The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “plural”, came with the cryptic note, “They’ll get used to them.” Well, there may be only one of Moses, but Jesus, part of a Trinity, can use “they/them”, right?
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ pronouns
December 9, 2020 • 1:30 pm
Mo is right
If only more people would agree.
I think a very great many do but most of us are too cowed to call bullshit on this narcissistic nonsense.
When I address someone in person, I use the pronouns “you” and “yours.” It’s a bit conceited to direct how I refer to them when they aren’t in my presence.
I agree; and I really get irritated by the tendency to use plural pronouns to refer to individuals. But I’ve become slightly less dogmatic about this issue over time, or perhaps I’ve just decided it’s not worth getting too stressed about.
I’d be perfectly fine with a new singular pronoun for people who don’t want to be referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she’. But I can’t stand the use of ‘they’ for individuals – modern English usage is becoming less and less precise. Just make yourselves a new neologism (yes, redundant!) and let us know what it is.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself – ‘they’ is already taken”
When you are talking to people directly, do you speak in the third person?
I agree completely.
I recently read a piece where someone was quoted talking about a person with they/their pronouns in the context of a larger group. It rapidly became unintelligible. To paraphrase Wilde, perhaps the only thing worse than being talked about with the wrong pronouns is not being talked about. (EDIT: Actually on consideration, “Who’s on First?” might be a hate crime.)
Depends. What are the pronouns on second?
The thing that slightly annoys me is when the media refer to someone as ‘they’ when it’s completely clear from the context that the individual is cis-male (or female). What’s wrong with using ‘he’ or ‘she’?
Since I self-identify as the last heir to the throne of Russia, my pronouns are in the royal plural, and of
course in Russian. For direct communications, I expect to be addressed by the correctly deferential formula, which is: Ваше Императорское Величество (in English, Your Imperial Majesty).
So that’s why Anastasia screamed in vain?
Anastasia and the other Romanovs are out of the picture, inasmuch as I claim descent from one of the umpteen False Dmitrys of the early 1600s, who each claimed to be Dmitry Ivanovich, youngest son of Ivan the Terrible. My legal team will begin civil action against the whole Romanov dynasty, who got the throne due to fraudulent mail-in boyars.
So it was you in St Petersburg who saw it was time for a change. You have my sympathy.
How about, y’all/y’alls?
I thought the correct plural was “all y’all”?
I’m dreading the day my university makes it obligatory for us to register our pronouns officially. Hasn’t been mentioned as a possibility yet, but you can already see it coming. I’m thinking of something along the lines of
we/them/its
But I’m not sure the recipients would get the intended point…
In the ‘olden’ days, say 40 years ago, I seem to recall that I often saw papers in mathematical research journals by single authors who would refer to themselves as ‘we’; e.g. ‘ ..and we’ll now assume xy is not equal to yx etc…” No connection with the “they” etc. here, I suppose.
Also use of “one”. I probably did the same.
How about biology or science more generally? Maybe not many single-author papers in biology and chemistry.
I think it would be mainly habit, or avoiding ‘I’ and ‘me’ to avoid sounding too self-satisfied.
I am intermittently writing an introductory book on mathematical statistics, and I use “we” in the sense that the reader is following the calculations with me.
Here, let’s let The Dude break this one down:
Which should be a reply to Ken, as his also to me:
As opposed to the royal wee.
Listening to Michael Atiyah lecture in those days was almost enough to cause pants wetting, he was so good. But both fortunately and unfortunately, he didn’t go too far over the canonical one hour.
Only he, Grothendieck and Serre were mathematical royalty in my opinion, IMHHHHO, so very humble, humble of course, with John Milnor pretty close.
On the other hand, speaking of The Dude, he was already wet when those weasels joined him in the tub. The best part was the ashes attempted scattering at the end.
This editing really works!
Weasel? That was a marmot:
You’ll have to keep your amphibious rodents straight if you ever want to make it as a park ranger:
Seems like a lot of opposition and energy spent on a practice that either will or will not become mainstream usage depending not on us oldies but on the young people today who will eventually – thank God – become the oldies whose own offspring will consider them to be out of step. It simply is not up to us.
I was watching a youtube video last night about somebody called Kushim. Throughout the video, Matt Parker refers to the person using they/their.
Now, I suppose that technically we do not know Kushim’s gender, but, given that Kushim was an accountant in ancient times, I’d bet money that Kushim identified as a man. To me the constant usage of they/their sounded extremely weird, so much so that I couldn’t get to the end of the vid. However, looking through the comments ,it seems nobody else cared to the point of mentioning it.
I think the they/their usage will just increase to the point where it doesn’t sound weird anymore to anybody left alive.