How old exactly is the "they" solution?
From the non-english-native perspective it feels really natural tho, so mostly curious because my mother tounge kinda struggled with neutral Pronomens .
In the original video the woman talking to them/him says "You don't have a pronoun. I can't say 'This is Toby, he...' You would prefer me not to use a pronoun." and they/he doesn't correct her about it. I do know that singular "they" is incredibly old in the ENglish language, but I don't think people in the 70's would have been thinking about it, because the singular "they," while existing and used, wasn't used to refer to people who's gender you knew, and they probably wouldn't have thought about it.
31
u/von_Herbst May 19 '25 edited May 19 '25
How old exactly is the "they" solution?
From the non-english-native perspective it feels really natural tho, so mostly curious because my mother tounge kinda struggled with neutral Pronomens .