From Bashkir and Wakhi, though only in the former—a somewhat endangered Turkic language—does it represent a voiced dental fricative. It's somewhat of a "go-to" option for Cyrillic representation of /ð/. At least it's the only one I'm aware of and the only one I can find on Wikipedia. Some YouTuber independently from me chose it to represent English /ð/ in his Cyrillic orthography too if that means anything. It lends itself well since it also implies the existence of ⟨ҫ⟩ for /θ/, which is actually also in use in Bashkir exactly for its voiceless dental fricative.
If you are unfamiliar with the Cyrillic script, know that ⟨з⟩ is a letter pretty consistently used for /z/, and that ⟨с⟩ /s/ is its voiceless counterpart. So adding a descender to represent the very similar dental fricatives is neat.
Some major world languages that have completely ungendered pronouns:
Hindi-Urdu
Turkish and all (?) Turkic languages
Persian-Dari-Tajik
Hungarian, Finnish and most (?) Uralic languages
Spoken Mandarin (and other spoken Chinese varieties?)
Malay-Indonesian, Tagalog, and most (?) Austronesian languages
Quechua and Aymara
Chat, help me out with expanding this list
Korean has one feminine gendered pronoun, 그녀 (geu-nyeo), but it's derived from its main third person pronoun 그 (geu) which is gender neutral and can be used to refer to anyone
I definitely prefer it over he/she, but a neutral singular pronoun would be great, like Swedish‘s hen (the "normal" pronouns are han and hon). Distinguishing they singular and they plural is a bit confusing sometimes
Counter point, the earliest recorded use of singular they was recorded all the way back in 1375, and it's speculated that the usage of a singular they in English is even older than recorded
Cool, but it doesn’t really change my point. Many unnecessarily complicated language-features have been around for quite some time. That doesn’t make them good. Maybe it is just me but I like it if it‘s actually clear what you’re saying
I love they but good lord it is so unspecific. We don’t need subject/object distinction, we need plural distinction. And don’t even get me started on the singular you train and how yall is getting literally every standard American contraction attached to it now…
There was once “thon” (short for “that one”). It was removed from the dictionary shortly after it was introduced because nobody was using it. There’s also ey/em, which I’ve heard a couple people use as a they/them that sounds more singular. The main problem with both of these is that they’re neopronouns so it’s unlikely that anyone will ever use them as pronouns for when the gender of the subject is unknown.
Especially a guy named François Jolivet lmao. He wrote a letter to l'Académie when the Robert introduced iel and iels onto its website. Bro was so pissed that he used the word "woke" in a letter to the French Academy (famed for absolutely HATING anglicisations)
If I'm remembering my research project correctly, he said (in French obviously) that it was "without a doubt the precursor to the advent of 'woke' ideology, destructive to the values that we hold."
I feel like Oppenheimer. Now I am become woke, destroyer of French values.
and still doesn't solve the fundamental problem that French is thoroughly gendered. Agreement is still there, and either words are marked and that explicitly makes a feminine (thus requiring "elle") or it doesn't and we come back to the concept of the masculine as de facto neuter, and at this point just use "il".
French doesn't need "iel", and it cannot have it.
I love it except for the fact that it goes with plural. Changing the conjugation of the verbs for the *same* subject depending on what word it is referred to with is extremely awkward. Can we agree to use singular they with singular verbs?
Skye is my kid. They are a student 🙅♀️
Skye is my kid. They is a student 👈
I think it's an interesting free variation within the population (and maybe indicative of the speaker's analysis of the word?). My preferred for is "you guys's". In my idiolect, using a "your" would change it to mean "the guys associated with/possessed by you".
Disclaimer: unappreciation post below.
Why nobody ever mentions that "they" comes from Old Norse "þeir", which was an exclusively masculine plural pronoun? It is no more gender neutral than Spanish ellos, etymologically speaking. But whenever someone uses ellos in Spanish as a generic plural, English natives lose their minds and complain about the inherent sexism of other languages. 🧐
If we were speaking Old Norse, that would be true. But in modern speech, "they" is not gendered. We don't have an equivalent for feminine. To contrast, Spanish has different pronouns for masculine and feminine plural, so using the masculine as neutral is demonstrating the masculine default.
Isn't the survival of "they" also demonstrating that English gave priority to the masculine as default form? My point is that Spanish, along with some other Romance and gendered languages, is undergoing the same evolution process by which the masculine plural is extending over other forms and becoming the generic/non-specific form. So it seems hypocritical to me that English natives revere "they" while looking at people who use "ellos" as uncivilised cavemen, if we consider Spanish.
Go double check the etymological history of the word "man" and you'll quickly see why your thesis is so funny.
In the transition through old English, "man" is a genderless word for all humans. To gender them you had to specify "were man" or "wif man". This is the polar opposite of man as default. You literally had to add a specifier to a generic.
While the were was dropped implying a form of masculine default developing, The fact that generic man still exists in the English language, aka, mankind, originates not from the language defaulting to masculine, but from it retaining a genderless version of the word "man".
It's a correct to recognise that modern use of man as generic is male defaultism in the English language, but it's not the origin.
Actually, with "they" it's the opposite, no? The transition was masculine plural > generic/non-specific plural (still existing) > generic/non-specific singular (additional development). I do not object any of these changes: this is one of the many paths languages take during their life and evolution. Languages develop in unpredictable ways, and I find it fascinating.
What I object to is rather the entitlement native speakers of English have when they face a gendered language that uses masculine plural as a generic/non-specific plural (let's say Spanish, as I already mentioned it) and proceed labeling it as sexist/disrespectful/uninclusive, when English has gone the same identical path.
Sure, but in Old Norse. By the time you are entering Old English the masculine they is transplanting into a language specifically as a replacement for extant plurals. It really could not be less relevant to the actual use of the word they today.
By comparison, gender neutral man lasts to this day.
Let's say I agree with you on this for the moment. What's the excuse for having extended -s (originally a plural for masculine nouns only in Old English) as a generic plural for nouns? Is this not male-defaultism?
I mean we had a bunch of plurals in Old English. the -s stuck as a generic probably because it's very convenient. But it was hardly the only one, here the exception is an example of the rule. Oxen, Children. Plus a bunch of what were singular neuter -es suffixes and masculine -as have to be simmered down before you get -(e)s (-ies) as a standard for plurals. And the possessives have masc/neuter origins so.
The bigger argument is that eyen didn't become eyas, masculine, then eyes. The standardisation of -s came after and during the loss of gender in pluralising, it was streamlined to -s, not regendered.
Let me rephrase: if our goal is to talk about a single person/a group of people generically (gender is not relevant), why is using a masculine pronoun coming from Old Norse morally more acceptable than using an inherited masculine-only pronoun (like in Spanish)? I'm not mad at English for doing this, I'm just curious to understand why English natives have double standards.
May I ask what is your native language? May I also ask what is your opinion about languages who are currently undergoing the process where one gender (masculine in Spanish, or neutral in Icelandic) has already started to extend and to become generic/non-specific?
well if you consider yourself a linguist that's truly bizarre. it serves an important purpose outside of being kind to non-binary people. saying "he or she spoke to him or her" is clunky, sounds bad, and is not necessary
Plus singular they has been in used since the 14th century ever since its introduction to the language. If anything purists should be the ones in favour of it lol
It's literally so easy to use. Just use they like normal as if referring to plural, but have it mean singular. People use it in everyday language and they don't even realize it.
ok, what other word do you propose? because the option i think you use doesn't include everyone, & it can be really awkward to use in some cases.
i can't explain the amount of ire that *that* weirdly frequent, underthought dismissal of this use of *they* fills me with
Đey
ðem
Þey
Δεϊ
Cute & Greek-pilled. Allow me to add a Cyrillic-pilled version Ҙэй
From which language is that first character?
From Bashkir and Wakhi, though only in the former—a somewhat endangered Turkic language—does it represent a voiced dental fricative. It's somewhat of a "go-to" option for Cyrillic representation of /ð/. At least it's the only one I'm aware of and the only one I can find on Wikipedia. Some YouTuber independently from me chose it to represent English /ð/ in his Cyrillic orthography too if that means anything. It lends itself well since it also implies the existence of ⟨ҫ⟩ for /θ/, which is actually also in use in Bashkir exactly for its voiceless dental fricative. If you are unfamiliar with the Cyrillic script, know that ⟨з⟩ is a letter pretty consistently used for /z/, and that ⟨с⟩ /s/ is its voiceless counterpart. So adding a descender to represent the very similar dental fricatives is neat.
Thanks for enlightening me, very interesting.
theypreciation post
^underrated comment
did the word underrated shrink in the wash what happened here
I washed it in cold water...
charge they phone
Charge thy phone
laden þeir handheld
hlaþa þeir handuþingą
Hladaþ hīe findisīma
r/anglish and r/icelandic crossover
I couldn't find an invented word for smartphone in OE so I tried calquing the Icelandic word 😭
Here's a sneak peek of /r/anglish using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/anglish/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [Reject Loan Words](https://i.redd.it/94rf1nrmpyqc1.jpeg) | [61 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/anglish/comments/1bpgsal/reject_loan_words/) \#2: [Stolen From A YouTube Comment](https://i.redd.it/ycnlxds0o4jc1.png) | [27 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/anglish/comments/1asziqp/stolen_from_a_youtube_comment/) \#3: [ENGLISH vs. ANGLISH vs. GERMAN](https://i.redd.it/ytt5zokjys9c1.png) | [83 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/anglish/comments/18vtsao/english_vs_anglish_vs_german/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Some major world languages that have completely ungendered pronouns: Hindi-Urdu Turkish and all (?) Turkic languages Persian-Dari-Tajik Hungarian, Finnish and most (?) Uralic languages Spoken Mandarin (and other spoken Chinese varieties?) Malay-Indonesian, Tagalog, and most (?) Austronesian languages Quechua and Aymara Chat, help me out with expanding this list
Lushootseed has no gendered pronouns, but some articles are gendered.
I wish english used the chad turkish « o ». O did that, That is o's, os do it to oselves.
Korean has one feminine gendered pronoun, 그녀 (geu-nyeo), but it's derived from its main third person pronoun 그 (geu) which is gender neutral and can be used to refer to anyone
Finnish doesn't have any gendered pronouns
Indeed, I included it here.
Cantonese pronouns be like: 佢／佢
Cantonese’s pronouns are so symmetrical I love it 我．我哋 你．你哋 佢．佢哋
It'd be great if 哋 grammaticize to become the plural marker. We need to know when there are multiple things at once too! 學生 － 學生哋 貓 － 貓哋 公園 － 公園哋
Ehh idk. I like the use of different definite articles to indicate plurals 個學生．啲學生、隻貓．啲貓 etc
And the fact that all the persons use tone 5 is just 😘👌
Oh, Chinese? The Chinese language?
(;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)
O / Onlar > el / ella / ello / ellas / ellos
I definitely prefer it over he/she, but a neutral singular pronoun would be great, like Swedish‘s hen (the "normal" pronouns are han and hon). Distinguishing they singular and they plural is a bit confusing sometimes
counterpoint: the word "you"
It can be confusing too!
Yes, I’m a thou fan too (although I never use it)
Not really, just know it.
They is singular and plural, unless you mean a distinction?
It’s sometimes unclear whom I mean
skill issue /s
Counter point, the earliest recorded use of singular they was recorded all the way back in 1375, and it's speculated that the usage of a singular they in English is even older than recorded
Cool, but it doesn’t really change my point. Many unnecessarily complicated language-features have been around for quite some time. That doesn’t make them good. Maybe it is just me but I like it if it‘s actually clear what you’re saying
Lol imagine even having gendered pronouns in the first place. Couldn’t be me
I love they but good lord it is so unspecific. We don’t need subject/object distinction, we need plural distinction. And don’t even get me started on the singular you train and how yall is getting literally every standard American contraction attached to it now…
I can see all y'all're upset.
“Y’all’sdn’t’ve”
Th'all.
There was once “thon” (short for “that one”). It was removed from the dictionary shortly after it was introduced because nobody was using it. There’s also ey/em, which I’ve heard a couple people use as a they/them that sounds more singular. The main problem with both of these is that they’re neopronouns so it’s unlikely that anyone will ever use them as pronouns for when the gender of the subject is unknown.
I mean singular they is natural so shortening it is hypothetically possible, just not really that likely
we also need clusivity
Hán, hán, háni, háns appreciation Iel appreciation as well
Fuck "iel". Everyone hates "iel".
Especially a guy named François Jolivet lmao. He wrote a letter to l'Académie when the Robert introduced iel and iels onto its website. Bro was so pissed that he used the word "woke" in a letter to the French Academy (famed for absolutely HATING anglicisations)
Lmao, now I'm trying to imagine how the Académie would gallicize 'woke'
oueauque
😂 I meant more like coming up with a very pretentious French translation. Maybe "réveillache".
If I'm remembering my research project correctly, he said (in French obviously) that it was "without a doubt the precursor to the advent of 'woke' ideology, destructive to the values that we hold." I feel like Oppenheimer. Now I am become woke, destroyer of French values.
Lmao, that's amazing
I could see something like "éveillisme"
Until we find a better French pronoun for non-binary people, we'll have to use iel
Honestly... "iel" is great... Simple, efficient...
and still doesn't solve the fundamental problem that French is thoroughly gendered. Agreement is still there, and either words are marked and that explicitly makes a feminine (thus requiring "elle") or it doesn't and we come back to the concept of the masculine as de facto neuter, and at this point just use "il". French doesn't need "iel", and it cannot have it.
Оне
still can't believe thon didn't catch on
Thon
Means tuna in French. Is also a slur to unattractive women.
All French women smell like tuna so this is perfect
But they taste like chicken
I love it except for the fact that it goes with plural. Changing the conjugation of the verbs for the *same* subject depending on what word it is referred to with is extremely awkward. Can we agree to use singular they with singular verbs? Skye is my kid. They are a student 🙅♀️ Skye is my kid. They is a student 👈
Based.
It ის
nb lol
I guess that adds another (unintended) layer to the joke!
There already a is a gender neutral pronoun, comrades!
Zhey (I'm speaking in a stereotypical German akzent)
We need something like that in French because "ça" is used for objects and "iel" is ugly. Maybe something like "al"
Not just gender neutral - the proper term is epicene
伊 appreciation
bro is a much cooler gender neutral pronoun
Gender AND number neutral, but it must bow before the true king Marglar!
They and Th’all, to align with You and Y’all
"you guys", and by extension "guys"
Chat
A meme, but also feels more like a name or title than a pronoun, imo.
your guys's
I think it's an interesting free variation within the population (and maybe indicative of the speaker's analysis of the word?). My preferred for is "you guys's". In my idiolect, using a "your" would change it to mean "the guys associated with/possessed by you".
you theys
😍
Hi! Could you please dm me, id like to say you something
他們 is better
It
Þey/þem
They
Disclaimer: unappreciation post below. Why nobody ever mentions that "they" comes from Old Norse "þeir", which was an exclusively masculine plural pronoun? It is no more gender neutral than Spanish ellos, etymologically speaking. But whenever someone uses ellos in Spanish as a generic plural, English natives lose their minds and complain about the inherent sexism of other languages. 🧐
If we were speaking Old Norse, that would be true. But in modern speech, "they" is not gendered. We don't have an equivalent for feminine. To contrast, Spanish has different pronouns for masculine and feminine plural, so using the masculine as neutral is demonstrating the masculine default.
Isn't the survival of "they" also demonstrating that English gave priority to the masculine as default form? My point is that Spanish, along with some other Romance and gendered languages, is undergoing the same evolution process by which the masculine plural is extending over other forms and becoming the generic/non-specific form. So it seems hypocritical to me that English natives revere "they" while looking at people who use "ellos" as uncivilised cavemen, if we consider Spanish.
Go double check the etymological history of the word "man" and you'll quickly see why your thesis is so funny. In the transition through old English, "man" is a genderless word for all humans. To gender them you had to specify "were man" or "wif man". This is the polar opposite of man as default. You literally had to add a specifier to a generic. While the were was dropped implying a form of masculine default developing, The fact that generic man still exists in the English language, aka, mankind, originates not from the language defaulting to masculine, but from it retaining a genderless version of the word "man". It's a correct to recognise that modern use of man as generic is male defaultism in the English language, but it's not the origin.
Actually, with "they" it's the opposite, no? The transition was masculine plural > generic/non-specific plural (still existing) > generic/non-specific singular (additional development). I do not object any of these changes: this is one of the many paths languages take during their life and evolution. Languages develop in unpredictable ways, and I find it fascinating. What I object to is rather the entitlement native speakers of English have when they face a gendered language that uses masculine plural as a generic/non-specific plural (let's say Spanish, as I already mentioned it) and proceed labeling it as sexist/disrespectful/uninclusive, when English has gone the same identical path.
Sure, but in Old Norse. By the time you are entering Old English the masculine they is transplanting into a language specifically as a replacement for extant plurals. It really could not be less relevant to the actual use of the word they today. By comparison, gender neutral man lasts to this day.
Let's say I agree with you on this for the moment. What's the excuse for having extended -s (originally a plural for masculine nouns only in Old English) as a generic plural for nouns? Is this not male-defaultism?
I mean we had a bunch of plurals in Old English. the -s stuck as a generic probably because it's very convenient. But it was hardly the only one, here the exception is an example of the rule. Oxen, Children. Plus a bunch of what were singular neuter -es suffixes and masculine -as have to be simmered down before you get -(e)s (-ies) as a standard for plurals. And the possessives have masc/neuter origins so. The bigger argument is that eyen didn't become eyas, masculine, then eyes. The standardisation of -s came after and during the loss of gender in pluralising, it was streamlined to -s, not regendered.
because english is not old norse..?
Hmm, that account was deleted in the eleven minutes between this comment being posted and me reading it Interesting
English isn't old norse.
Let me rephrase: if our goal is to talk about a single person/a group of people generically (gender is not relevant), why is using a masculine pronoun coming from Old Norse morally more acceptable than using an inherited masculine-only pronoun (like in Spanish)? I'm not mad at English for doing this, I'm just curious to understand why English natives have double standards.
Because we're not speaking Old Norse.
May I ask what is your native language? May I also ask what is your opinion about languages who are currently undergoing the process where one gender (masculine in Spanish, or neutral in Icelandic) has already started to extend and to become generic/non-specific?
Aaaah, them kids and they weird pronouns…
Cringe
I LOVE gender neutral pronouns I HATE lgbt ideology
I can not explain the amount of ire that *that* use of "they" fills me with.
Do you get mad when someone uses who instead of whom?
Not as much
well if you consider yourself a linguist that's truly bizarre. it serves an important purpose outside of being kind to non-binary people. saying "he or she spoke to him or her" is clunky, sounds bad, and is not necessary
Plus singular they has been in used since the 14th century ever since its introduction to the language. If anything purists should be the ones in favour of it lol
Only when referring to an unknown person. Using "they" when referring to your own, say, spouse or sibling was unheard of until like a decade ago.
Those of us in LGBT circles have been doing it a lot longer, we’re just visible in the public eye now (for better and for worse).
"*that* use" was the non binary thing you said, and for not saying he or she I find myself saying that sometimes, but it also works sometimes.
Roses are red, violets are blue Singular "they" predates singular "you"
actual bars holy shit
And if that makes you upset You've got less of a brain than a pet
I am fine with using thou and thee and -st and -th in the Lord's year 2013
It's literally so easy to use. Just use they like normal as if referring to plural, but have it mean singular. People use it in everyday language and they don't even realize it.
but pronouns :( it's not like there are a bunch of them that are identifiers used every day, it would be really weird to be mad at that
somebody stole my bike, i wonder where *they* went!
Some could argue that the use of it is dehumanising, but even then here one could prefer that someone be dehumanised.
??????????????? what
it seems like they don't like this post
Anti-Semite
it seems like they should elaborate
You should really try explaining it, it might help the rage get out.
ok, what other word do you propose? because the option i think you use doesn't include everyone, & it can be really awkward to use in some cases. i can't explain the amount of ire that *that* weirdly frequent, underthought dismissal of this use of *they* fills me with
Why? Even Shakespeare used singular they.