• merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Now the they/them in English rolls off the tongue

    No, it doesn’t. It’s really awkward.

    Canada has a player on the women’s national soccer (football) team who wants people to use they/them pronouns when referring to them in the third person. It leads to trying to create sentences like “they’ve been playing well today but they haven’t”.

    • cryptowillem@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      And it would be impossible to replace one of those pronouns with “the team” or the player’s name. Completely impossible.

    • escapesamsara@discuss.online
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      1 year ago

      They (singular) has been used since at least Shakespeare, so every single student in an English-speaking country has learned how to use it correctly; including how to format sentences using singular they. ‘The firefighter rescued a puppy from a burning building; they were really lucky they spotted the puppy in time.’ In any sentence where two pronouns are the same, you’d replace one or the other (preferably the latter though the ‘rules’ on this are stupidly complex). Alex was drinking Jim’s coffee. He should really buy himJim a replacement.