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A comment on Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK'. Parent comment

Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by Wowfunhappy on Thursday May 02, 2019 @04:49PM (#19812728)
Singular "they" still sounds wrong to me every time I see it. Which is a shame since it would be very useful.

Perhaps more importantly, I don't think singular "they" would be considered proper in formal writing.

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Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by mattkrause on Thursday May 02, 2019 @05:00PM (#19812862)
If it is good enough for Austin, Byron, and Chesterfield, not to mention Shakespeare, then it is good enough for me.

The catch is that it sounds best when there's no specific antecedent: "Every user of the workshop must be responsible for their own safety."

It sounds odder when it is deliberately used to avoid (mis)gendering a specific individual: "Pat does not discuss their* gender." I think this is the niche that 'ze' is supposed to fill.

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Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by stordoff on Thursday May 02, 2019 @06:55PM (#19813740)
> It sounds odder when it is deliberately used to avoid (mis)gendering a specific individual: "Pat does not discuss their* gender."

I suspect it depends on dialect. "their" just sounds more informal to me, "his"/"her" sounds slightly more formal.

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Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by mattkrause on Thursday May 02, 2019 @08:48PM (#19814473)
Hmmm, interesting idea.

I looked at some older examples of singular-they and they almost exclusively refer to an unknown or unspecified person ("Everyone loves their mother"). Using it for a specified person seems to be fairly new: Time Magazine had a piece describing how their (in this sense) was the 2015 word of the year.

http://time.com/4173992/word-of-the-year-2015-they/

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Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by caseyohara on Thursday May 02, 2019 @05:45PM (#19813290)
I've heard of 'ze' as a gender-neutral pronoun, but I've never really seen it used. How would you substitute 'ze' in that sentence: "Pat does not discuss their gender"?
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Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by dragonwriter on Thursday May 02, 2019 @05:59PM (#19813396)
“Ze” (like “they”) is a subject pronoun, it has been suggested with various object pronouns (like “them”), possessive determiners (like “their”) and possessive pronouns (like “theirs”), including at least these patterns: ze/hir/hir/hirs, ze/mer/zer/zers, ze/zir/zir/zirs; ze/zem/zes/zes.

So, the “their” could change to any of “hir”, “mer”, “zir”, or “zes”, depending on which “ze” pattern was used.

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Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by wiredfool on Thursday May 02, 2019 @04:53PM (#19812782)
The singular they is quite old:

> The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to 1375, where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf.

from https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they...

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Re:Scrabble rule change allows use of 'OK' by kermitismyhero on Thursday May 02, 2019 @04:55PM (#19812812)
If singular "they" was good enough for Shakespeare, it's good enough for me.

There's not a man I meet but doth salute me/ As if I were their well-acquainted friend.

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