Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Ben on October 17, 2019, 09:37:21 AM
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Apparently they have a day for this crap now. It was still new enough (or at least confined to the likes of Berkeley) that I never ran into it before I left CA. If I did, I'm not sure what my reaction would be. Likely something between shaking my head or laughing, but I can tell you right now, whatever my reaction, if someone tries to shove this crap in my face ever, I will not comply. Shove it up whatever your preferred wording for your ass is, Xer.
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2019/10/16/xyr-pizza-is-incredible-planned-parenthood-posts-a-tutorial-on-proper-pronoun-use-for-pronounsday/
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So if you are trapped in an area where people expect you to observe this crap, I guess "Keep to Yourself Day".
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Another mine field they expect us to walk through
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Henceforth, I would like to be addressed as Skippy the Wonder Dog.
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If you have a trans/non-gender-specific fetus, wouldn it be a hate crime to about xhe/xher?
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Mister Metokur dropped this just in time for pronoun day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obauxqrridQ
It's Transtastic!
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https://babylonbee.com/news/canadian-announces-his-preferred-pronoun-is-eh
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My preference is that you learn which pronouns to apply to each of the two genders. You're supposed to know these things, so people don't have to tell you, retard.
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The royal ze are not amused!
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The royal ze are not amused!
The plural of "royal" is "royals."
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My pronouns are: Carbon Based Life-form, Vertebrate, Mammalian.
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My pronouns are: Carbon Based Life-form, Vertebrate, Mammalian.
Are the last two really applicable in these types of situations?
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As I heard earlier. My pronoun is Lord Emperor Palpatine. I demand you use that form of address at all times.
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Hmm. Preferred pronoun would be "Sir!", spoken smartly and at attention. Or with kowtowing.
xhe/xher?
Xit? (Pronounced "zit".)
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I'll respond to a simple "Your Excellency" or "Your Royal Highness."
(I'd go for "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor HankB, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular" but aside from being a bit wordy, it ultimately didn't work out too well for the last guy who used it.)
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"Hey you!" is less complicated.
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Are the last two really applicable in these types of situations?
Well, I HAVE a backbone, am still pretty hairy in my old age, and not a fungus/slime... :old:
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I will adhere to proper grammar to the end of my days.
English has male and female pronouns, he and she.
It has a nongendered pronoun, it.
Anyone that does not identify as he or she, is an it.
People that insist on using "they" for a singular nongendered pronoun are idiots. They is a plural pronoun for multiple objects.
All the other xe/xir/ze/etc nonsense is just that: nonsense.
I will add to all of that... language is a tool for two humans to communicate. Typcally when a 3rd party pronoun is used (such as he, she, it, or the made up xe class of stuff) it is used to communicate from party 1 to party 2, about party 3. Party 3 is not present in the communication process to receive the information. Xe is neither a 1st person nor 2nd person pronoun (not I or you). So when party 1 tells party 2 about a person doing a thing, his intention is to communicate. Not to placate party 3's feelz. If I, as party 1, see that party 3 is roughly male, I will tell party 2 about what he is doing. Party 2 will also perceive the general masculinity of the 3rd party object. Or, if party 2 appears roughly feminine to me, I will tell party 2 about what she is doing.
But... xe and similar pronouns are not visually apparent to parties 1 and 2 about that 3rd party. Using such a word just invites confusion when trying to communicate.
English has no gender for 1st and 2nd person pronouns.
This whole thing is absolute garbage.
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AZRedhawk deserves a standing ovation for the above.
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@AZRedhawk44, may I quote you and if so, how do you want to be cited? "This 'It' I know?" or "A forum friend" or...
I will adhere to proper grammar to the end of my days.
English has male and female pronouns, he and she.
It has a nongendered pronoun, it.
Anyone that does not identify as he or she, is an it.
People that insist on using "they" for a singular nongendered pronoun are idiots. They is a plural pronoun for multiple objects.
All the other xe/xir/ze/etc nonsense is just that: nonsense.
I will add to all of that... language is a tool for two humans to communicate. Typcally when a 3rd party pronoun is used (such as he, she, it, or the made up xe class of stuff) it is used to communicate from party 1 to party 2, about party 3. Party 3 is not present in the communication process to receive the information. Xe is neither a 1st person nor 2nd person pronoun (not I or you). So when party 1 tells party 2 about a person doing a thing, his intention is to communicate. Not to placate party 3's feelz. If I, as party 1, see that party 3 is roughly male, I will tell party 2 about what he is doing. Party 2 will also perceive the general masculinity of the 3rd party object. Or, if party 2 appears roughly feminine to me, I will tell party 2 about what she is doing.
But... xe and similar pronouns are not visually apparent to parties 1 and 2 about that 3rd party. Using such a word just invites confusion when trying to communicate.
English has no gender for 1st and 2nd person pronouns.
This whole thing is absolute garbage.
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You know, incorrect as it is, I can live with "they". I find it an easy way to be left alone by old school SJWs. At the old job for instance, it was much easier to just say "they" rather than "he", then have some woman interrupt and snarkily say, "What if it's a woman?"
"They" could cover these 500 other so-called pronouns as well. I'm willing to concede one word to keep me from dealing with 500 other words that I will have to deal with whether I use them or not, because you know at some point the MSM is going to start using them, and we'll all have to stumble through articles trying to figure out who xer and xis are.
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@AZRedhawk44, may I quote you and if so, how do you want to be cited? "This 'It' I know?" or "A forum friend" or...
Either AZRedhawk44, or KC Connor from Mesa, AZ (as of 2019), or Casey Galt Kawner on Fecesbook, though I change that from time to time.
I've been fishing my distinction regarding 3rd party perspective (and the pronouned object having no say in the stream of imparted knowledge), looking for anyone in the LGBTWXYZ movement with a background in language arts that can find a logical flaw in it. It's been a couple years that I've been putting this out and I still have yet to get anyone to bite on it for a fight. I think it's a slam-dunk winner to the whole damn affair.
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AZRedhawk deserves a standing ovation for the above.
Yes. It's an excellent summation of the issue.
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Thank you sir! "KC Connor from Mesa, AZ" it is!
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"One" is a pretty useful 3rd-person pronoun that doesn't get enough respect. It doesn't always fit, but when it does I like it better than the English default "he" (like in John 15:13)
I grudgingly accept singular "they" in informal conversation (even use it sometimes), but it really bugs me to see it used in print.
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Yeah, "one" can be quite classy when one uses it appropriately, and it is gender neutral.
Though it doesn't really flow in speech when attempting to be specific about a third party you are referencing by pronoun. It's better used for vagaries and suggestions, such as: One doesn't pull on Superman's cape. To accomplish a great task, one must undergo great preparation. Et cetera. Not particularly useful when attempting to have an exchange like: (to crib from SNL) Pat went to the record store today. One bought a new set of headphones.
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Thank you sir! "KC Connor from Mesa, AZ" it is!
I really don't care, I can be some dude on the internet for attribution... other than I'd kind of like to get into a semi-intelligent debate over it if you come across someone that can refute my stance on the intent of 3rd party pronouns.
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There is nothing wrong with "they" as a singular 3rd person pronoun. If you want to complain about grammar, know grammar first. Don't overcorrect and screw up English even worse.
The problem with trying to change pronouns, aside from the preposterous motivation, is that it basically can't be done, due to barriers not at the lexical level, but syntactic level. English pronouns are a "closed class". Linguistically speaking, it's impossible to coin new pronouns. You can try, but it won't work.
Linguists classify words by how easy it is to coin new ones. There's a continuum. English verbs, for example, are very easy to create. You can verb any noun you want; I just did it. But in French for example, it's quite a bit harder, because everyone needs to know how to conjugate the new verb. Most new verbs enter French as group 1 ("manger") verbs and become conjugated thusly. It can be done, and it is done. Some new verbs even evolve irregularly somehow; it's pretty crazy. It's just harder than English, and people may prefer to rephrase or use an auxillary verb instead.
At the far end of the scale, for some word classes it's basically impossible to coin new words, due to syntactic barriers. English pronouns are an example. Another example of a closed class is Japanese verbs. Coining a new Japanese verb is basically impossible. In the last 100 years, there has been only 1 new Japanese verb (saboru). All the many thousands of borrowed verbs from other languages come into Japanese as nouns.
Interestingly, Japanese doesn't have pronouns proper, but it has a bunch of pronoun-like words which are NOT a closed class, so while it's impossible to invent a new Japanese verb, it's relatively easy to coin new Japanese "pronouns". In fact, kids these days invented calling themselves "jibun" relatively recently; it has already caught on alongside other alternatives. So in Japanese you can, at your pleasure, refer to yourself as watashi, atashi, washi, boku, ore, jibun, your actual name, uchi, or you can make up a cute pronoun for yourself just as easily as choosing a name. But this will not work in English; English is not Japanese. You can't just decide to refer to yourself as something other than "I" without breaking the bounds of the syntax of the language, and evidence shows those bounds will heal themselves and eject the innovation. You can propose new pronouns as much as you want; they won't stick. New pronouns enter or change in English only if you are looking at time scales of centuries. What the pronoun police want to do when they propose new pronouns is not only usually a stupid idea all on its own, on a lexical level, it's basically impossible on a deeper structural level. I'm not sure if they know this, or if they care. I assume they are too ignorant to even know.
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There is nothing wrong with "they" as a singular 3rd person pronoun. If you want to complain about grammar, know grammar first. Don't overcorrect and screw up English even worse.
You seem to have a strong understanding of language arts, why do you assert that "they" is an acceptable singular 3rd person pronoun? In every usage case I've come across while stewing on it, using "they" as a pronoun for previously referenced ambivalent or mixed gender singular objects (anyone, "man" in context of humanity encompassing both sexes, everyone, the throng of people, etc), the ambivalent singular object can be construed as an aggregate object and argued to contain a plural group. It is grammatically incorrect to use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular object that describes an aggregate of singulars. Whether it's a murder of crows, a quiver of snakes, a throng of people... each of those are a singular object. Each of these are properly referred to as "it," not "they."
As for "anyone", "everyone" and similar nouns... Grammatically it is 100% correct to say "anyone may perform an action, if he is motivated to do so." In English much like many other languages, the default singular pronoun if a distinct gender is not applied, is the masculine. These words do vary in their inflection of plurality depending on if acting as a subject of a sentence, or the direct or indirect object receiving the attention of the verb. Converse to "anyone may perform an action, if he is motivated to do so," I could construct a sentence like "You may throw the ball with anyone if he is willing." In this usage, "anyone" is a singular indirect object. "Anyone" may be male or female, but it is going to be singular. A game of catch doesn't function as a group collective. More than 2 people can be involved, but throwing the ball must target an individual and be reciprocated by an individual (hence the preposition "with"). Choosing a different verb that implies less singular autonomy of an aggregate, we might say "I will address everyone at 9PM but they need to arrive 5 minutes early." Our verb conjugation of the secondary phrase is plural ("need" rather than the singular "needs"). But writing a synonymous phrase just using "everyone" as a subject and "needs" as our verb, we get "everyone needs to arrive 5 minutes early." Here, in this limited scope, our pronoun and noun do not agree on the plurality of each other. And that is a conundrum, and I'll admit I'm unsure to the explanation of it. This might have to do with subjunctive verb conjugation, since we are imparting a suggestion or obligation in this particular example.
But any verb conjugation using the pronoun "they" as subject, uses plural conjugation.
Verb conjugation must match the subject, and there is no scope where single 3rd person verb conjugation of the subject "they" is an acceptable style.
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You seem to have a strong understanding of language arts, why do you assert that "they" is an acceptable singular 3rd person pronoun?
Because it is, and pretty much has been since English was modern English. It has nothing to do with me.
"Everyone should finish their plate" is 100% correct uncontroversial English. In this use both subject and verb are singular. Sorry if you don't think so. Maybe it's your dialect. "His" is equally correct.
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Because it is, and pretty much has been since English was modern English. It has nothing to do with me.
"Everyone should finish their plate" is 100% correct uncontroversial English. In this use both subject and verb are singular. Sorry if you don't think so. Maybe it's your dialect. "His" is equally correct.
I've been repeatedly trained in the elementary, high school and university spheres, that "their" is unacceptable for use in your above situation. While it is certainly understood, it is not acceptable for written and/or published content. "His" is the only acceptable solution to your example. Thousands of miles apart and multiple different people.
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I guess it depends which expert you listen to. I'm comfortable going with Shakespeare over the Common Core set.
I listen to the prescriptivists when I feel like it; when they part with extremely common use they can get lost.
I do like the generic masculin, I do use it, but you can't revise history and just pretend that "they" isn't a legitimate singular 3rd person pronoun in English, because you don't want it to be. That's makes the prescriptivists inthe same exact camp and just as bad as the pronoun police.
The singular they emerged by the 14th century,[3] about a century after plural they. It has been commonly employed in everyday English ever since then, and has gained currency in official contexts. Criticism of singular they began in the late-19th century by prescriptive experts, as they deemed it to be an "error".[4][5][6]
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I guess it depends which expert you listen to. I'm comfortable going with Shakespeare over the Common Core set.
Most definitely not the Common Core set, when it comes to those I've experienced. Proponents of the Oxford Comma and long arithmetic. The stance of each was, if the sentence appeared to require "they" in a singular reference, it needed to be completely reorganized. If done properly it would convey information far better when completed without the incorrect plural pronoun.
Shakespeare constrained himself into metered cadences and made tropes and games of word usages. A word-memer, if you will. Hardly an authority on conveying an idea into clearly communicated language.
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Yo bitch!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/62/f1/6f/62f16f1458cf6c82a926d93ab75c04bc.jpg)
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Because it is, and pretty much has been since English was modern English. It has nothing to do with me.
"Everyone should finish their plate" is 100% correct uncontroversial English. In this use both subject and verb are singular. Sorry if you don't think so. Maybe it's your dialect. "His" is equally correct.
I will concede that I have read this is now considered correct (or, at least, acceptable). IIRC, it was not considered correct when I was in high school in the 1950s, so I'm not prepared to concede that it has been correct and uncontroversial since the dawn of "modern" English.
What does the Chicago manual of style have to say on the question?
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What does the Chicago manual of style have to say on the question?
Evidently in 2017 it has fallen to the singular "they" in limited situations, though still discourages it in context of formal publications.
https://cmosshoptalk.com/2017/04/03/chicago-style-for-the-singular-they/
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Evidently in 2017 it has fallen to the singular "they" in limited situations, though still discourages it in context of formal publications.
https://cmosshoptalk.com/2017/04/03/chicago-style-for-the-singular-they/
From the link:
Chicago accepts this use of singular they in speech and informal writing. For formal writing, most modern style and usage manuals have not accepted this usage until recently, if at all. CMOS 17 does not prohibit the use of singular they as a substitute for the generic he in formal writing, but recommends avoiding it, offering various other ways to achieve bias-free language.
That seems about right. My copy of the CMOS predates 2017 by a number of years, so I think I'm safe.
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CMOS 17 does not prohibit the use of singular they as a substitute for the generic he in formal writing, but recommends avoiding it, offering various other ways to achieve bias-free language.
What other ways of "bias free" language do they recommend, and how clunky are they?
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There is nothing wrong with "they" as a singular 3rd person pronoun. If you want to complain about grammar, know grammar first. Don't overcorrect and screw up English even worse.
The problem with trying to change pronouns, aside from the preposterous motivation, is that it basically can't be done, due to barriers not at the lexical level, but syntactic level. English pronouns are a "closed class". Linguistically speaking, it's impossible to coin new pronouns. You can try, but it won't work.
Linguists classify words by how easy it is to coin new ones. There's a continuum. English verbs, for example, are very easy to create. You can verb any noun you want; I just did it. But in French for example, it's quite a bit harder, because everyone needs to know how to conjugate the new verb. Most new verbs enter French as group 1 ("manger") verbs and become conjugated thusly. It can be done, and it is done. Some new verbs even evolve irregularly somehow; it's pretty crazy. It's just harder than English, and people may prefer to rephrase or use an auxillary verb instead.
At the far end of the scale, for some word classes it's basically impossible to coin new words, due to syntactic barriers. English pronouns are an example. Another example of a closed class is Japanese verbs. Coining a new Japanese verb is basically impossible. In the last 100 years, there has been only 1 new Japanese verb (saboru). All the many thousands of borrowed verbs from other languages come into Japanese as nouns.
Interestingly, Japanese doesn't have pronouns proper, but it has a bunch of pronoun-like words which are NOT a closed class, so while it's impossible to invent a new Japanese verb, it's relatively easy to coin new Japanese "pronouns". In fact, kids these days invented calling themselves "jibun" relatively recently; it has already caught on alongside other alternatives. So in Japanese you can, at your pleasure, refer to yourself as watashi, atashi, washi, boku, ore, jibun, your actual name, uchi, or you can make up a cute pronoun for yourself just as easily as choosing a name. But this will not work in English; English is not Japanese. You can't just decide to refer to yourself as something other than "I" without breaking the bounds of the syntax of the language, and evidence shows those bounds will heal themselves and eject the innovation. You can propose new pronouns as much as you want; they won't stick. New pronouns enter or change in English only if you are looking at time scales of centuries. What the pronoun police want to do when they propose new pronouns is not only usually a stupid idea all on its own, on a lexical level, it's basically impossible on a deeper structural level. I'm not sure if they know this, or if they care. I assume they are too ignorant to even know.
It's Leftism. It doesn't have to actually work as real language for real communication. It's not intended to answer any real need, except their need to create division and doubt. See "modern art."
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So how are they handling the "HMS" (His/Her Majesty's Ship) designation?