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Treat others as they want to be treated! Or barring that…
Treat others as you want to be treated!
Or barring that…
Don’t be a jerk!
:thumbup: Quote:
When it comes to gender-neutral pronouns, I already use “they” and “them”, when I don’t know a person’s gender or am speaking generically. For example, “When a customer comes into Walmart, they…”, “Can I have a friend over?” “Tell me about them. What’s their name?”. I think it’s already commonly used in our language, and I have no problem using them when referring to a particular person who doesn’t identify as a “him” or a “her”.English is effectively shrinking. We have already lost “thou” in favor of the plural “you”. “They” is trying to replace “he, she and it”, and some people such as the Queen of England use “we” instead of “I”. I do wonder where all our singular pronouns are going.
There is a need for a completely neutral singular pronoun. I do use “they/them/their” occasionally, but think it unsuitable in some instances because of the confusion between plural and singular (which is already a problem with “you” which leads to confusion frequently in English).
But I would still take “they” over some of the hideous new pronouns that have been invented.
“Who did it?”
“They did.”
“Get them over here.”
“Did you do it?”
The last three lines here don’t differentiate between one and more than one, which I think is a major weakness in English.
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