- cross-posted to:
- latin@lemm.ee
- linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- latin@lemm.ee
- linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works
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Explanation: Latin looks and sounds cool, but it is a Hell Language with infinite declensions and conjugations and other minor grammatical nuances. You want to learn someone’s pronouns in Latin? Best get a paper and pad, it’ll take a while. Pronouns aren’t as important in Latin, though, as it’s a pro-drop language. Context usually fills in for pronouns.
Also, mandatory statement that ‘they/them’ is a perfectly good singular gender-neutral pronoun and I will die on this hill.
Why does he also give the plural forms of his pronouns?
“Singular They” has been in use since at least Early Modern English.
"Roses are red
Violets are blue
Singular ‘they’ predates
Singular ‘you’"
Right? I feel like I’m not taking my anti-crazy pills every time I hear people get mad about not using he/she. It’s just so easy to use “they” and it makes perfect sense. And we should just use it permanently for everyone.
My main problem with it is the namespace ambiguity, especially with respect to plurality. For simple statements it’s fine, if you’re saying something about one person it’s going to be clear they are the one you refer to. If you’re talking about their relationship to a group though, unlike a singular pronoun it is no longer explicit that you refer to them but not them, for instance. You compensate for this by making sure your meaning is clear in other ways and it can be made to work, but the fact you have to put in extra effort to make up for “they”'s relative lack of structural utility is a serious problem with the word.
I still use it for lack of a better way to avoid implying knowledge/relevance of gender, but it would be nice if some overtly singular gender neutral pronoun like xe would catch on.
Yeah as an example a simple sentence like “My daughter and her boyfriend went to a concert but she got ill so they had to come home”
Can’t change to “My daughter and her boyfriend went to a concert but they got ill so they had to come home”
It loses its meaning.
My daughter and her boyfriend went to a concert but my daughter got ill so they had to come home" is extra “work”
It’s not perfect
But you literally just demonstrated how dealing with ambiguous pronouns is a non-issue? You’d get the exact same ambiguity with “a mother and daughter went to a concert but [she] got ill”.
Salvete discipuli latini! Quid agits hodie?
Sum bene!
Alright so I’ve always thought the past was always shitty, but this. God damn am I proud of this. Some social things that were much more lax back then should have stayed that way.
That’s not what that is.
It’s just that Latin had more complicated grammar regarding pronouns.
They still only had 3 grammatical (and societal) genders: he, she and it.
