"They" is Merriam-Webster dictionary new word of the year

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"Merriam-Webster declares 'they' its 2019 word of the year".

"Merriam-Webster recently added a new definition to its online dictionary to reflect use of “they” as relating to a person whose gender identity is nonbinary".

"Nick Adams, director of transgender representation for the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said Merriam-Webster's choice is a positive step in acknowledging nonbinary people".

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/merriam ... 40663.html

I've usually used the term to refer to someone anonymous, or to talk about a person discreetly or indirectly. I think it should stay that way.

This may complicate that now.

As others may think, you're labeling the person "gender non-binary".

(Do you mean "they" or "gender they"?)

I don't think that definition change has reached here yet. I don't think it's the end of the world for me if it changes.

It's for a person of unspecified gender - and that's exactly why the nonbinary adopted it.
The previous meanings likely remain as they were.

By the way - viewtopic.php?f=21&t=380591

"They," in the "neutral singular" sense, dates back to the 14th century.

It's by no means a "new" word.

Now I really feel old.
Ok Boomer

Well, the upside to this is that when I'm explaining how 'they' said this, or did that and the person gets smart with me and says, 'who's they?' I will further complicate my problems by asking them if they wish to be reported for challenging my choice of pronouns?

What's interesting about English is that it is a rare example of a purely pronominal gender language. Other languages have pronominal gender, especially in Europe, but it is almost always tied to a broader grammatical gender system that affects adjectives and determiners. In fact, English is the only language currently spoken in Europe with a purely pronominal gender system, but there are languages spoken on other continents that also have such a system, with different ways of dividing the pronouns up. In fact, the way English does it (one pronoun for human males, one pronoun for human females, and one pronoun for everything else) is the most common, also practiced by Malayalam, Classical Tibetan, Parintintin, Kayabi, Jo, and Defaka:

https://www.academia.edu/3321785/Gender ... _languages

So that we're moving toward more gender-neutral terms suggests we are starting to move toward becoming a genderless language, like Turkish, Finnish, and Hungarian.

That's an interesting remark.
When I first learned about the whole "they" issue, I thought about my native language, Polish.
Polish is very (grammatically) gendered, all nouns have some gender, it has gendered pronouns, adjectives and some cases of verbs.
But
in Polish the gender of adjective or pronoun needs to fit the noun grammatically but not semantically. If a word has differently gendered synonyms, you use the gender fitting the actual word you used. "Ktoś" (someone) is masculine, "osoba" (person) is feminine, using them interchangeably may cause switching gender of the same object in one sentence.

In such situation, pronouns are not rigidly attributed to a person, so people don't care about them that much. However, in Polish, some non-binary experiment with adjectives for describing themselves, as "ja" (I, me) is not grammatically gendered, you use your "real-life" gender as grammatical gender in this case.

It's likely that English is drifting towards becoming genderless. Languages evolve.

I use "they" when I am adressing both genders as opposed to he/she, his/her.

The thing about "they" is,is that they is plural.So how does one use a plural word to decribe a singular pronoun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they

That's the curious thing. We English speakers are like the desperate homeowner who grabs a butter knife to use as a flat headed screwdriver to fix something. When we English speakers speak about an individual in the third person we only have the two gender specific third person pronouns available: he and she. When the gender of the individual is unknown you cant call the person "it", and it gets cumbersome to say "he, or she" all of the time. So folks just desperately grab the gender neutral third person plural pronoun "they" and repurpose it as the gender neutral third person singular pronoun.

It may seem like folks have always used 'they' to mean 'either he or she', in that situation for ever, but actually back when I was a kid it was acceptable to use "he" as a stand in for "either he or she". So folks didn't really do the repurposed "they" so often in the past. But (for better or worse) defaulting to "he" is too male supremist sounding for 2019. I kinda even remember a lady school teacher admonishing me for using "he or she" and for NOT defaulting to just "he" back in the Sixties.

So do I.

This.




Sadly, this they topic just reminds of how many people here use 'they' when they should use 'them'. It's pathetic.