'Non-binary' gender identification

[crb11]

That's just the point. Erosion of language, creating an ever increasing number of irregularities, makes it more and more complicated as time goes on. The British are notoriously bad at learning foreign languages. I sometimes wonder whether that has something to do with the difficulty we have with our own tongue.

Guy Deutscher's "The Unfolding of Language" dissects the whole subject of changes in language, discussing many opposing arguments. It's a fascinating book.

Of course, French, German and some other languages do the same as you're objecting to but the other way around, with the formal you (vous, Sie) taking a plural form. (English historically did this too: our "you" is descended from the plural form and would presumably take plural verb forms if we had any to take.)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Of course, French, German and some other languages do the same as you're objecting to but the other way around, with the formal you (vous, Sie) taking a plural form. (English historically did this too: our "you" is descended from the plural form and would presumably take plural verb forms if we had any to take.)

I know, but at least there's consistency. English verbs are among the simplest:

SINGULAR
I sit
You sit
He-she-it sits/they sit

PLURAL
We sit
You sit
They sit

Let's not get started on the royal "we".

The informal 2nd person singular is still used in certain dialects. E.g. "Where't tha' goin'" = Where art thou going.

[Count Boso]

Erosion of language, creating an ever increasing number of irregularities, makes it more and more complicated as time goes on.

But 'ordinary people', non linguists, seem to be the ones who find this erosion useful when communicating the ideas of a constantly evolving society.

Many of the European languages have developed from Latin - but not the Latin of Caesar, Cicero or Tacitus, but Vulgar Latin (="Latin of the masses, the common herd"). And the masses and common herd now cope quite comfortably with their French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian. It might have been less complicated if they'd all stuck to Classical Latin, but these modifications are the languages that they've created for their own use.

The purists tore their hair out crying, No, don't say plus grandis, say grandior! And while we're at it, it's TA-BUL-A not tabla. You'll be calling it a tayble next.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But 'ordinary people', non linguists, seem to be the ones who find this erosion useful when communicating the ideas of a constantly evolving society.

Many of the European languages have developed from Latin - but not the Latin of Caesar, Cicero or Tacitus, but Vulgar Latin (="Latin of the masses, the common herd"). And the masses and common herd now cope quite comfortably with their French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian. It might have been less complicated if they'd all stuck to Classical Latin, but these modifications are the languages that they've created for their own use.

The purists tore their hair out crying, No, don't say plus grandis, say grandior! And while we're at it, it's TA-BUL-A not tabla. You'll be calling it a tayble next.

Yes, the book covers that and suggests that Latin endings in different tenses may have been the result of diminution/erosion. Whether these changes are a good thing or not will only be evident over time. Some hybrid mixups of verb and preposition might even make make it (gonna/gotta) but don't expect me to be applauding their inclusion. I must say I'm relieved that predictive text has effectively killed off many of the emerging text-speak spellings.

[Count Boso]

I think my own usage is conservative - I don't tend to adopt new usages even unconsciously, so am unlikely to import 'a big ask' or 'any time soon' or once unspeakable swear words, not because I disapprove of them but because I don't need them. Other people, I think, quite deliberately adopt them, and I don't have an opinion about that.

Gonna/gotta as you say may become as usual as don't and shan't because 'sloppy' speech does break down the formal language forms. It was sloppy 'vulgar' speech that did for formal Latin with its declensions and conjugations which relied on clearly pronounced endings. You say, "Whether these changes are a good thing or not will only be evident over time" but a) we've had well over 1,000 years to make up our minds about that and b) it's not really a question of whether it's 'good' or 'bad'. Do people nowadays find it harder to communicate with each other than the Romans, Germans or Slavs did 2,000 years ago? Even when we don't understand some linguistic novelty, we have ways of discovering meanings that our ancestors didn't have. 'Linguae mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis', as the Romans might have said. But even they distinguished their two languages: the formal written word and sermo cotidianus which everyone spoke - even Cicero.

Yes, the book covers that and suggests that Latin endings in different tenses may have been the result of diminution/erosion. Whether these changes are a good thing or not will only be evident over time. Some hybrid mixups of verb and preposition might even make make it (gonna/gotta) but don't expect me to be applauding their inclusion.

[Pulcinella]

There's a review (by Amia Srinivasan, Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford) in today's London Review of Books of What's your pronoun? Beyond he and she by Dennis Barron, a professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois.

I might report back! It's a very long article.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'm so confused over all this, I've decided to be It. Going for top of the It parade.

[Bryn]

I'm so confused over all this, I've decided to be It. Going for top of the It parade.

Though in the UK my forename is generally regarded as restricted to males, over The Pond it is principally associated with females. Happy to be referred to as a Bryn.

[Richard Barrett]

Sooner or later some consensual usage will condense out of all the possibilities currently in circulation. What I see is that in general my generation treats this issue with the (not always well-intentioned) bemusement that previous generations treated the increasing visibility of homosexuality, or the move away from using "he/him/his" as a default pronoun. When we're all dead and gone people will ask themselves what all the fuss and resistance was about.

[oddoneout]

Sooner or later some consensual usage will condense out of all the possibilities currently in circulation. What I see is that in general my generation treats this issue with the (not always well-intentioned) bemusement that previous generations treated the increasing visibility of homosexuality, or the move away from using "he/him/his" as a default pronoun. When we're all dead and gone people will ask themselves what all the fuss and resistance was about.

While also saying 'how could they think like that, what dreadful people'?

[Nevilevelis]

As English does not provide a gender neutral pronoun, 'they' seems the unfortunately obvious choice, though some writers use the inelegant 's/he'. There is some precedence for this usage of 'they', for example in referring to a person where anonymity is required. (E.g. the source said that there was reason to believe the rumour, although they were unable to provide evidence.)

Would thon be better? It doesn't seem to have had much use recently.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/thon

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thon

NVV