Language Fluency and Cultural literacy

Language Learning Chinese
21

I did some reaserch into this topic (the google search) and “techically speaking” MT is right. Could someone make something clear for me. Is the use of “they” only grammatically incorrect because people say it is? Or it is some-sort of law of the UNIVERSE that makes it not ok to use.

I found a quote I enjoy:
“It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial
repositories, put together well after the languages they
define. The roots of language are irrational and of a
magical nature.”
-Jorge Luis Borges, Prologue to “El otro, el mismo.”

It appears that either a new word needs to made made, or people can continue to use they. Which do you think is a better idea? I understand that it’s importance goes beyond dictionary definitions and street usage. It’s very important for things to be clear when writing legal documents and things of that nature (which I’m glad I take no part of :wink: ).

22

Just to kick this dead horse some more, I always thouht that historically, he was the singular pronoun used in masculine as well as a non-gender-specifying sense. Similarly, man had and continues to carry the meaning of person in some cases.

Seemed to me that it was due to the politically correct ideology of the 80’s that they came to replace it, as a corruption of the he or she construct. Or maybe I only started paying attention to these things in the 80’s. But I like MT’s suggestions on rewording your sentences to avoid this problem, rather than being insensitive, ungrammatical, or inventing a new pronoun.

As for why they is wrong - by definition, since it’s a plural subject pronoun and so cannot refer to a singular subject.

23

Nope. I started using “they” a long time ago as a singular… :? . I found it to be very useful for when I wanted to be covert when talking about different things. What do you do when the gender is unknown? It makes more sense for God (and things of that nature) to reffered to as

24

I didn’t grow up in that world. In my world he means a boy/man ( :wink: ) and she meant a girl/woman.

[quote=“mangalica”]Seemed to me that it was due to the politically correct ideology of the 80’s that they came to replace it, as a corruption of the he or she construct. Or maybe I only started paying attention to these things in the 80’s. But I like MT’s suggestions on rewording your sentences to avoid this problem, rather than being insensitive, ungrammatical, or inventing a new pronoun.

As for why they is wrong - by definition, since it’s a plural subject pronoun and so cannot refer to a singular subject. [/quote]
I won’t fight to change anything, but until there’s a new word, I’m sticking with they. Rewording sentences and stuff because of some grammar rule would be like… Following the rules :smiling_imp: I don’t even know these so-called grammar rules, and any I do know are from osmosis.

25

hey man … maybe you’re forgetting about such words as snowman, milkman, postman. How do you say them? The PC people managed to change give rise to spokesperson, and that does have a nice ring to it. Then again there’s walkman, where man means “radio”. :smiley: :smiley:

But seriously, I dont think we need fewer words, not more. How about we start using ta as the new generic pronoun.

If anyone agrees that this suggestion float’s tas boat, ta is free to comply.

ps: Miltownkid, if you really want to be more sensitive, start by changing your signature! :wink: Just kidding, thanks for the thought-provoking discussion!

pps: my definition of fluency: it’s like love, nearly impossible to define, but when you’re there, you’ll know it

26

You can use One instead of they.
But gosh, that’s sound so french to me…
On ne peut pas parle francais…One cannot speak french…

I think there’s too competing argument about the usage of they. I’ve read that THEY can be used as neutral pronoun a long time ago in a grammar book and have used it that way eversince.

Using he instead of they would really provoke the feminist…

Q: Is God, a He, a She, or a They?

A: It’s Dei. As in Agnus Dei.

ax

27

They CAN be properly used as a neutral pronoun in the plural, but not in the singular.

If a people want to use they as a singular pronoun he are free to do can but they will be use wrong English and that’s OK if it don’t matter if your English is write or not.

When speaking informally that’s fine, but when editing or writing professional papers one should avoid using they as a singular pronoun.

28

MT,

if that is the case, then english has a major flaw of an orphaned singular neutral pronoun.

another major flaw is the plural pronoun of you.

We all use “you guys”, Yinz, Y’all, and what else…

but english has lost that when it used “You” for “Tu” while it was supposed to match a “Vouz” in french :slight_smile:

Now thou, the correct singular pronoun is just an archaic pronoun.

ax

29

[quote=“miltownkid”]
Nope. I started using “they” a long time ago as a singular… :? . I found it to be very useful for when I wanted to be covert when talking about different things. What do you do when the gender is unknown?[/quote]

I think it’s ok to use they in speaking when the gender is unknown, but when you’re talking about a definite person, it sounds deceptive and very unnatural to me. My friend has been using “they” a lot lately when he tells me what he did with a “friend.” So I assume that he is talking about a girl and that he doesn’t want me to know. There’s usually no seamless way to conceal someone’s sex.

30

Concerning the use of ‘they,’ there’s a crucial distinction which Dzhefri brought up but everyone else has ignored:

[quote]To be more precise, I should say, “Third person singular they is definitely used by native speakers of English from English-speaking countries throughout the world, and has been for many centuries.”

Just having finished a degree in Linguistics, I must disagree with calling the regular speech of hundreds of millions of native speakers of a language “wrong.”[/quote]

The distinction is between a descriptive grammar and a prescriptive grammar. Prescriptive grammar is made up of the sorts of rules like the one under discussion, the kinds of rules you learn in school. These rules often come about through historical influences and accidents that we don’t even remember, or else are created by self-proclaimed experts and committees. What linguists are interested in is descriptive grammar, which is really just an objective description of what a native speaker actually speaks. So Dzhefri was right: since native speakers actually speak this way (that is, they make the “mistake” of using ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’), this is actually the correct way to speak. Actually, according to a linguist, there is no incorrect way to speak.

Personally, I prefer the descriptive approach, since it accords with the way language and the mind actually work. But maybe there are some good reasons for “prescribing” rules (aside from using them to teach non-native speakers, which may or may not be a good method…). And of course, MT’s approach of rewording the sentence seems a perfectly acceptable way of avoiding the problem, and is a solution I’ve seen grammar books as well. Anyway, I’m inclined to go the linguistic route and say screw the rules, but I’m interested to see if anyone else has any thoughts on why a prescriptive grammar is useful or necessary…

31

Mad Scientist,
The distinction between prescriptive and descriptive is interesting, it highlights how a living language’s rules change in speech before they’re changed in textbooks. English is not a particularly perscriptive language anyway, compared to other languages where elementary school students get indoctrinated with intricate grammar rules. English grammar, on the other hand, is assimilated subconsciously, while rules are only used to point out exceptions, and often take the form of funny mnemonics such as “I before E, except after C, and when it sounds like AYE as in weight, and a few more stragglers such as WEIRD and foreign words such as EISENHOWER”.

So English is not a language of strict rules, it’s more like open-source software, we’re free to modify and add to it. So which rules can we ignore and which should we enforce? It’s a tough call.

I’ve an Indian collegue, who speaks the English he grew up with. He says things like “marks-it” to mean his college transcript, and “hill station” to refer to a resort in the mountains. These are perfectly valid regional variations. But he also tends to say “very less” instead of “very few”. When he does, I feel the need to correct him. Should I? After all, his intended meaning is clear.

A good example of descriptive grammar is double negatives. “I didn’t say nothing” is perfectly clear when used in speech, assuming the right emphasis is put on “nothing”. However it’s prescribed as wrong in English grammar. The fact that double negatives are the norm in many languages such as Spanish, French, Russian… shows that there’s no fundamental flaw in them. The weakes argument is that double negatives cancel one another out… if this were so, then a triple negative would be perfectly acceptable.

Another example is the “S apostrophe S” issue. The rules state that “United States’s”, “Jones’s” is the right form, but many people will simply drop the last S, either in writing or only in speech.

I think the deciding factor should be, does bending the rules for convenience clarify or cloud up the meaning. By this measure, double negatives are OK, dropping the last S is not. I tend to think that singular “they” falls into the latter, since it leads the listener to think that the subject may be plural. But again, with the right spoken emphasis, confusion can be avoided. So perhaps we can conclude that such rule-bending is acceptable in speech, but not in writing.

32

Or maybe it should be:

So perhaps we can conclude that such rule-bending is acceptable when the target audience thinks it’s acceptable.

This may sound as if it’s straying away from a universal standard of a language, but will there ever be a universal standard that can be reffered to so one could say something is “right” or “wrong” in a language, written or spoken?

Isn’t the written form of a language a reflection of it’s spoken counterpart?

33

(miltownkid)
Isn’t the written form of a language a reflection of it’s
spoken counterpart?

I think it would be more productive to consider spoken and
written forms as in fact two languages in their own right.

The constraints in speech and writing are not the same, so why
get bogged down into trying to have the two behave in the same way?

In practice, nobody does.

EB

34

I think you’re exactly right, Miltown, when you say that rule-bending is acceptable when the target audience thinks it’s acceptable. I don’t know about you, but I definitely speak different styles of English depending on the audience. Not that it takes any effort – it’s just an automatic adjustment. At work it’s gotta be proper; at home or with friends rule-bending is fine. I believe much has been written on the subject as it applies to blacks who speak “proper” English in the university but to fit in back home slide into the serious rule-bending of “black English.”

But we got diverted onto this tangent because Sir Donald made a statement that he attributed to a language reference book, and I asked if it was a direct quote because it wasn’t “proper” English. I think you would agree that the audience of a language reference book would not expect to see rule bending, as the book is supposed to be a model of “proper English.”

35

There’s nothing to argue about there. A “native” speaker of English shouldn’t have a problem understanging that rule bending (reffering to the use of they), but it might confuse a “non-native”. That’s why these sorts of standards are important.

36

As a follow-up, I think the above about target audience does apply pretty much the same to writing as well as speaking. This is a casual, conversational forum where sentence fragments are perfectly acceptable. At many jobs they’re not.

But, I’m not so sure about speakingpigeon’s question, “Isn’t the written form of a language a reflection of it’s spoken counterpart?” I’m not exactly sure what the question means, but spoken dialect can be very hard to capture in words. Mark Twain did a great job at it. But I doubt that I could write in any regional or ethnic dialect. I think even most people who are fluent in spoken “black English,” for example, would have trouble capturing the dialect accurately in writing. Speaking and writing seem to be two very different activities.

37

or for that matter MLK (the German one) who tried to popularize German vernacular.

but yeah, try writing in Cantonese vernacular or Shanghai or some other regional dialect. very hard. sometimes there aren’t words for the spoken word (you would use the written equivalent: same meaning, different word). The only time I’ve seen it done is really in comic books and not 100%.

an article on new words put into the dictionary (eng)
msnbc.com/news/932921.asp?cp1=1

38

That was me that posed the question “Isn’t the written form of a language a reflection of it’s spoken counterpart?”. I just meant that written form is based directly off of the spoken form, not that it is a mirror image.

What’s all this “black English” stuff. :laughing:

Ima get mad and hafta start bustin’ cats up in this piece.

Speaking and writing are 2 different activities. So are speaking and public speaking, forum writing and legal writing, English and Engrish. I’m not sure what my point is with that, but language is really strange. There are many different levels of comparison.

39

more like
c koi kan on di fransai noi…

ax

40

Well ax - I never saw it quite that “different” - but people do write french something like that in chat rooms - as in “koi d 9” = quoi de neuf = what’s new