• Cethin@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Since when has singular they/them not been natural language flow? It’s been a common part of the English language foriterally hundreds of years. Shakespeare used it, but many before him did as well.

    Your stupid arguments about things being “natural” are always missing (or ignoring on purpose) so much context. It makes no one want to take you seriously.

    I’m a cis-gendered straight white man by the way. I’m not asking anyone to treat me differently from the way I’ve always been treated, but I think others deserve the same respect for the way they want to be treated. If you want to disrespect others who have done nothing wrong then you don’t deserve respect.

    • wizzwizz4@fosstodon.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      10 months ago

      @Cethin @Mr_Blott To be fair, there was a big thing in schools about it being “improper English” for a bit. Some n+1th language speakers don’t find it comes naturally, and *in theory* there might be native variants of English where it isn’t present (though I have yet to see one – even anti-singular-they teachers tend to use it).

      Linguistic prescription is bad, but that goes both ways. I find the ‘correctness’ argument much less compelling than the ‘common decency’ argument.