196

17053 readers

1360 users here now

Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.

Rule: You must post before you leave.

Other rules

Behavior rules:

No bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc…)
No genocide denial
No support for authoritarian behaviour (incl. Tankies)
No namecalling
Accounts from lemmygrad.ml, threads.net, or hexbear.net are held to higher standards
Other things seen as cleary bad

Posting rules:

No AI generated content (DALL-E etc…)
No advertisements
No gore / violence
Mutual aid posts require verification from the mods first

NSFW: NSFW content is permitted but it must be tagged and have content warnings. Anything that doesn't adhere to this will be removed. Content warnings should be added like: [penis], [explicit description of sex]. Non-sexualized breasts of any gender are not considered inappropriate and therefore do not need to be blurred/tagged.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us on our matrix channel or email.

Other 196's:

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

remotelove

[email protected]

667

Singular they rule (pawb.social)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

174 comments fedilink hide all child comments

ALT TEXT:

Panel 1: A person with the text "Singular 'they'" written on them smiling with open arms.
Panel 2: "Singular 'They'" beaten up by others who said, "Singular they is ungrammatical. It's too confusing," "How can anyone use plural pronouns for singular," and "Every pronoun should only have one purpose."
Panel 3: "You" hiding from the mob who was beating "Singular 'They'"
Panel 4: "German 'Sie'" hiding with even more fear next to "You"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You used to be just second person plural, thou was second person singular. At some point, thou fell out of favour and we started using just you

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Alright, I can think of a few instances given that context. Funny how it's original usage is now relatively uncommon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

You can see it's still grammatically plural even when used as a singular with the other words that go around it too. "You are" instead of the singular "is".

It can even make singular things kinda behave like they're plurals. Like "The Lemmy user is posting comments" vs. "you, the Lemmy user are posting comments"

Back in the day it was "thou art posting comments" (singular) and "ye are posting comments"(plural). With "ye" becoming "you" over time. Although they also had more funky letters like ȝ and þ and stuff.