Quote:
Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
No one intends to "disregard this practice as a new or transient whim" any more than I've dismissed the use of thou as the side-effect of a Tickle Me Elmo commercial. (I don't mean to sound edgy about your comment, BTW -- I'm just trying to have fun. I think I'm the only one to have played with third-person neologisms so far. Where are Anthony Burgess and Tolkien when you need them?)
The singular use of they has been around since the Middle Ages, but my specific mention of current practice refers to its use as the preferred and even overriding form for third-person pronouns -- i.e., to the utter exclusion of she and he in every instance not referring to a specific person or sex. You won't find that in Shakespeare, Chaucer or Sir Philip Sidney.
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Do you really think it's gone that far? Yes the academic aversions to the singular use of they (etc.) may be fading, but I think the existence of this thread shows how far there is still to go. There are lots of things you find now that you don't find in Shakespeare (etc.), and vise versa. The commonality and roots of our expressions are useful to our understanding, and to understanding how our language is understood, but that's not to say we necessarily want to return to Old English. It's like the discussions on this forum about localisation and so on: as writers we need to know what specific expressions mean to our readers so that we can avoid misunderstanding and ambiguity (or deliberately introduce them if that is our goal).