7 Sep
2023
7 Sep
'23
11:46 p.m.
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
On Thursday 07 September 2023 15:32:58 deloptes via tde-users wrote:
Well, today using they is signalling progressiveness. AFAIR from the English
classes "you" is sufficiently polite and would prefer this as pronoun
reffering my person.
Mike Bird via tde-users wrote:
> As to Deloptes original question, I am unclear as to whether they want
> to
Delopes is a he :) They are (if in one person) anomaly :)
It is unusual feeling being called they, even if I understand the
politeness in the background. I just want to say it is not necessary for
me.
Ah, you have got caught up in our culture wars. It is a pity that this
stupid non-question has become an obsession for so many people who take
different sides and evidently do not know at all anything about, say,
linguistics or the established etymologies of words.
I, too, get annoyed by this kind of misuse of
language, which is a kind of
pretension to some "better knowledge"; but the funny thing is, practically
everybody is wrong on this matter.
The use of *they* as a kind of indeterminate form can be considered both
right and wrong, depending on one's point of view. It is used to be
deliberately non-specific, or maybe "polite" usage: neither male nor
female, neither singular nor plural, nor giving other indications about
one's relations to others (as one finds in languages other than English).
I think maybe it's because English lost the use of gender in language for
ordinary words. I don't hear about people debating whether, in other
languages, a wall or a house ought to be masculine or feminine, etc. That
part of the culture wars seems to be peculiarly an American phenomenon, or
at least it is very much anglocentric.
I do not want to prolong this discussion in the linguistic direction as it
is getting OT. However "they" is nowdays plural in contradiction to archaic
use as you describe. "You" is the accepted pronoun. The progressives try to
insert all kinds of other pronouns or variants of spelling, but there is
the principle of economy of language and it is not likely to succeed (from
theoretical and historical PoV).
And yet, I must point out that the use of the words
*they* and *them* in
this sort of indeterminate or "polite" sense is actually quite ancient,
and can be traced back a part of speech that was lost. There are traces of
this, for example, in French, as when one says "On dit" (They say), as in,
"They say it's going to rain sometime later today." Who is this
"they"?
This seventh form or declension (not sure if my terms are correct here, as
it's been decades since university) dropped out of most Indo-European
languages sometime at the brink of the historical record. It used to exist
(I believe) in Old Irish and the other oldest European languages, but then
gradually disappeared.
You mean dualis, which stands for 2, meaning both of us. I was always
curious. I know in Europe the Slovenians still have dualis.
Personally, I wish scholars, linguists, grammarians,
makers of
dictionaries, politicians -- whoever it is that gets to decide these
matters -- could get it together, and come up with a kind of all-purpose,
inclusive term (one that doesn't offend anybody) to cover this problem of
the "third gender" or third sex; not to make any kind of political
statement, but only because it is a concept that is recognized in many
cultures already, and can be found in our own history, going back before
the Classical period.
Well, from theoretical PoV the scholars follow the development in the
language. The philosophers or alike create or perhaps more accurately
develop the concept and the people either accept or reject it.
For example the above mentioned "they" was used only when reffering the
Emperor which was inherited from the Roman-Byzantine empire, where they had
two equal in power and they find a way to address them without insulting
one or the other. The simple people then adopted it as polite form, but for
example in Austria or Prussia/Germany they were forbidden to use it and
they used "he" or "she" instead of nowdays "you" reffering a
single person.
And then maybe we could all get back to living our
lives again, instead of
fighting these stupid culture wars over things that aren't even real.
My strategy is "ignore", but I still prefer to be he and addressed by
"you".
This is what I wanted to highlight originally.
And if someone can tell me how to solve the issue with the generated mail,
it would be great.
BR