Greetings grammarians welcome to another awe-inspiring grammar lesson for you today.
let's do it now.
Have a look at the sentence and tell me what word you would put in the space.
if you ask the average person ___ tell you that human activity contributes to climate change
Have you got it? What was your answer? Let me tell you that whatever answer you gave
you're going to make somebody angry. Let's go through the possible answers one by one.
You could be a traditionalist and put HE arguing that HE or HIM or HIS in these situations is
gender neutral, the masculine carries the feminine with it. It refers to both a male or a female
if you ask the average person he will tell you that humans contribute to climate change.
Ever since grammar books and style books on the English language were first written the use of HE
as a gender neutral pronoun has been recommended even as recently as 2010 we had Choi and Clark
in Basic Grammar and Usage saying that we should use it in formal situations. For example informal:
Somebody should let you borrow their book. Formal: Somebody should let you borrow his book.
Here's some more examples of HE as a gender-neutral pronoun. No one shall be
arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 15 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948.
It's every man for himself and god for us all. English proverb. The debate about this has raged
for a long time. In the 19th century it was established that at least in the legal
sense in England, laws that refer to HE also refer to SHE. So a woman is under the same
tax obligation and incurs the same punishment as a man. Even if the law states that it is HE
who shall pay a fine or HE shall be sent to prison for breaking the law. The suffragettes
were fighting for the right to vote for women in Britain and they argued that if the right
to vote didn't apply to them then nor did the obligation to pay taxes or respect the law.
They might have had a point. However the British government didn't see it that way.
Since the 1970s using HE to mean anyone has been decreasing using HE may once have been
an inclusive HE but it doesn't sound like that today. The problem is that in the 21st century
in spite of the fact that it's supposedly gender neutral this HE just seems wrong as if we're
pandering to an outdated world view where the male takes precedence but what about SHE? Could we say
SHE if you ask the average person she will tell you that humans contribute to climate change. Well
it's unusual but also controversial a few years ago there was a report published about nursing
which used a female gender neutral pronoun. For example her pay will depend on her experience
and seniority. The assumption was that most nurses are female so it was okay to use SHE. Male nurses
and many female nurses were unhappy with this assumption. I recently read Sapiens a book by
Yuval Noah Harari he uses SHE as the gender neutral pronoun throughout the book
but it didn't sound right to me if you replace HE with SHE you're still open to accusations of
sexism it's used for like a political statement it was like ‘hey look what a non-sexist man I am I'm
using SHE as a generic pronoun’ It detracted from an otherwise excellent book. The truth is that HE
or SHE is never gender neutral despite what they say so what about using both HE or SHE sometimes
this works. Before recording this video I searched my email and here's one I got from Amazon.
If you feel this is a mistake contact the owner of the selling account and he or she
can approve you as a sender. Amazon wrote this well because THEY sounds wrong here but we'll come
to THEY in a moment. I sometimes use HE or SHE myself. In speaking it sounds fine. Next
time you meet a friend learning English tell him or her to subscribe to LetThemTalkTv. It works
better than THEY because we're talking about one person not people in general.
HE or SHE works once or twice but in a long text or talk it starts to sound annoying and ugly.
HE or SHE this HE or SHE that. Next time you speak to your teacher tell him or her that he or she is
lovely and if he or she has a problem with that then he or she can speak with me after class. No
that doesn't work. It's every man for himself. It’s every man or woman for himself or herself.
No good. If someone calls get him or her to leave his or her number and I'll call
him or her back tomorrow. You see what I mean confusing for the reader and it sounds ugly.
Another thing is that in a sentence like if you ask the average person he or she will tell
you that humans contribute to climate change it doesn't work because the sentence is too general
we are not discussing one person it's about all people who believe a certain thing not a single
person, an owner or one teacher. A further point is that some people consider HE or SHE as too
binary. If there is a third or a fourth sex then it doesn't work but that's a whole different thing
which is frankly beyond the scope of this video. What about inventing a new gender
neutral pronoun? This would solve the problem instantly; you could use shim
or hesh if you ask the average person hesh will tell you that humans contribute to climate change.
Interesting and grammatically perfect yes it works problem solved but hold on a minute,
attempts to artificially create a new pronoun for this purpose have so far proved unsuccessful.
If you want to try it, good luck with that I’m all for it
because you know it worked in swedish. They had a similar problem to English
they had han which is she and han he but no gender neutral pronoun so they invented one in 1966 hen
and I'm told it is now gaining traction. If you know swedish tell us more in the comments. So
this kind of solution is not as far-fetched as it seems. Having said that English is a far bigger
language than Swedish. that brings us to THEY traditionally style guides don't like it because
you're using a plural noun with a singular verb. A study found that the average person
looks at their phone 400 times a day. Everybody loves their mother but the gender neutral theyTHEY
or THEIR or THEM has been with us for hundreds of years going all the way back to the 13th century.
Shakespeare uses a singular THEIR. There's not a man I meet but that salute me. As if I were their
well-acquainted friend. Comedy of Errors. Act four scene three. Jane Austen used the singular THEY
and them no less than 63 times in her writings. But remember that the pain of parting from friends
will be felt by everybody at times whatever be their education or state.
Sense and Sensibility. So this seems like a good solution and it is in many cases. I use it myself;
it's certainly the best answer to the original question. If you ask the average person,
they will tell you that humans contribute to climate change. Or a sentence like ‘everyone must
return to their seats’. So using a singular THEY is acceptable and it has history behind it but
once again it simply doesn't work all the time. Look at this sentence someone didn't
sign their form if they come back tell them they have to sign it before they start school.
too many THEY and THEIRS colliding and by the end of the sentence you
really feel like you're dealing with many people. It's too confusing for the reader
but it gets worse. What about this sentence? Was it Bob or Sarah that crashed their car and broke
their legs? is it a shared car or is it owned by just one of them and is it a shared leg.
That sentence won't work with the impersonal HE either by the way. Was it Bob or Sarah that
crashed his car and broke his leg? We're really stuck with this one. What about this? If someone
loves animals they should protect them. No THEY doesn't work in all cases it's every man for
himself becomes it's everybody for themself. No, no thank you. I won't say that. You know there's
no academy of the English language as there is in French and German and many other languages
so English writers have to rely on style guides and suggestions from other writers and their own
instinct which is what you'll have to do too. For this video one of the books I consulted
was THE Sense of Style. Here it is The sense of style by Steven Pinker a really
excellent book. I highly recommend it. It's a book about writing style as well as discussion on
controversial grammar topics such as this one. Here it is. I'll leave a link in
the description if you're interested in purchasing a copy. The singular pronoun
this is one case where the English language is left wanting. There is no foolproof solution
but here are my suggestions. Use THEY as a gender neutral pronoun but do it sparingly overusing it
will cause confusion but it works a lot of the time. HE or SHE can be used in informal
English when you are assigning an attribute to one person but we don't know if that person is male
or female but you can only do this once or twice more than that will start distracting the reader.
When the candidate arrives tell him or her to wait downstairs. If it's a single sentence
you could just use HE or perhaps SHE and run with it. For example if the plumber comes tell
him to wait in his car. Even if you don't know if the plumber is male or female it'll probably
sneak under the radar but only once. In writing, repeating it often will justifiably open you up to
accusations of sexism. Try rewriting the sentence. A very common way to escape this trap is to
rewrite the sentence with a plural for example instead of every student should pay attention to
their grammar you could write all students should pay attention to their grammar. You can sometimes
replace the pronoun with a definite or indefinite article so you could write every student should
pay attention to the grammar. Switch between HE and SHE this is a very creative solution and one
that Pinker used in the book I just mentioned. The Sense of Style. so in one chapter he would use HE
as a generic reader and in the next chapter he would use SHE and he made this announcement
right at the beginning of the book and it worked pretty well but I'm not sure that
every author would be prepared to make such a statement at the start of each of their books.
Their books there you are the gender neutral pronoun. Now it's your turn can you think of
any other cases where English is broken? and what about other languages I know that French has far
greater confusion than English in respect to inclusivity in writing look at this example
Is it just me or does that look really ugly once you have an organization that polices
the language you're asking for trouble is your language broken in any way let
us know in the comments. Thank you for watching grammarians stay healthy and see you soon bye