singular they. Because you are referring to ‘normies’ and you have not stated in any way the gender of those normies, so the person you are speaking to would not know the gender of the normies. As a result, ‘they’ is proper use.
Not to mention, the most effective way to get words added or changed is organically, not by blunt force. And a lot of the ‘normies’ do not accept ‘they’ as a singular pronoun, except when used to denote someone who’s gender is unknown. It seems like it would be far easier to just add one or two additional words, rather than change the definition of a rather well-established word, and definitely easier than getting the normies to organically accept dozens or hundreds of additional words that seem to be added without any consistent reason, or where words are added that are just normal nouns with ‘self’ appended to it in the newer ‘neo-pronouns.’
If they don’t get it, it means it won’t work in the language organically. So make it something that they CAN get with more ease so that they are more likely to accept it as part of the language. And be prepared for it to take some time, since language changes slowly. Plus when something is forced upon people, they (singular pronoun to call back to the noun ‘people’) tend to double down against it.
“the usage of ‘they’ as a singular where the subject is known is grammatically incorrect.”
That sentence makes no sense to me. The speaker’s knowledge cannot dictate whether a particular sentence is grammatically correct.
“The speaker’s knowledge cannot dictate whether a particular sentence is grammatically correct.”
I meant the listener’s knowledge of the subject, not the speaker. Although yes the speakers knowledge CAN dictate if a sentence is grammatically correct, because if the speaker does not know the gender, neither would the listener anyway.
I suspect our definitions of “grammar” vary. Due to my technical background in computers and linguistics, my understanding of “grammar” is very formal, which deals primarily with syntax, and does not encompass the kind of rules that could depend on knowledge about the universe. Either a sentence is grammatically correct, or it’s not, independent of the truth value of the sentence.
I realize that for most people, “grammar” covers all the rules of language — or more specifically, “Grammar is often a generic way of referring to any aspect of English that people object to.”
“I suspect our definitions of “grammar” vary.”
When you went to elementary school, or junior high school, or high school, I’m assuming that you took English classes, or when you were in high school you took the SATs. They usually teach sentence structure pretty early on (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), and later on teach other stuff like pronouns, subject, compound sentences, contractions, conjunctions, prepositions, etc.
I’m using these basic rules of grammar (and sometimes etymology and word history) when I’m writing my posts on why ‘they’ being used as a singular third person pronoun where the gender is known does not work. I’ve given examples of WHY it is confusing, compared to, say, having a new pronoun instead (or as someone else has mentioned, a pre-existing pronoun called ey, em, etc which apparently has been around since the 1890s but made a comeback in 1975).
I know that you actually write well, but for some reason you seem to have forgotten the reason certain words are used in different situations, or what family of words different words come under (adjectives, pronouns, nouns, etc). I’m thinking that maybe you’re so keen on the argument that you’re losing track of what you’re saying? I don’t know to be honest, but your rules for grammar do not seem to be very formal at all, at least with how you’re trying to debate them.
“Either a sentence is grammatically correct, or it’s not, independent of the truth value of the sentence”
I have no idea what this has to do with anything either of us have said. The knowledge of the subject to the third person has nothing to do with truth value… it has to do with how much clarity there is in how a narrator is relaying information about a subject from the narrator to the listener (or listeners).
The listener is literally a ‘third person’ – hence the use of the term ‘third person pronoun.’ It has NOTHING to do with the subject because the subject will usually not even be hearing it – it is being said to someone completely different, based on whatever the narrator is trying to relay to that listener.
“I realize that for most people, “grammar” covers all the rules of language”
Um… yes.
That’s the definition of grammar.
Grammar – the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general, usually taken as consisting of syntax and morphology (including inflections) and sometimes also phonology and semantics.
It’s that for most people because it’s literally the definition of grammar. If you’re not following those rules, that just means you are not speaking grammatically correct, and might be more confusing when relaying information than someone who uses proper sentence structure and syntax.
It’s not a law or anything. A lot of people speak in broken english, poor grammar, slang words, etc. It doesn’t mean they’re speaking properly though. It just means there are a lot of people who do not know HOW to speak properly, either out of laziness or lack of education on proper grammar (or they simply forgot the lessons from school).
But it does NOT mean the language changes automatically because a minority of people use words incorrectly.
Youse is not a formal word.
Ain’t is not a formal word.
Gucci, as others have mentioned, is not a formal word (it’s a brand name).
Speaking in double negative constructions is not proper grammar.
Ending a sentence in a preposition is not proper grammar.
It doesn’t mean people aren’t going to do it. It just means they’re literally speaking incorrectly as far as proper grammar is concerned. Which makes what they’re saying more difficult for others to understand or more difficult for someone to discern the clarity if the information being relayed.
As I said, you’re operating on grade school grammar, while I’m operating on college-level language theory. Grammar does not properly cover semantics or pragmatics, though some people misuse the word as if it does. Spelling and punctuation, for example, are rules of language that are not encompassed by grammar. Formally, grammar refers to the rules for how morphemes can be combined into utterances. It is possible to form sentences that are grammatically correct, yet devoid of coherent meaning. A grammar cannot describe whether a particular word is correct or incorrect based on its meaning, or anyone’s knowledge.
Language, as I stated in another comment, exists both within and between people. Each person has their own unique language, derived from their experiences, but the usefulness of that language as a communication tool depends on its similarity with the language of others. Some languages have a formal body that claims authority to it, but English is not one of them. Regardless, all public languages are artificial constructs that depend on the agreement of the speakers and audience. Most people claiming that some linguistic construction is correct or incorrect have no basis but their own preferences, an attempt to exert authority by force.
You are definitely not operating on college level grammar. A person would not even pass the SAT verbal part with what you have been proposing. Feel free to assume language doesnt require rules in its construction though. You’re wrong but it doesnt do anything to me – it just makes you sound less coherent when you relay info.
“Because linguistically, it is incorrect grammar, plus a terrible way to relay information, which is the point of language in the first place.”, “If anything it’s VERY educated to point out that the usage of ‘they’ as a singular where the subject is known is grammatically incorrect.”
It really is only a terrible way to relay information if you let it be, much as many elements of English are. How opaque your usage of it is, is up to you (and really, while you may claim relaying information is the purpose of language, that is not how a large swathe of people use it, how they use it is for relaying *convenient* information or misinformation). Further, it is actually *relaying information*: The information that the subject is non-binary.
“Breaking grammar rules” is not exclusive to “they”, and so many other “rule breakers” get passes, after a certain length/popularity of use. I think “the better part of its lifetime” qualifies.
“They” is no more of a plural than “you” is a singular. Both are context sensitive, both can be confusing, both do not have to be. And hey, if we are going to complain about singular they, are we going to complain about singular you? The word was originally plural, but, much like they, has evolved.
“Not to mention, the most effective way to get words added or changed is organically, not by blunt force. ”
Slang gets… injected into our language much less “organically”(e.g. a bunch of popular people start using it out of nowhere and drawing attention to it until it becomes common) at times and, without a real wait period, gets defined in our dictionaries(sometimes within the same year they come to attention). Comparatively “they” has been used singularly and neutrally for a long time. Longer than much(much, not all) of slang language takes to incorporate.
It is not that people are trying to “blunt force” make it a common usage, it is that people are trying to blunt force fight an existing usage. The use became popular enough to come to widespread attention of people who find it objectionable who are now trying to resist it.
The problem with people resisting this use however, is that unlike much of slang language, “they” is a way of addressing a subject.
Also, given that using incorrectly gendered terms is a common method of mocking in the English language (e.g. “Would the little miss like a tissue?” used against a boy, or “Are you sure you’re not a boy?” used against a girl), why would people not try to force others to use the correct terms for them?
“It really is only a terrible way to relay information if you let it be, much as many elements of English are. ”
It’s not about if ‘I’ let it be. or if ‘you’ let it be. It’s about if the majority of the population lets it be. Blunt force is not a very good way to get a population to ‘let something be.’ It creates a very adversarial situation and makes acceptance of a change LESS likely, not more likely.
“Further, it is actually *relaying information*: The information that the subject is non-binary.”
Actually it is not relaying information that the subject is non-binary. It’s relaying information that the subject is EITHER non-binary, or that it’s multiple subjects, without the listener being able to tell one way or the other without more information. It’s poor sentence structure. IF there was a third person SUBSTITUTE pronoun to relay that the subject is non-binary, -THAT- would be a good relay of information in a very clear manner. Although ultimately, it’s not the subject trying to relay this information to the listener anyway – it’s the narrator trying to relay it.
““They” is no more of a plural than “you” is a singular. ”
I’m sorry but you’re entirely wrong here. You is both singular and plural in all cases, is able to relay this information clearly because the subject IS the listener, and it has been used in this manner since the 14th century, about 200 years after the word came into usage (after replacing thee, thou, and ye).
They is NOT both singular and plural in all cases. It’s plural in all cases, but it’s singular only when the gender of the subject is unknown where the narrator cannot relay a ‘he’ or ‘she’ as a pronoun. This is just how the English language works in order to explain information with more clarity instead of less clarity to the listener. I’ve given the examples of why this is the case multiple times in multiple posts, in as simple a way as I can. The best solution, as I’ve also said multiple times, is the adoption of a new pronoun to replace they (not to replace he and she) as a singular pronoun but ONLY dealing with non-binary subjects.
I’m not sure what the argument is against this. It seems to fix the linguistic problem rather well.
“It is not that people are trying to “blunt force” make it a common usage, it is that people are trying to blunt force fight an existing usage.”
No. It’s the people trying to make it a common usage using blunt force. It creates an impetus by the population to double down against it if they feel forced, rather than if they choose the change of their own accord. Especially in any culture that values freedom of speech, let along the ability to relay information clearly.
“The use became popular enough to come to widespread attention of people who find it objectionable who are now trying to resist it.”
Twitter, the niches of the internet, and even specific urban centers, are not the majority of the ‘normies’ who you need to be able to convince to adopt the words organically. They are not a large enough majority (or not a majority at all) of the speakers of the language. It requires a more subtle touch, not a hammer.
“Also, given that using incorrectly gendered terms is a common method of mocking in the English language (e.g. “Would the little miss like a tissue?” used against a boy, or “Are you sure you’re not a boy?” used against a girl),”
None of that has anything to do with proper pronoun usage in English. It’s just people being jerks. In fact, you didnt use any third person pronouns in any of those examples at all.
“why would people not try to force others to use the correct terms for them?””
Because you shouldn’t try to force people to use words against their own free will. It’s authoritarian and feels very Orwellian. And it is ultimately self-defeating in the long run and creates more animosity and anger, not less. Especially if the ‘rules’ being set in place are inconsistent or poorly defined.
Again, the best way would be to try to subtly, naturally, over a longer period of time, get a SINGLE substituted word into the english vernacular. Not 100. Not change a very established word’s rule usage. It’s easier to add one word than to do either of those clumsier routes if the goal is to be able to CLEARLY describe people who identify as non-binary when talking about them in the third person on a mass scale, rather than using this argument merely as a political cudgel to beat people over the head to try to make them submit.
Trust me. Life is not like a Perry Mason courtroom show. Going hard at a person almost never gets them to go along with you.
“It really is only a terrible way to relay information if you let it be, much as many elements of English are. ”
“It’s not about if ‘I’ let it be. or if ‘you’ let it be. It’s about if the majority of the population lets it be.”
Uh… If something is terribly communicated is up to the general public, rather than the individuals communicating the message?
No. You may want to reread what I said, but I’ll clarify: If you chose to phrase things in a way that, by design, allows miscommunication that is your choice(mistakes happen, but communication helps with those too!). Unless there is a character limit on what you are saying and no way around it, you can add details to your message so you are understood.
“Further, it is actually *relaying information*: The information that the subject is non-binary.”
“Actually it is not relaying information that the subject is non-binary. It’s relaying information that the subject is EITHER non-binary, or that it’s multiple subjects, without the listener being able to tell one way or the other without more information.[…]”
Again, that comes down to how opaque you make the message, who you communicate.
““They” is no more of a plural than “you” is a singular. ”
“I’m sorry but you’re entirely wrong here. You is both singular and plural in all cases, is able to relay this information clearly because the subject IS the listener, and it has been used in this manner since the 14th century, about 200 years after the word came into usage (after replacing thee, thou, and ye).”
As I understand (and I admit I am limited both by lack of verifiable resources, and the fact that it has been long since I’ve look into it): You descends from ye, the plural equivalent to thou. Now yes, around the time that this change was occurring, ye and thou were also starting to meld, but thou would continue to be the singular pronoun over the course of 3-4 centuries, while ye/you would not have a plural alternate. And funny that you should mention “has been used in this manner since the 14th century” since… that is also supposedly when singular gender-neutral they started to see use… So they have similar precedence.
“They is NOT both singular and plural in all cases. It’s plural in all cases, but it’s singular only when the gender of the subject is unknown where the narrator cannot relay a ‘he’ or ‘she’ as a pronoun.”
“It’s X in every case, except Y” means it is not X in every case. You say it’s is only singular ”the gender of the subject is unknown “, but people didn’t start using it for gender neutrality just yesterday. And even if it had been, things change.
“[…] I’m not sure what the argument is against this. It seems to fix the linguistic problem rather well.”
Or you know, just using what is already in adapted use just works, and practice clear communication by tailoring the surrounding message as you do with other words. Many words take on different meanings depending on context.
“No. It’s the people trying to make it a common usage using blunt force.”
Rather than provide anything new here you just doubled down on the claim I disagreed with. Agree to disagree.
“Twitter, the niches of the internet, and even specific urban centers, are not the majority of the ‘normies’ who you need to be able to convince to adopt the words organically. They are not a large enough majority (or not a majority at all) of the speakers of the language. It requires a more subtle touch, not a hammer.”
Ignoring that these are the people fighting the concept the most vocally, rather than say, a number of major dictionaries, or something… Who are you to say that the majority object? Have you spoken to the majority of people about this, people who aren’t espousing their views in places like twitter or these comment sections? How are we supposed to know we do/don’t have approval? When, twitter adopted, say “Fleek”, it was a pretty official sign of approval. It even ended up in the dictionaries around the same time.
“In fact, you didnt use any third person pronouns in any of those examples at all.”
The point wasn’t to demonstrate how “third person pronouns” could be offensive, so of course I didn’t. I don’t get why you’d bring up third person pronoun use here, since the point is how using *incorrect terms* is a sign of mocking (or disrespect), as deliberately referring to someone non-binary as something else would be. Or are you asking me to find you an example of when using gender-neutral terms is offensive?
“Because you shouldn’t try to force people to use words against their own free will. It’s authoritarian and feels very Orwellian.”
People use these same arguments for why they should be allowed to use racially charged terms, insults or threats and no one should be able to punish them for it. I disagree on all counts. If they want to be abusive, they can do so elsewhere. Also, if you were a doctor/lawyer/professor/etc., would you not insist people don’t call you… I don’t know, butcher or paper-pusher? Much as using the wrong pronoun does, it can be mocking/disrespectful, and is misrepresentative of you.
“Again, the best way would be to try to subtly, naturally, over a longer period of time, get a SINGLE substituted word into the english vernacular. Not 100.”
I’ve not argued this; you are bringing in other people’s arguments.
“Not change a very established word’s rule usage. It’s easier to add one word than to do either of those clumsier routes if the goal is to be able to CLEARLY describe people who identify as non-binary when talking about them in the third person on a mass scale, rather than using this argument merely as a political cudgel to beat people over the head to try to make them submit.”
Again, we disagree on who’s blunt-force-ing whom here. But singular words (or phrases) change meaning all the time and with ease. Words also gain new meanings with frequent misuse. It is not hard, it happens often.
““It’s not about if ‘I’ let it be. or if ‘you’ let it be. It’s about if the majority of the population lets it be.””
Clearly when I was saying ‘you’ I was not referring to you specifically, Natsune. I was referring to ‘you’ as in’ the culture.
“No. You may want to reread what I said, but I’ll clarify: If you chose to phrase things in a way that, by design, allows miscommunication that is your choice(mistakes happen, but communication helps with those too!). Unless there is a character limit on what you are saying and no way around it, you can add details to your message so you are understood.”
I have no idea what you’re responding to here, sorry. The entire point of my post was that using a new pronoun allows more clarity for communication than using the word ‘they’ incorrectly, for reasons that I’ve already spelled out. With examples even.
“As I understand (and I admit I am limited both by lack of verifiable resources, and the fact that it has been long since I’ve look into it): You descends from ye, the plural equivalent to thou.”
You and ye/thou/thee both existed simultaneously for about 200 years (12th to 14th century), but otherwise correct.
” but thou would continue to be the singular pronoun over the course of 3-4 centuries, while ye/you would not have a plural alternate. ”
2 centuries. And yes. Thou was the second person singular subject. Thee was a plural second person pronoun, although it started to be used as both before you just took over for all uses for the second person pronoun in the English language. Thou is a subject case, thee is a straight up pronoun.
“Who are you to say that the majority object?”
Because the word ‘they’ as a singular third person pronoun is not used in common parlance still. Plus it’s not up to me to prove that the majority use a word in a way that it’s been used since its inception. It’s up to the people wanting to change the meaning of the word to prove that the majority is using the word in the newly proposed manner.
“People use these same arguments for why they should be allowed to use racially charged terms,”
There’s nothing racially charged about a pronoun. People who make arguments that because someone uses they the way it’s supposed to be used can therefore say a NOUN that’s offensive are just being stupid. And they are looking for an excuse to say racial slurs, not trying to describe proper grammar.
“Also, if you were a doctor/lawyer/professor/etc., would you not insist people don’t call you… I don’t know, butcher or paper-pusher?”
1) I am a lawyer still.
2) doctor/lawyer/professor/etc are nouns, not pronouns.
3) If someone wants to call me a butcher, and I’m not a butcher, then they’re relaying incorrect/unclear information to a third party. In either case, I’m not directly involved. The problem is all on the narrator not relaying information correctly, and the person harmed is the listener who is getting incorrect information. Not to mention there are different rules for nouns than for pronouns. You can’t say ‘butcher’ is sometimes the same word as ‘lawyer,’ for example.
“I’ve not argued this; you are bringing in other people’s arguments.”
Yes, because it was my initial post. I’m reaffirming my initial post, to which you responded.
“Again, we disagree on who’s blunt-force-ing whom here.”
Blunt-forcing implies CHANGE. When change is involved, the change is what is being blunt-forced or organically adopted. The pre-existing/original rules are not ‘blunt forced because those rules have the weight of history behind them already and mass acceptance over a period of years or centuries over a majority of the culture, if not the entirety of that culture.
How do we determine who is the majority on a particular issue? Which is the original meaning, and which is the proposed change? Your assertions carry no more weight than anyone else’s on the matter. Determining which party carries the burden of proof itself relies on that proof being provided.
Language is particularly tricky because it exists both within people and between them. Someone can use a word a certain way their entire life, and be surrounded by people who understand it the same way, and yet it can be considered new or incorrect by others from a different cultural context. One way may be truly older or more correct… and yet we don’t really have a way of proving many aspects of language, because we can’t know what goes on in other people’s heads except through inference. With sufficient data, we can develop a model we’re confident in, but it’s hard to condense every aspect of a word into a concise definition that covers the full range or limitations of its usage or meaning. Dictionaries are full of holes that we fill in subconsciously, based on our own experiences.
“How do we determine who is the majority on a particular issue? Which is the original meaning, and which is the proposed change? Your assertions carry no more weight than anyone else’s on the matter.”
There are literally fields of expertise on this. Etymology. Linguistics. Rules of grammar are not subjective to each individual because that’s not how RULES work.
Can everyone speak in whatever way they want? Sure.
Are you going to go to jail for not speaking in a certain way? Of course not.
Are you going to seem less educated, or not be as capable of relaying information clearly? Yes.
You can speak informally, and with poor grammar. But there are several centuries (starting in the beginning of the 13th century) in which the word ‘they’ has been used in a particular way, and in 1375, it was included in the Oxford English Dictionary in a singular form ONLY where the sex of the subject was unknown (so the author could not clearly relay ‘he’ or ‘she’ and did not want to write ‘he or she’ and instead wrote ‘they’ (the manuscript in question was a medieval romance btw, called “William and the Werewolf.”)
“One way may be truly older or more correct… and yet we don’t really have a way of proving many aspects of language”
….
Again, there’s literally an entire field of study called etymology which is dedicated to doing exactly that as accurately as possible.
“Dictionaries are full of holes that we fill in subconsciously, based on our own experiences.”
What? That’s… not how dictionaries work.
At one time, I would have considered myself a prescriptivist. Age and experience have turned me more descriptivist, and perhaps ironically, arguing with you about language.
There are indeed many fields of research on language. Because it’s a complex subject, not easily reduced to a known set of rules. Because most languages don’t originate from a simple set of formally expressed rules. We attempt to find and formalize rules that exist within people’s heads, that they subconsciously express and communicate without even being able to conceptualize or articulate. Those rules change over time, as people’s needs and understanding change, as people interact.
While the average person now has the ability to contribute their language to the historical record, due to the widespread availability of education and technology, our understanding of the past is strongly biased towards those who had the ability to write and have their writings preserved. But they probably weren’t representative of the majority of the speakers of any language.
There is no authority for any human language, nobody who can dictate what will be spoken or understood, though some groups may attempt to assert such authority.
Do you have a dictionary that provides a complete, unambiguous meaning for each word, and a full set of rules for when it is or is not appropriate to use in a particular sentence? Or do you know things about words that aren’t contained in any dictionary?
https://www.oed.com/public/oed3guide/guide-to-the-third-edition-of
Here ya go.
Oxford English Dictionary. The most comprehensive English dictionary on the planet. Third edition. They update it regularly. It’s huge.
And yet it still does not provide a complete set of rules on how to use, or not use, any particular word. A word may fit into a sentence, and yet not be the word a native would choose, because they have a lifetime of experience to tell them which words carry the meaning they intend to convey.
Also, the entry for they in no way proscribes its use for a singular subject whose gender is known. Definition 2 is “In anaphoric reference to a singular noun or pronoun.”, with a small note that “Use of they to refer to a singular antecedent has sometimes been considered erroneous.” Sometimes. Or see 2c: “Used with reference to a person whose sense of personal identity does not correspond to conventional sex and gender distinctions, and who has typically asked to be referred to as they (rather than as he or she).”
“And yet it still does not provide a complete set of rules on how to use, or not use, any particular word.”
Have you bothered to look at it? You might change your mind if you did.
And the reason it’s sometimes erroneous is because it’s erroneous when the gender of the subject IS NOT KNOWN to the listener. Which is something I’ve said a few dozen times. And you’re basically proving my point on the existence of actual rules for grammar.
Which is something that boggles my mind that I have to prove to you, if you’re actually claiming to be any sort of linguist, college-level or otherwise.
I have. I particularly read through the page on ‘they’ in detail, to determine whether or not it supported your beliefs. It does not. Nowhere on that page does it specify that it is erroneous to use ‘they’ to refer to a singular person whose gender is known.
My claim is not that there are no rules for grammar, or language. My claim is that your understanding of them, and their evolution throughout history, is overly simplistic. I repeatedly dumb down my language in an attempt to get ideas across to you, but that’s apparently a useless strategy because no matter how simply and directly I state something, you read something else entirely.
“Clearly when I was saying ‘you’ I was not referring to you specifically, Natsune. I was referring to ‘you’ as in’ the culture.”
“I have no idea what you’re responding to here, sorry. The entire point of my post was that using a new pronoun allows more clarity for communication than using the word ‘they’ incorrectly, for reasons that I’ve already spelled out. With examples even.”
I was responding to you bringing up “the majority of the population”(/culture) on a comment which was about two parties communicating. In response to your claim that the use of they is “terrible way to relay information” I claimed that it is only that if *the parties involved* in the conversation are not clear in how they communicate. Then you inserted the general public as if they have a bearing on a conversation between individuals.
“Who are you to say that the majority object?”
“Because the word ‘they’ as a singular third person pronoun is not used in common parlance still.”
…”not used in common parlance still” *around you*. You do not know how common it is elsewhere. People around me use it when a non-binary member of our community is subject.
“Plus it’s not up to me to prove that the majority use a word in a way that it’s been used since its inception.”
It is not up to me to prove the opposite. Oh look! We both failed to show that the majority agrees with us! Your claims hold no water without evidence.
“It’s up to the people wanting to change the meaning of the word to prove that the majority is using the word in the newly proposed manner.”
Really? And that has been done for every word ever? Or even many? That seems like an absurd requirement that would lead to a failure of language evolution, since you know, regional language and slang would never pass (including my example which merely required a rise to internet fame to gain recognition) as would new words that are not part of the general public lexicon. Even the most wide-spread terms would likely fail if they required… what? polling? to gain or change meaning.
Actually, there’s a point, you keep appealing to the majority, but what about all the very real terms that the majority of people *don’t even know exist*; All the fun scientific terms or the legal terms that people either do not know about or misuse? Are those bound to the majority too?
Inflammable has been misused by thousands (maybe millions?) of people over time, but still does not mean “fire-proof”. The pushback against that misuse did not source from Joe Q. Public. For all we know though, the uneducated masses could have outnumbered those pushing to keep the meaning.
“People use these same arguments for why they should be allowed to use racially charged terms,”
“There’s nothing racially charged about a pronoun. People who make arguments that because someone uses they the way it’s supposed to be used can therefore say a NOUN that’s offensive are just being stupid. And they are looking for an excuse to say racial slurs, not trying to describe proper grammar.”
Interesting how often you misrepresent my arguments (and here in response to a paragraph who’s topic was misrepresentation), really, cutting context and manipulating it. “There’s nothing racially charged about a pronoun.” Well, geez, I suppose I’m lucky I never made that claim. It’s almost like that wasn’t one of my arguments. If you read the full sentence, you’d see that the bit you cut out of context was part of a list pertaining to that paragraph’s thesis statement “Much as using the wrong pronoun does, it can be mocking/disrespectful, and is misrepresentative of you.”. It pertained to *targeted mockery and disrespect* in general.
“Also, if you were a doctor/lawyer/professor/etc., would you not insist people don’t call you… I don’t know, butcher or paper-pusher?”
“1) I am a lawyer still.”
That’s cool, except “still” implies you have told me before (I cannot recall any such interaction, in fact, I cannot recall the last time I interacted with you, and if at all, I suspect it’s been years), *and* this was an analogy irrelevant either of our professions. As you put it: “not referring to you specifically”.
“2) doctor/lawyer/professor/etc are nouns, not pronouns.”
Of course. This was an analogy covering the topic of misrepresentation of a person, which is why the rather clear comparing line “Much as using the wrong pronoun does” was used.
“3) If someone wants to call me a butcher, and I’m not a butcher, then they’re relaying incorrect/unclear information to a third party. In either case, I’m not directly involved. The problem is all on the narrator not relaying information correctly, and the person harmed is the listener who is getting incorrect information. Not to mention there are different rules for nouns than for pronouns. You can’t say ‘butcher’ is sometimes the same word as ‘lawyer,’ for example.”
So, you agree that the speaker would be providing misinformation in my example… but what you ignore is that the speaker may not be the only one harmed. If the listener were then to go to the subject under false impressions due to the speaker, they might interact in a harmful way. Or the subject might overhear the misrepresentation (either when the speaker relays these claims or when the listener does) and be harmed that way.
“I’ve not argued this; you are bringing in other people’s arguments.”
“Yes, because it was my initial post. I’m reaffirming my initial post, to which you responded.”
Except, in debate, you counter the arguments made, not those that weren’t. If you said that pizza is the greatest food and cited culture, taste and design, and I countered you on design; you don’t get to bring up taste as though I argued against that as well. The only use I can see for that (and in fact the common use for a tactic revolving around what you did here) is to misrepresent my arguments as absurd (per your views at least), by making up arguments for me.
“Blunt-forcing implies CHANGE. When change is involved, the change is what is being blunt-forced or organically adopted. The pre-existing/original rules are not ‘blunt forced because those rules have the weight of history behind them already and mass acceptance over a period of years or centuries over a majority of the culture, if not the entirety of that culture.”
Blunt-forcing implies violence (in this case in the form words), regardless of if you are starting or stopping something. Change is only implied in the theoretical trauma it brings about. Though if change is what you are looking for, I already made the claim the non-binary they has seen long use, so the people resisting it would indeed be trying to “change” those using it.
Many people use they as a gender-neutral single-party third-person pronoun. They feel that people like you are attempting for force them not to, just in the same way that people who don’t like that usage feel like it’s being forced on them. That’s organic linguistic evolution for you. It’s adversarial.
“Many people use they as a gender-neutral single-party third-person pronoun.”
Many people don’t know how to use proper grammar, then, or how to speak with clarity, because they is not a gender neutral single person third party pronoun unless the subject’s gender is unknown. If the subject’s gender is known, as they’re still using it as a gender-neutral single party third person pronoun, then they are speaking without clarity in a grammatically incorrect way.
People say ‘irregardless’ as well, but that’s not a word either.
“They feel that people like you are attempting for force them not to, just in the same way that people who don’t like that usage feel like it’s being forced on them. ”
People are free to speak in an incoherent fashion if they want to. I’m definitely not going to force them to speak one way or another. But if they want to be understandable to third persons to the maximum effect, they should learn when ‘they’ should and shouldnt be used. And if the problem has to do with non-binary identifiers, then the best solution is just to have a SINGLE new pronoun in place of they, only to be used when non-binary subjects are concerned so that that information could be relayed to a third person coherently.
“That’s organic linguistic evolution for you. It’s adversarial.”
No. Adversarial is not ‘organic.’ Forcing the usage of a new word is not organic adoption of the word or word rules. And when you’re talking about’ organic adoption of language, it’s the new word rules or sentence structure that needs to be organically adopted, not the already existing word rules or sentence structure. That’s why it usually takes time.
It is unclear by what authority you claim to know what is or is not correct grammar. I suspect you’re just operating on your own internalized understanding of the English language… the same as everyone else. Including the people who disagree with you.
Again, I would challenge you to provide a coherent, consistent definition of “organic”.
Sixth grade english class, and the SAT exams. Also etymology and linguistics.
And other people, with similar or more education on matters of language, argue that you’re wrong. Do you have anything more persuasive than your own experiences to back up your claims?
“And other people, with similar or more education on matters of language,”
Such as who?
“argue that you’re wrong.”
From what I’ve seen, the people arguing i’m wrong have been you and the person who called me obtuse. Because I use proper grammar and they haven’t.
And you haven’t really been showing similar or more education on matters of language. You’ve been saying that language is INCREDIBLY subjective in word structure, syntax, and word creation/alteration, entirely based on opinion…. and you seem to have ignored the entire study of etymology to make these assertions.
I’m not going to call you obtuse like you called me, because that’s just insulting, but you’re not really displaying a lot of ‘education on matters of language’ to convince me.
Again, check out ANY websites on etymology. Preferably one without a political bent.
Or check out an SAT guide on the verbal portion of the SAT.
Or even a sixth grade book on basic grammar and sentence structure.
These are not ‘my own experiences.’ I did not create the study of etymology. I did not create the SAT verbal section. I did not invent grammar.
Or check out the Oxford English Dictionary. Third Edition. It’s the most comprehensive dictionary ever written and is constantly being updated whenever words are added, or altered. It is the definitive source for the English language and formal grammar.
Although I do know how to speak in grammatically correct sentences because my job involves using language to relay information in a coherent manner. Plus I find etymology to be fun.
Hey Pander, please inform me in what way I should care about your incredibly obtuse decision regarding grammar.
I have read this post 4 times and have no idea what you are trying to ask here, although I am guessing that it is a failed attempt at an insult, mostly because of you using the word ‘obtuse.’
Despite nothing I’ve written actually being obtuse. If anything, I went out of my way with examples to make it easy to understand.
Did you maybe mean verbose instead of obtuse? Because I definitely am verbose.
Your opinion on this matter, as well as many others, is just that — your opinion, and nothing more. And yet you present it as incontrovertible, unquestionable fact. Obtuse does seem like a reasonable description of you at times. Your own understanding of the universe often gets in the way of comprehending anyone else’s.
“Your opinion on this matter, as well as many others, is just that — your opinion, and nothing more.”
It’s… not my opinion. It’s literally just the rules of proper english grammar. I didn’t MAKE the rules. They arent my opinion. Just like I did not make rules on what is a noun or a verb or that ending a sentence in a preposition is poor grammar. Just like I did not make rules on what constitutes a run-on sentence.
Or where you should use a semi-colon.
Or which words are not actually real words (examples – irregardless, depthful, etc). If you’ve taken an SAT, you’ve undoubtedly had to deal with the fact that English, like any language, does have a set of rules, right? Those rules are not opinions on what is grammatically correct. They ARE what is grammatically correct.
“And yet you present it as incontrovertible, unquestionable fact. ”
Yes? Because I didn’t make the rules of grammar. It’s an incontrovertible, unquestionable fact that rules of grammar are an objective set of rules, not subjective. Not BECAUSE I said it, but because I’m relaying what the rules actually are. Feel free to do an etymology deep dive if you want.
What you are thinking of, assuming grammar is all subjective, is ‘slang’ or ‘informal language.’ Not grammatically correct formal language. Think back to when you were in school and you’d turn in a paper and the teacher would make up your paper with the spelling mistakes, sentence structure errors, context errors, run-on sentences, and so on. The teacher was NOT GIVING THEIR OPINION.
If you were in a spelling bee, and had to spell ‘weight,’ but you spell it W-I-E-G-H-T, you can’t just say ‘well, your opinion is that weight is spelled ‘W-E-I-G-H-T’ but that is not incontrovertible, unquestionable fact.
“Obtuse does seem like a reasonable description of you at times.”
You haven’t really shown that at all. Honestly, going to an insult just shows that the other person lacks the ability to form a coherent argument.
“Your own understanding of the universe often gets in the way of comprehending anyone else’s”
You mean my understanding of proper grammar and how sentence structure works? I mean… I’m relatively sure most of us have gone to school long enough to learn that – usually by 6th grade. But maybe you should not treat this as if I created the rules of grammar from 1320 A.D. onward, by calling the rules of grammar ‘my understanding of the universe.’ :)
Who made the rules? What is your source for them, other than your own internalized understanding? If they are formal rules, then you should be able to point at something other than your own experiences as proof of their existence.
You speak as if rules are simply a property of the universe, when most of them are simply things humans have made up and agree upon. They are closer to opinions than facts.
You’re “the frog at the bottom of a well”. You think your own experiences describe the totality of objective reality, when you’re just ignorant of the broader world.
I’m very surprised that you do not think grammar and language have rules for sentence structure and syntax and word formation. Also that you seem to have ignored the entire study of etymology and think that the English language’s words are just ‘made up on the spot.’
Again, feel free to start looking through etymology websites. You’d probably be surprised at what you learn and discover the non-spontaneity of the english language.
The fact that you don’t understand the origin of certain words or grammatic rules does not mean people just made it up. There were always reasons, root causes for words being used, taken from other languages, etc. Which is why I refer to English as a hodge podge of different languages. Because there’s not a lot of originality in modern English. You will not be finding many, if any, words that spontaneously come into being if you bother to study it. It’s always taken from somewhere else, there’s always a reason they shortened something to make a sentence flow more easily while not messing up the previous rules on grammar, etc.
You’re the frog at the bottom of the well, not me. :) I was paying attention to the people who built the well in the first place.
I’m just as surprised that you think I don’t. Human history is short, so maybe when I say that any particular language is not an inherent property of the universe, that the rules are something humans have invented, maybe I come across as saying that they’re just ‘made up on the spot’. But that’s not what I mean.
I have no idea what you just said when you say ‘language is not an inherent property of the universe’ (what the heck does that mean and who said anything about the universe?), or how you think what you said in any way means that language does not have very defined rules, based on consistent reasoning (again, do an etymological deep dive, it’s fun – you’ll enjoy it) in order to be a coherent means of relaying information.
How can you know anything about etymology and yet not understand… anything about the process by which humans develop languages and modify them over time? They do not spring forth, fully-grown. There are multiple languages, and they evolve, because they are arbitrary, based on agreement, and not on essential properties.
It often seems like history for you is just a series of facts, with no connective tissue, no reasoning, no why, no motivations, just “this happened and then this happened, and we can make no inferences from this”.
Words that uniquely identify a single person are useful. That’s what names are for, though they’re usually not unique, or only unique within a specific context.
Well… like DaveB said, there is ‘it’ – but ‘it’ is pretty dehumanizing to use for a person, rather than an object.
Someone else suggested thon, which is a very old english word that basically means ‘that’ – but that also feel as dehumanizing as ‘it’ and I’m pretty sure it was also meant for objects rather than people.
So what would be easiest as a compromise that makes grammatic sense would be a word substitute for ‘they/them’ which can be used as a singular pronoun when the subject’s gender IS known, which is the thing that ‘they’ is not meant for (they is only singular when the subject’s gender is NOT known/is not he or she, or at the very least, where the speaker wants to relay the information that the subject is neither identified as he or she, but it a single person, not multiple people).
You’re right this is how it used.
Now as a multilingual I’m going to complain about this.
All languages I know the pronouns and/or relevant grammar of that are not english use plurals only singular as an expression of respect and often declaration of authority, but english doesn’t this took me months to learn.
grmbl.
In regards to the English language, it’s a complete mix of all the languages of invaders, and it doesn’t work in the way a lot of other languages do.
For example, a direct translation (words only) of ‘my car’ from English to Indonesian is ‘saya mobil’, but that doesn’t mean ‘my car’, it roughly means ‘I am a car’. The correct translation would be ‘mobil saya’, which is very roughly, the car that is mine.
Another example is that English describes what you’re talking about first, before providing you with what it is – “the big, fat, hairy, grey, hungry……”. Other languages will say “the monster, that is big, fat, hairy, grey…”.
So basically, it’s another case of being ‘lost in translation’.
Halo: “Yes. These are things that require multiple supers, and are not all found in a single person. You need three people to pull this off. Aherm.”
I mean… She can’t do all three of those at the same time either :P
As far as pronouns … if ‘you’ can pull double duty as singular and plural (it used to be plural only), so can ‘they/them’. Don’t forget, the singular second person used to be ‘thou/thee’ until … I guess we got tired of them?
As far as the comic … I wonder how often supers try to change their codenames. I remember Archon made sure to get a good one for Halo (especially for marketing purposes), but aside from things like that is there a gudieline?
On the super-hero name thing, I am reminded of a naming convention that is almost universal; applies to superhero names, monster names, fantastical creatures, spells, super moves, and so on..
the *foreign sounds cool* convention.
No matter what country you are from or language you speak, you may think that certain words or names in some other specific language just sound cool so use them in your series to name stuff. Latin is a very common *victim* of this as its a dead language, and funny enough English, German, and Spanish often get this treatment in Asian media. Heck just look at the anime Bleach and the use of Spanish for place and move names for the Hollows.
So I could see someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language, and even learning it is not emersed in the culture(s) so doesn’t have the same associations for some words, thinking “Carrier” sounds cool, because Aircraft Carrier, only to like here encounter a native English speaker having a completely different association for the word.
-I myself know this feeling as I named a continent Ravashira only to find out its a food dish in India. (granted this happened more by accident *combining Ravishing with Shire* but the effect was the same when encountering someone who had this word (or two words equaling the same sound anyway) in their own language.
Or, simply making up foreign-sounding names because they make a cool-sounding super-name (ie ‘Issanador Abolchick’ = Is an adorable chick)
Not seen too many supers do that, other than those chooping up words like Thanos coming from Thanotos, or Titania from Titan, etc…
see the assortment of letters that sound whimsical used in fantasy a lot, my own example there as well, which can end up a coincidence when you think you’ve made some whimsical word and someone in the world has it in their language.
Of course in fantasy you also have the (lazy adjustment) take a real world location or name and add or subtract from it for your world.
-me as a teenager early twenties making place names for my Aesperia world (which was a disc world version of Earth), so we got Bostonia, and Nipponia as placements for Boston and Japan.
but then have totally random it just sounds nice like Rafoesha. Agrax, etc…
\
honestly a pretty common tend in fantasy stories to name things like this. Or running a name through google translate to try and make it sound more magical to your language’s readers like having a place called Golden Princess Castle of the Sky, but run through a translator.
-funny enough a lot of Kaiju names are like that too, Americans try to make Japanese sounding Kaiju names not realizing that when translated to English most Kaiju just have pun names.
Anguirus is the equivalent of naming your monster Ankyloton or Gojira is like Gorwhale.
Also, the point is, a Supers name does not have to have anything to do with their powers or even their appearance
Neither Wolverine or Sabertooth look like the aminal they are ‘borrowing’ the name from, nor do they have anything to do with their powers
To most people, a ‘Nightcrawler’ is a type of worm, not some fuzzy-blue fork-tailed cuddle-demon
But when was playing Traveller (first on paper then on computer), would use the computers built-in text-to-speech programme to come up with some ‘alien’ names: basically just mashed the keyboard and see if they made a group sound rather than individual letters (or a robot with two letters and a number, where the letters could be used as a name: KD = KayDee)
Since my college English class, I’ve use “per” from person, as a gender-neutral personal pronoun and “pers” as a gender-neutral possessive pronoun. Not sure if he came up with it but Brin (Uplift Series) also uses “et” and “ets” for genderless beings personal and possessive pronouns.
This is why personally hate (yes, ‘hate’) Sydney at times
Because she has a sense of humor? Opinions? I think you’ll have to be more specific.
Because she’s the only one smart enough to come up with names, even when she knows nothing about what they can do
That sounds like a dumb reason to hate someone, but I guess you’re at least consistent in hating intelligent, competent people.
You know what sounds a better (and more apt) name than ‘Halo’? ‘Ball Bearer’, and that shall be Sydney’s new name
I dont know about that.
“Ball Bearer” is just a hop, skip and a jump to “Ball Bag” (from balls and ugly bag of mostly water) and then just one small step to “Ball Sack” (from bag to sack is not far).
Sydney would end up being called “Scrotum”.
Probably wouldn’t end well.
That is presumably what Guesticules is going for, given his comment directly above.
Halo didn’t name herself. Ariana did. Sydney couldnt think of a good name for her because every name she could think of sounded stupid.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-134-sobriquet-quest/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-135-an-under-reaction-get-it-cause-shes-short/
Your point?
So, because Sydney didn’t get to name herself, she is allowed to (re)name everyone else?
A long time ago, I was informed that while your parents may name you. It’s your friends that decide what you are called. So yes, most people invariably never get to decide on their name.
As far as gender neutrals’s… I’ve always been a fan of “HEY, YOU!” Non specific and generally offensive. Checks all my boxes in just two words :).
No, my point is that as good at naming people as Sydney is, because of her genre-savviness, she was not good enough to name herself. Arianna, the P.R. person, was better at it in Sydney’s case.
The reason I responded to your post is you suggested ‘ball bearer’ as Sydney’s name. Something that Sydney had already dismissed because it sounded stupid (or at least most words involving the word ball, as we saw from how Achilles kept trying to name her stuff using the word ‘ball’).
Who is making that claim?
The claim that Sydney is generally better at coming up with names is distinct from the claim that Sydney has any kind of authority to rename other people.
You attempt to rename other people all the time. I don’t think many people will agree that you’re any good at it.
if sydney ever saw scylia im sure her reaction would probably be along the lines of omg that’s awesome, so, uh, are you an alien, or mythological person?
I’m hoping that we get to see some ongoing development of Scylla’s character. She seems to be a regular part of Deus’ entourage. At first I wondered, given Deus’ hobby of collecting interesting and exotic sex partners, if he had a page for her in his book. After consideration, I think not. Not that he wouldn’t, but shagging your employees tends to create an unproductive work place. Given her appearance rate DB could tease us with tidbits of appearance and personality for years.
Who are you people talking about? Cthillia?
yeah him, the dude with the death, and I guess ice gase.
to me it seems that sydney is the one of a small number of people that could get them to be happy with how they are, over their current plan of mass sacrifices for the artifact knife and then change to the body they want.
Yeah, I should have looked up the proper spelling. I still misspell Cthulhu even though I’ve been reading that stuff for years.
The singular “they” has existed in English for longer than the singular “you”, and yet I never hear people complaining about singular “you”.
How mysterious.
Incorrect. Both came into use at roughly the same time, the 14th century. Although ‘you’ technically started a couple of centuries earlier in the 12th century but didn’t actually get into the common usage until 200 years later, when it replaced ye, thee, and thou (and your replaced thine) for both singular and plural. It took 200 years for this to happen organically on a mass scale.
And even back then, they was only used as a singular pronoun if the subject’s gender was unknown, as a substitution for ‘he or she.’
So no, it’s not that mysterious.
Also, it’s weird and not logical to compare a second person pronoun vs a third person pronoun. It’s basically comparing apples and oranges, because they go by completely different rules for a very legitimate reason, which I will explain below.
There would never be a complaint about a second person pronoun because both people are speaking to each other with a second person pronoun, so there’s no way for there to be confusion as to the subject that the narrator is talking about. With a third person pronoun, there IS confusion about the subject that the narrator is talking about, since the third person subject is not actually part of the relay of information.
Nope no gender neutral pronoun needed on earth. Off world maybe there is a nueter gender but they would have a name for it.
Pronounced like Godzilla or like a Spanish tortilla
English is a dynamic language, common usage denotes the meaning of a word, and new words have been added as a result.
They, them, can be singular or plural, and have been and are used both ways. If you feel the need to write a thesis paper on why they can’t and you should be allowed to call people by what you want to call them instead of what they want to be called; then you need to check your reason why.
Seriously if you can mold some plastic into a human shape and refer to as a man or woman, then a real human being can be called how they identify.
and if makes people *feel better* arguing they and them is used singular when you don’t know the gender. congrats you solved the riddle, YOU don’t know their gender and they don’t want to reveal it to you, so the reasoning here to use they and them still stands.
Sydney’s method of making friends is unique in a way.
Oddly enough, it’s the exact method she uses to make enemies… strange how that works out, don’t it
eh, people got used to singular you, they’ll get used to singular they.
I’m just waiting for they-all to start showing up :)
The hardest part of adding new words to a language is getting the rest of the people who use that language to know what it means, and use it, without changing the meaning in the process. So, basically, it’s impossible unless you have a TikTok video go viral or something.
True, but it’s easier to add one new word than to change an existing word, or to add 100 new words. It’s all a matter of degrees.
I would suggest language “naturally” drifts, and it’s harder to prevent change to existing words than to encourage it. And harder still to add new ones.
Incorrect. Language doesnt drift particularly easily, actually. It just seems that way to you because history is LONG and our lives are short in comparison.
It’s actually MUCH easier to add a new word than to change the meaning of an existing word. It happens every year, many times over.
Hahahaha.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Dear God, I think I’ve finally pushed Torabi over the edge. He’s now cackling with utter madness.
The correct pronouns to use for a person are the pronouns they specify for you to use. Period. It’s as simple as that. You respect their preferences, regardless of what they are.
If their preferences are unknown (or you deliberately wish to leave the preferred pronouns unspecified*), ‘they’ is best.
Once you know what a person wants to be called, calling them anything else is, explicitly, transphobic.
You don’t need to remember every set of new pronouns. There’s literally dozens upon dozens of pronouns that exist. You’re not expected to memorize them all.
But you ARE asked to use the pronouns someone specifically asks you to use. You don’t need to memorize every pronoun. You *should* memorize the pronoun of someone who has told you their pronoun, as much as you should memorize their name.
Just like someone’s name, it’s okay if you forget what their pronouns are. If you struggle to remember, then they will understand. But try your best, and that’s all you need to do. Pronouns, like a name, are something that all you need to do to be decent is attempt to respect the preferences of the person being talked to. If someone’s legal name is “David” but they tell you to call them ‘Dave’, then you try to call them ‘Dave’. If you don’t remember, that’s okay; if you need to ask or say ‘David’ accidentally, it’s okay, as long as you then after being reminded/corrected, adjust (and if needed, apologize for the mistake).
Pronouns are no different. If someone tells you their pronouns, then you use those pronouns. If you don’t remember, that’s okay; if you need to ask or say the wrong one accidentally, it’s okay, as long as you then after being reminded/corrected, adjust (and if needed, apologize for the mistake).
It’s actually just that simple.
(*Anonymity is an easy example with confidentiality of information. You might know a speaker is a she/her, but in relaying info to another, not wish to reveal to this other person that they are a she/her, so you use ‘they’ instead.)
“Pronouns are no different. If someone tells you their pronouns, then you use those pronouns. If you don’t remember, that’s okay; if you need to ask or say the wrong one accidentally, it’s okay, as long as you then after being reminded/corrected, adjust (and if needed, apologize for the mistake).
It’s actually just that simple.”
Or you could just simply use the persons name.
People, do not be a Sydney, if you don’t know what someone you have just met’s powers are or their name, be polite and ask them!!
Don’t be (offensively) wrong and then insist that they change their name so you don’t have to learn something new
You do surprise sometimes. You might be a halfway decent person if you followed your own advice.
Lots of ex-colony countries have kept english or french as common/official tongues, be it as a lingua franca (since they’re often amalgamations of completely different territories/nations/groups with their own languages) or as a working language for media and certain fields of knowledge. But the level of an average individual can vary a lot; My father spent a bunch of time helping with a Côte d’Ivoire refugee and her french was pretty awkward.