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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • lugal@lemmy.oneto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneSingular they rule
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    11 months ago

    Actually it’s older than people think. Shakespeare used it for stuff like “Every knight grabbed their sword”, and even for talking about a specific person it’s not a new phenomenon to use singular they if the gender doesn’t matter (so I was told in a linguistics sub over on r*ddit when I insisted it was new)

    The only new thing is that people say, it’s their prefered pronoun.





  • lugal@lemmy.onetoLinguistics Humor@sh.itjust.worksNani?
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    11 months ago

    Maybe that helps: there is always one (or rather never more than one) strongly declined element before the noun.

    Ich fahre das blaue Auto. (Definite articles are always strong)

    Ich fahre ein blaues Auto. (Indefinite articles are most often weak so the adjective is strong)

    Eines schönen Tages. (I said most often. Genitive singular indefinite articles are strong, obviously)

    Thinking in terms of strong and weak declination is key. But maybe it’s obvious. It wasn’t for me when I learned about it in linguistic lectures in university.